Into The White With The Pixies

Last Monday I had the good fortune to catch the Pixies' 20th anniversary Doolittle show at the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC. I am pleased to report that, 16 years after their farewell LP Trompe le Monde, they still are one of the most powerful, most rocking bands on this Planet of Sound.

Playing their watershed album Doolittle sandwiched between B-sides of the period, the Pixies validated both the Reunion Tour Without A New Album concept and the Playing A Classic Album In Its Entirety concept.

Highlights were many. Of course there were the 120 Minutes classics "Debaser," "Wave of Mutilation," "Here Comes Your Man," "Monkey Gone to Heaven" and "Gouge Away." The group attacked these songs with the same force and energy that galvanized a generation of fans and followers. The players were magnificent. Leader and mastermind Black Francis whooped howls of delight and strummed commanding rhythms with his Telecaster. Joey Santiago played with feedback-drenched, surf-infused fury. Kim Deal held down the bottom with her thumping basslines, and the very underrated David Lovering's drums drove the whole thing home.

Just as thrilling as the so-called hits were the deeper cuts, such as "Crackity Jones" - this is the type of strange, hillarious song you will only get from the Pixies. For all the postgame analysis about Kurt Cobain being heavily influenced by the Pixies, the Pixies deserve to be appreciated on their own terms, with no talk of who they influenced or who influenced them.


Perhaps most thrilling of all was the Kim Deal B-side "Into the White" with an almost overwhelming strobe light fog show. Though this fan-shot video isn't pro-quality, it gives a pretty good idea of the majesty of the moment.


The A-side of "Into the White" (also available on their best-of Wave of Mut ilation) was the band's foray into pop-hitmaking territory, and the song most known by Pixie knowlittles, "Here Comes Your Man," a song the Pixies had in the can for years before recording it for Doolittle.

But before you think it's a sugary sweet sellout, bear in mind that the song is actually about nuclear holocaust. As Wikipedia notes: "The true subject of this song is the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. "Boxcar" refers to the plane that dropped the bomb, named Bock's Car. The name itself is alluding to the nuclear bomb dropped, named Fat Man."

Looking forward to the Bossanova XX tour in 2010.