Kim jumps into the audience after playing a set. She's behind the barriers where the security guard stood during the performance, handing out cups of water to those crushed down at the front. You can tell where she is by the Mexican wave of people moving along, clustered around her epicentre. She's so close. She is shiny with sweat, looking totally alive. I push my hand in there, over everyone and she grabs it. I get to say "I love you! I love you!" and she looks in my eye for half a second before moving on. I feel like a cow that's just been serviced by the prize bull.

Kelley sings I Just Wanna Get Along. It's the story of your life. People dick you around, they get in your way, they interfere, they tell you No, they push you, they fuck you up. I Just Wanna Get Along. Kelley is defiant, the refrain sounds like an affirmation. She looks so strong. She's really here. She didn't die. She didn't disintegrate. She came back and now she's singing I Just Wanna Get Along like it's a mantra for staying alive.

Kelley and Kim are sexy and beautiful. Sometimes they're fat, sometimes skinny. Their hair is the same, dirty and greasy onstage. They have muscled forearms from gripping their guitars. They have dyke hands. Their cheekbones obscure their eyes. The heroin legacy is only evident in Kelley's face when you stand her next to Kim, but there are so few public photographs of them together, side by side. They are these two uncomplicated women. Kim is excited about going to Amsterdam because she can smoke pot there. All they want to do is make music.

For the most part I don't know what they're singing. I read the words on a lyric sheet and I looked them up on the internet but I have this thing with music that I like, which is that I rarely know what it's about, even after years of singing along. It's like watching abstract pixelated shapes on a screen, pulling into focus and realising that you've tuned in to a war report on the nine o'clock news. All I hear are phrases that make no sense on their own, but which ignite a feeling inside me. I'll be your whatever you want. Do you think of me like I dream of you. Don't call home, you never can call. You got me going you got me going. Add to the mix their cloudy voices cut free from convention to make any kind of noise, midwestern burrs, mean inflection, and all the guitars banging away, and all I want to do is just shake-it-shake-it-shake-it when I hear them play.

When we left from watching them play someone said: "I feel like I'm 16 again". I know there's no one else who's poster I'd kiss. I feel like I'm in love. When we left from watching them play we saw their tour-bus parked outside and I fantasised about stowing away with them. I thought about the gals lying on their bunks inside, bored, smoking, stinking up the place with their sweat, picking fights. I imagined Kelley knitting her funny handbags. Both she and Kim use(d) heroin and I'm not surprised if this is the life they lead.

There's an amazing photograph of them in a yard, running behind a lawnmower into the camera, laughing like mad. Being twins they might be one entity. They look like teenagers, girlish. I imagined, like my girlfriend and her sister, that in their family they'd be referred to as "the girls". I wonder if those same family members ever thought the girls would turn out the way they did - I doubt it! I wonder if they're proud of their daughters watching them onstage, guzzling beer, gurning and smoking as they play, dripping sweat, breathing nicotine, not oxygen. I wonder what they think of their daughters who make music that's high art, lyrically obscure, thoughtful, complicated, smart. How do you explain to your neighbours that your daughter's songs are about pain and longing?

Rock 'n' roll feeds your imagination, it offers you some kind of release, a connection. It's a holy feeling. But it's totally transient and elusive, often exploited, and often the cause of misery. But really, when it's there, when it works, it's so good, so satisfying.