Posts tagged The Pixies
Your Tour Guide – The Pixies
Nov 29th
Few bands have the cache or street cred that The Pixies do. It’s really hard to actually put a finger on because the run of the mill rock fan might be able to name three or four Pixies tunes max. I wrote about these guys maybe six months ago so I’m not going to wax poetic all over again today. Ryan, better known as The Giant Panther, and I took in The Pixies show this past Friday night at The Wang Center For The Performing Arts here in Boston. The actual building has a long history of hosting cultural events. In 1925 The Metropolitan Theatre opened in Boston’s Theatre District presumably hosting opera, classical music concerts and probably a little vaudeville. In 1962 the edifice was rechristened the home of the venerable Boston Ballet and renamed The Music Hall. In addition to the ballet crowd, the Music Hall began hosting a myriad of rock concerts including The Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan, particularly in the 70′s. I’m stating this from memory, which I’ve admitted in the past has betrayed me in the past, but I think I can safely say I saw The Outlaws, Heart, and possibly The Cars in that building before it was renamed yet again (this time back to The Metropolitan Theatre) in 1980. Great building; forced identity crisis…
Dr. An Wang, a computer engineer, made a large donation to the now non-profit Metropolitan Theatre in 1983. Wouldn’t you know it? Name change! According to Wikipedia, $9.8 Million was raised to renovate the theatre between 1989-1992. Now, with a capacity of roughly 3600, The Wang Center For The Performing Arts represents the very best Boston has to offer to the theatre going public. The Opera House is a fine establishment as well, but it’s buried a little off the beaten path near The Shopping District and not quite as big and glorious. Since the renovation The Wang has been careful not to attract the wrong element. I don’t think you’ll be seeing Motorhead or Judas Priest performing there any time soon (no offense to their music or perceived crowd intended). I think my concert going has been restricted to apple pie acts like Steely Dan, 10,000 Maniacs and comedian Jerry Seinfeld since they did the place over, but it is gorgeous. I don’t know their exact connection to the neighboring Wilbur Theatre is but I’ve taken in The Dandy Warhols and comedian Craig Ferguson over there. Nothing too offensive there either. I do have some crappy news though; The Wang Center For The Peforming Arts is being name hijacked once again…hello Citi Peforming Arts Center…uggh. I don’t believe I’ll be using that moniker anytime soon to describe this address. I still call The Tweeter/Comcast Center Great Woods and I always will. I detest corporate name changes. If they actually built the place fine, but otherwise…it’s such a turn off…no other way to describe it…have their been studies done that being hit over the head with a particular company, let alone a bank, improves business? Really? Stupid me…
The Pixies have another type of crowd. First of all, they have Boston ties, so that would probably factor into The Wang booking them, but I’m always curious where they draw that imaginary line in the sand. Ironically, my last, and only Pixies concert was November 27, 1991 at The Orpheum Theatre in Boston. How absolutely ironic is it that my next Pixies concert was 18 years to the day on November 27, 2009? I find that a tad disconcerting, but in a good way as we are all still here, healthy and rocking. The Pixies don’t have a particularly frightening brand of music, but they aren’t afraid to challenge the norm. The focus of this concert was the 1989 CD Doolittle, celebrating the 20th anniversary of its release, which they played end to end after a four song warm-up. I’ve been to my share of shows, but I got a big kick out of this one. I have often said that my 1991 show was spectacular. I was in roughly the 20th row this time so I wasn’t nearly as close as I was the first time, but I still got a pretty good feel for the enormity of what I was witnessing. To recap; The Pixies were together from 1986-1993 and released five studio albums. Come On Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa featured some awesome singles such as “Gigantic” and “Where is My Mind,” but ultimately sales were so-so. Then came 1989′s Doolittle.
Doolittle, to the uninitiated, might represent a struggle for continuity. You know and love “Here Comes Your Man” and “Monkey Gone To Heaven” from repeated radio listenings, but you don’t hear many a Pixies’ fan favorite “Debaser” much anymore on terrestrial radio. “Wave of Mutilation,” featured twice in two different forms during this concert, also has trouble maintaining any consistent radio waves. You can forget about hearing Pixie classics “Gouge Away, Hey and I Bleed” from this record unless you own it. Only three of the fifteen tracks clear the three minute mark, yet the record placed 226th on Rolling Stone Magazine’s prestigious Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time published in 2003. That is incredibly impressive.
If you live in a major metropolitan city like Boston with some 15 potential rock venues you sometimes have to pick and choose your concerts, particularly in this economy. No matter what the circumstances, when you see a band re-surface like The Pixies after years of squabbling and not knowing if they will ever come around again you have to make the effort to see them. It’s historic, it’s magical and they were terrific. If they come to your town go see them. They go on just after 9 PM. I spent almost as much money on the Live at Hammerstein (11-23-2009) CD they were hocking in the lobby before the show AND by shelling out $50 for what looked to be an ordinary cardboard poster of the cover of Doolittle (they swore they were only selling 15 of them per show…that’s probably right…there aren’t 15 suckers at each show to pay that kind of money) than I spent on three tickets, but I had a great time. You will too. The good news is I can now leave you with a copy of “Hey” from the Hammerstein CD for your enjoyment. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.
Set List – Dancing The Manta Ray, Weird at My School, Bailey’s Walk, Manta Ray, Debaser, Tame, Wave of Mutilation, I Bleed, Here Comes Your Man, Dead, Monkey Gone To Heaven, Mr Grieves, Crackity Jones, La La I Love You, Number 13 Baby, There Goes My Gun, Hey, Silver, Gouge Away
Encore I – Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf), Into The White
Encore II – Where is My Mind, Caribou, Vamos, Gigantic
My Insipid Record Collection – The Pixies
Jun 4th
One of New England’s finest exports in the 1980′s was a band called The Pixies. I’m quite sure you have heard of them if you liked the Modern or Alternative Rock genre. With a few minor exceptions, The Pixies were mostly comprised of Black Francis, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago and David Lovering. You may have noticed their much ballyhooed one off reunions over the past couple of years at strategic festivals. Their story has been told more than once. You also may have heard of how one time University of Massachusetts-Amherst college roommates Black Francis and Joey Santiago formed a band in 1986 and began recruiting band members. They found bassist Kim Deal allegedly by placing an ad requesting a female bass player that liked both folkies Peter, Paul & Mary and Husker Du. I really have no way of knowing what is true and what isn’t, but legend has it Deal was the only one who responded to the ad and showed up for the audition without a bass guitar claiming she had no money to retrieve it from her native Ohio. On top of that she had never played the instrument if you believe the rumor. Apparently drummer David Lovering was discovered at Kim’s own wedding reception. Different, but with the pieces now in place they began to build the legend…
I began thinking about The Pixies again this morning because my local alterna-rock station, WFNX, runs a feature every Thursday morning called “My Song is Better Than Your Song.” I kind of like the bit, but they frequently fail to mention the song titles after the first time and they don’t document the history of the game on their web site. It’s kind of maddening because it takes place in a span of 15 minutes to half an hour and then they crown a champion. Voters are encouraged to continue the debate on their home page, but it basically ends right there. It would be a lot more fun if you could go to their web site and look at the history of what song beat what song. It’s a futile pursuit of course, but if I miss a week or some guy is champion for weeks on end I want to follow his song titles. They might have made some improvements to their web site, I haven’t checked in a while, but it was severely lacking when I last checked to try and track some of the history of the game. It is an interesting concept for someone with a little historical perspective on the station. I think I was listening to it before the morning crew were born, but that’s on me I suppose. They rag on old time alternative legends like Roxy Music, which drives me up a wall (I can’t communicate how much I love everything about Roxy Music including the name of the band), but they are just kids. I get that. But I love it when they get all bent out of shape when Mission of Burma’s That’s When I Reach For My Revolver tops Pearl Jam’s Jeremy or Steppenwolf’s The Pusher takes out Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart (don’t quote me on that last match up…I’d reference it if I could). They frequently have older guests like Big Jim’s Dad (Big Jim is the afternoon drive guy who also hates several bands I love) who won several weeks in a row with older tunes they would never actually play on WFNX. It’s kind of fun to see how much perspective the actual listeners have and how many of them are in my age bracket. You can sort of tell by the votes and it’s a fun curiosity for me.
The reason I tell the story is because this morning one of their sales guys brought Van Halen’s Ice Cream Man to the My Song party. I love David Lee Roth led Van Halen, but Ice Cream Man has never been a favorite of mine. I know it’s an old blues standard redone, but I would have picked a gazillion other Van Halen tunes to ostensibly go up against what will likely be a song they play on the station. The champion picked The Pixies’ Dig For Fire from 1990′s Bossanova. Predictably, Van Halen went down by a 4-1 margin even though this Pixies number is probably not in their top ten songs lifetime in my opinion. For those of you who don’t know who The Pixies were, they had a brilliant seven year run from 1986 to 1993 or so. They had four studio albums and an EP. It doesn’t sound like much, but what an impact. Nirvana and other bands have tipped their collective hat to this outfit from Boston. Combining surf music, punk rock and Black Francis’ infatuation with all things UFO, this band’s sound was characterized by soft and melodic excerpts frequently followed by harsh explosions of sonic noise. It was referred to as LoudQUIETLoud in their 2006 Rockumentary. You couldn’t really put a handle on it, but you knew it was something totally different. It had some Sonic Youth and Husker Du attached to it, but it was definitely off the beaten path.
The Pixies had to wait until their third record for real “national” recognition. I say “national” because it’s debatable whether they were ever really that big in the United States. Once they had established a bit of a foothold in Europe and Surfer Rosa gained some notoriety, they were able to sign a deal here in the States and get going. The first song I ever heard by The Pixies was “Gigantic.” Whoa. ‘Nuff said I thought to myself. Count me in. Many of their songs were short bursts of intensity and Gigantic was just perfect as far as I was concerned. Then I heard “Where is My Mind?” and I was an even more ardent Pixies fan. Everything sort of changed when they released Doolittle in 1989. Now they were stars. I will never get tired of listening to “Monkey Gone To Heaven” as long as I live. Songs like “Debaser” and “Wave of Mutilation” just put Pixies fever in overdrive 20 years ago. I know very well I will receive some criticism for what I’m about to type, but I liked Bossanova the best out of all of their records. It contained all kinds of “B” cuts. Aside from the radio friendly Dig For Fire you might have heard personal favorite “Is She Weird?” on the radio, but never today. It’s a crying shame too. The Pixies were much greater than people even realize today. It just goes to show you what you hear on the radio or see on the charts is not necessarily indicative of greatness. They cobbled together one more record called Trompe Le Monde in 1991 before calling it a day. It’s amazing that they could put together two more good records after it became public knowledge that Francis and Deal were having a power struggle. Thank god they squeezed out the song “U-Mass” before they expired. That song positively rocks! Black Francis famously notified band members Deal & Lovering of his cessation from their union via fax (remember those?) in January of 1993 officially ending their intial run as Monsters of Alternative Rock.
OK, I’ve got to shut myself off because I could go on all day about these guys and this post is already too long. The Pixies imploded due mostly to the egos of Black Francis and Kim Deal, but one of the greatest shows I have ever seen took place November 27, 1991 (the night before Thanksgiving that year) at The Orpheum Theatre in Boston. For my $20.50 I saw an unbelievable combination of intensity, musicianship and crowd worship. I walked out of their completely spent and talking to myself. How could this band be on the verge of breaking up? They clearly were ignoring each other to a degree, but WOW!…what a concert! After the breakup Kim Deal formed The Breeders with her sister Kelley and dominated the free world with the song “Cannonball” in 1993. Black Francis became Frank Black and also released a tremendous, but little known, self titled solo album in 1993 (go buy that one if you like The Pixies…trust me) before his career tailed off big time. The song I leave you with today is from Bossanova called “The Happening.” If you don’t own Bossanova you have never heard it, but it is very representative of The Pixies. Death To The Pixies? I think not!…
