I have a lot to be thankful for, including two incredible live music experiences in one week: The wonderful Arcade Fire last Thursday at the Magic Stick, and a reunited, rejuvenated Pixies at the lovely State Theater in downtown Detroit. A bit of backstory, the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim is one of the first compact discs I bought in The Great Format Switch of 1988 and has had more front-to-back spins than any other CD I own. Yet, for a number of reasons, I never had the chance to see the Pixies play live until the other night. Let’s just say, they bought me a soda, they bought me a soda and tried to molest me in the parking lot…yep, yep yep! They were so tight (Dave Lovering was playing drums like it was his last chance on earth), no one was holding back, and they played for two solid hours and hit every single song on my wish list. Joe and I tried hard afterwards to think of anything else we would have had them play and all we could come up with were B-sides and agreed that was way too greedy of us. So that backstory now has a happy ending. Merry Thanksgiving everyone!
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Cool – going to see them tonight in Toronto. I was lucky to have seen them twice back when I lived in Chicago.
Thanks for the clips!!!!
Another part of the larger backstory is that I'd seen the Pixies once before, for about five minutes, in Detroit in about 1989. Sam was already off at college, so he missed it (maybe another reason not to go to BYU). Anyway, Black Francis kept getting electrocuted by his microphone during the first song, and he got understandably upset and left. And that was it. No "Bone Machine," no "Gouge Away," no "Debaser," (Sam vowed to find Pixies mp3s after the show the other night, and succeeded!), and especially no "Gigantic," which ended their set on Monday and almost made me wet my pants. It was beautiful. Thanks, Sam. It was way better than that St. Andrew's show 15 years ago.