Waiting For Sooooo Long / Here Comes Your Band

October 3, 2004

Full disclosure: I wasn’t that excited about the Pixies reunion. I’m probably a medium sized Pixies fan, owning all their records but not lovingly caressing them on a daily basis. There was just something about the way the tour was put together and announced that never made it seem an essential experience. It was a cash-in reunion for a nostalgic audience wanting one more chance and a small percentage of new hipster fans weaned on the Pixies’ descendants looking for their first time. I’m inbetween, old enough to be familiar but never seeing them live the first time ’round. Given that, I figured one shot would be worth it, even if it was the Pixies in their Fat Elvis mode.

I went to the 2nd night, so the band had already made their triumphant return to Los Angeles just 24 hours earlier. Selling out the Greek isn’t an easy task, but 8,000 strong showed up anyway. It was a weird crowd, with a lot of old guys in too-tight t-shirts and skunk haired girls dressed like Pat Benatar, but all of them had that same glazed over look of anticipation. The vibe to the whole affair was very classic rock, particularly the older accountant types sneaking puffs on their joints like they hadn’t done it in years, and wouldn’t do so at all any other time this year.

After obligatory sets from Grant Lee Phillips and the Thrills, the Pixies came onto the stage with little onstage fanfare but a huge reaction. It started with “In Heaven” and then it never really seemed to stop. One thing about the Pixies was that they weren’t much for the talking, just the playing, and the songs kept coming and coming. “In Heaven” was a light intro, but “Where Is My Mind” and “Hear Comes Your Man” got the crowd singing along.

The setlist was pretty varied, but there was a four or five song stretch that ran from “River Euphrates” to “Crackity Jones” that killed the momentum. Songs like “Cactus” and “I Bleed” are fine, but running all of these spacy grinds back to back meant about 15 minutes of meandering. The show ramped up again with hits like “Debaser” and “Gouge Away” before closing out with “Vamos.” The band never actually left the stage before the encore, just standing at the edge waving to people before finally finishing off the whole deal with the surf version of “Wave of Mutilation” and finally “Gigantic,” the warmest hug of a song the Pixies ever penned. 30 songs with nary a pause and it was done.

The band sounded pretty good, but it lacked any sort of fire or any real tension. They weren’t nearly as sloppy as the early live shows I heard, but Kim Deal remains playing off in her own world much of the time. This didn’t hurt too much though, as Frank Black’s trademark howls and yelps were all dead-on, and Joey Santiago and David Lovering were rock solid. Curiously, it looked like Lovering was going to disappear into the results of an overzealous fog machine. Someone might want to turn that down. For those keeping track, Santiago is the one that looks the least Fat Elvis.

For me, it wasn’t life changing, but it was fun. For everyone else, it was the second coming. Hey, I’m not about to try and take that away from them.

Posted in From Blown Speakers