Long before there was The X, there was Double X -- WXXP, a station that had a few years of New Wave glory in the era before Clear Channel and Infinity gobbled up the airwaves.

Deb Brady, left, and Garrett Hart spin discs for listeners of progressive rock station WXXP in Millvale in 1987. WXXP Tribute Show Where: Rex Theatre, South Side. When: 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Tickets: $10.07; proceeds benefit the Western Pennsylvania Area American Diabetes Association and the Mercy Hospital Amputee Program. Auction and merchandise proceeds will benefit the Persad Center of Pittsburgh. A portion of the proceeds with be donated to the American Red Cross for the Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort. Information: 412-323-1919.

WXXP, a sister station of New York's WLIR, owned by Denis McNamara and Elton Spitzer, moved into Millvale in 1986 and started spinning a college format on commercial radio. With the catch phrase "The Station That Dares to Be Different," WXXP played a steady diet of rockers like The Ramones, Elvis Costello, The Replacements and Violent Femmes; New Wave acts like the Smiths, the Cure, and Echo and the Bunnymen; and synth-rock bands like Depeche Mode, New Order and Erasure.

It would be like a commercial station today playing the Arcade Fire, Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand and the Flaming Lips -- fairly unthinkable.

WXXP, a counter to the more mainstream WDVE, gave on-air personalities like DJ Bird, Deb Brady, Paul Cramer and Garrett Hart an unusual amount of latitude to spin what they wanted.

By turning more people on to college rock and giving airtime to bands from the burgeoning Graffiti scene, XXP was an adrenaline shot to the local scene.

"People don't realize the impact that this radio station had on Pittsburgh," says Rod Schwartz, who is organizing a tribute show to the station this weekend. "No major market station in this area has been brave enough to commit exclusively to what we now call alternative music, before or since. And in those days, it wasn't even called alternative. This was before Nirvana, before Radiohead. The music didn't have a name. We all just thought of it as good music that no one else was playing."

Unfortunately, it was all too good to last (much like The Revolution that came after it). McNamara and Spitzer sold the station in 1988, and it went Top 40.

WXXP is gone, but not forgotten. The local all-star band led by former 11th Hour bassist Schwartz that has played tributes to the Clash and Elvis Costello has re-assembled the XXP playlist for shows Friday and Saturday at the Rex.

The idea came from A.T.S. drummer Kip Ruefle, and they set to work on the playlist for the show. It only came to, uh, 160 songs, Schwartz says. They've pared that down to between 100 to 120 for the two-night stint, which will benefit local charities.

Making this a true blast from the past will be the appearance of most of the XXP DJs, including Brady, now a visual artist living in San Francisco, and Scott "DJ" Bird, who owns a mattress company and runs a hockey Web site in South Florida.

"I thought it was wonderful that they remembered and respected and appreciated what we had done at XXP," Bird says. "I thought, 'Yeah, it's a great idea. Count me in, I'll figure out a way to get there.' I'm tickled pink that all of [the DJs] are going to be there. I haven't seen most of them in over 20 years. It will give me the opportunity to thank them in person for not ratting me out for being such a ... partyer."

When Bird first came here from New York, where he was a DJ for WLIR, it was a culture shock to be relocated to the small town of Millvale. But he loved the station and the freedom the owners gave him to program it.

"The method to their programming was completely different from how most of America programmed radio. Even back then. I was first exposed to it coming from New York to Pittsburgh when one of the A&R guys from I-don't-know-what-company, I looked at him and said, 'Look, we don't play Bruce Springsteen' or whatever crap he was asking me to add. He said, 'I know that. You just add it on your list; you don't actually play it.' I said, 'Excuse me. I don't think you understand. We actually sit down and listen to records, and the good ones we add to our playlist and the bad ones we don't.' He said, 'I don't know what you're doing, but that's not how it's done.' "

The DJs at XXP played what they liked, within reason, and Bird is pretty sure they were more successful than the numbers ever indicated.

"When we went through the Arbitron process, our ratings didn't kick in, because, while we were wildly popular with college kids and high school kids, they weren't the ones filling out the ratings cards. But we knew we were doing the right thing because every band we brought in sold out."

The XXP show will begin with a reunion of the Affordable Floors and then move on to members of 11th Hour, the Spuds, A.T.S., the Floors and other bands backing singers like Chris Theoret, Ronda Zegarelli, John Young, Alex Peightel, Lexi Rebert, Jen Catalina and Ed Masley (from the Breakup Society, not to mention the Post-Gazette).

Bird will be Bono on U2's "I Will Follow," and he recommends being there Friday night, because, he says, "If it doesn't sound good the first time, I'm not doing it the next night."