Death To....

Reunions and comebacks, no matter the specific circumstances, tend to be disappointing. For example, when meeting up with an old girlfriend/boyfriend, things tend to be a little awkward and stilted; and even if/when you slide back into familiarity, it's not as familiar as it once was. Something is slightly off, and the space between the old and the new -- no matter how tiny -- is heightened and made to see mmuch larger because you are dealing with such an intimate subject. Compare this to meeting someone you vaguely knew much earlier in life. Your sense of this person may be so completely and utterly different than what it once was, yet it will seem more "normal" than the "oh-you-haven-t-changed" nature of a lunch with an ex- where the change is only slight.

We, as a people, tend to wax nostolgic about things we once loved but have run their due course. These things in our pasts become highly idealized and idolized and, in reminding ourselves of all the good we conveniently forget all the bad. And then when we have these comebacks and reunions, they often seem out-of-place and inherently are unable to live up to our expectations. To wit: the new Star Wars movies. I haven't seen the third one yet, but the first two were so dreadfully bad and unwatchable that the third one would have to be Casablanca for me to forgive George Lucas. But who do we have to blame? George Lucas for making, in my mind, an inferior product? Or me (we, the consers) who for years speculated about and pined for those first three chapters. We asked for it.

And this leads me to the concert I saw last night.

The Pixies.

Part of their legendary status is that they quit at the right time. They weren't around long enough for a slow descent to irrelevance (I'm looking at you, Mick Jagger) and, while Trompe le Monde is a good album, it shows signs of decline. In a vacuum it's good, relative to Surfer Rosa, it isn't.

I wasn't into the Pixies when they were around the first time, but I did get into them a few years later. They quickly became my favorite band (behind the Beatles, but in truth I would pick Pixies albums to take to a deserted island before Beatles albums; and slightly ahead of R.E.M. - speaking of slow descents to irrelevancy). I saw R.E.M. on their Monster tour, and so the chances of seeing my top 2 bands in concert were slim to none... slim walking out the door when a crazed fan snuck into it's house and stabbed him before Mrs. Harrison could scare the attacker off...

And then Frank Black and Kim Deal kissed and made up and Coachella happened and they were touring.

And we come to last night. I shrugged off my cloak of sarcasm and jaded-ness and became a kid on Christmas morning. But then I started thinking of Star Wars and I began worrying. What if they suck? What if they suck? And then the four band members strolled on stage to the roar of the masses and launched into "Alec Eiffel". Okay. A Trompe le Monde song. I worried a little more as I began thinking of the second Star Wars movie. But then they ripped through song after song, a juggernaut of sound the likes of which Phil Spector only wishes he could have produced. Frank Black's trademark whisper-to-scream heightened the tension and energy of the band, the songs and the audience and if you weren't looking you'd never know the lead singer was a short fat man. Kim Deal's half-a-beat off back-up vocals were as sexy/sweet as I remember. I don't know how Joey Santiago gets such noise from a single guitar, but he does. And David Lovering kept the band tight with his drumming and hammed it up on La La Love You.

It was fantastic. It was incredible. There was no awkwardness or disappointment because the band played just how we remember them. They weren't slightly off to highlight the awareness of how off they were. Nothing was stilted or slow. They simply rocked. But where do they go from here? Do they record a new album? Will the new stuff suck? With one exception (the fantastic Teenager of the Year Frank Black's post-Pixies stuff hasn't excited me, and the Breeders last album isn't very good, so can Frank and Kim (and Joey and David) make a worthwhile album? I don't know. I don't care. Because I saw the fucking Pixies live and they were amazing.