The Pixies, Brixton Academy 2nd June 2004
I’ve never been a massive Pixies fan, but they were a great band and there’s a whole load of nostalgia attached to their songs for me, and my sister, and my better half.
When I worked briefly at the Rough Trade warehouse it seemed like whole days were spent shifting copies of Doolittle along with Yazz’s The Only Way is Up 12″ (*bomp* baybeeeeeeeeeee!!!) and 3 Feet High and Rising. I even managed to blag a 4 track promo for Doolittle with “Wave of Mutilation” on it. Which I then promptly sold to cover my part of the printing costs for T.O.P.Y. London Bulletin 2 (a little A5 zine which we punted about 300 copies of in 6 months! I was stunned.).
I eventually got sacked from Rough Trade for nicking a copy of Nurse With Wound’s Alas The Madonna Does Not Function. I was gutted, but also somewhat amused by the unceremonious termination of the contract-I-was-never-given – people I worked with were parcelling up huge great boxes of LPs every day and sending them to “such and such record store” c/o their home address. You may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, as the saying goes. I imagine da management (although I think it was ostensibly a co-op?) were aware of the major “shrinkage” and I was made an example of. That, or I was just too cack-handed for a life of crime.
Anyway, I digress. It was also a time of my life when I was going out a lot and this even involved going to the occasional indie club where dancing drunkenly to “This Monkey’s Gone to Heaven” was de rigeur. Good times.
Plus obviously the Pixies were the architects of the whole “quiet bit/shouty bit” which is now a staple of every pop punk boy band you care to mention. It’s all about the dynamics, and the controlled mania of the lyrics, folks!
We missed the support cos of putting the daughter to bed on the other side of the river.
The Academy was rammed, huge numbers of people were singing along to every word, it was an impressive atmosphere considering the band just steamed through loads of their best songs without any banter whatsoever. It was, as my beter half pointed out, “a non arse-wiggling gig”. But that’s alright. Once in a while. Anyway it turns out that she likes all the mental thrashy ones and I like the girly Kim Deal ones like “Wave” (which got two outings – version excursion!) and “Heaven”.
It has been a long time since I went to a gig where young men clutch gigantic posters afterwards.
