Live on the Planet of Sound: The Pixies in Regina

March 15, 2004

reviewed by "Sweet" Lou Ambrosia

About 3 months ago I was working diligently in the office when I received an e-mail from El Hombre. To paraphrase, it said something like "rumour is the Pixies are doing a reunion tour and that the second show is in Regina". My response was something like this: "Don't toy with me". The next step in situations like this is to head to Google. I did some sort of search about a Pixies reunion tour and sure enough, there it was. April 14th Winnipeg and April 15th Regina, the first 2 shows. Wow, 13 years after the release of their final album and they are back from the dead. Of course there was no guarantee of tickets and the venue in which the show was being held in Regina is not particularly large and only 900 tickets were available. The pressure mounted leading up to the date the tickets went on sale. Problem 1: they went on sale on a Saturday morning. You see, I to do this thing called "getting drunk" most Fridays after work so the pressure of staying sober enough to get up early and get into the line was tremendous. Problem 2: 4 ticket limit. Sure enough I needed 5. So now I need a second body. Seems easy enough and the obvious choices of Dr. Jimmy and El Hombre were close at hand. Problem was they had a party to go to on Friday night. I made them promise to be at my place at about 9 am. Then I get a call from Billy Kwan in Calgary telling me that the show there sold out in 3 minutes and to make sure I got him a ticket. Huge pressure. Now I'm panicking. How early do I need to get there etc? The only way to deal with panic: drink more. A vicious circle really. Alright, to make a long story short, Dr. Jimmy, El Hombre and I went to the box office I thought would be least busy, anticipating an on-line jam up, and was able to secure the necessary tix. I was giddy for hours.

Pixies preparing to ROCK!

I've wanted to see the Pixies live since 1990. Back in those days, when you went to Louis' bar on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan, you used to hear lots of Pixies tunes on a Friday night. Nowadays all you hear is overproduced garbage like JT and J-Lo and frankly it makes going out to a club suck (unless they play Bell Biv Devoe, more on that in a later column).

Those were good times. Of course the notion of ever seeing this band was a fantasy at best. They were long broken up. Black Francis had embarked on a solo career as Frank Black and Kim Deal and her sister had formed the Breeders. Both groups did some excellent work in the 90's and the Breeders released a fairly recent album, which isn't a bad disc. It's not the same though.

Early last April Frank Black and the Catholics came to Regina. The opening band was Tangiers and overall the show was excellent. Frank played 5 or 6 songs off Surfer Rosa and Doolittle and I thought that this was as close as I'd get to seeing the band I still regard as my favourite musical group of all time. Luckily this was not the case.

Now after all this sucking up, you're probably wondering how I could possibly write an objective review. Well you see, I'm a crank. If the show had sucked, I would tell you. It's what I do. You suck. See, there it is. First I would like to address the venue, which frankly sucked (See, there it is again. By the way, has your dog ever played with a ball when you're writing an article, continuously lost it under your dresser and bed and then barked at you to get it out? How about licking your dresser drawers? Well it sucks. Do I like the term sucks? Yes.). The show was held in a hall, which is good for high school graduations, maybe, but not for a rock show. The stage was too low and therefore you could not see the band, especially when you're a short guy. I'm not sure how the women, not that they were all short, handled it. It probably needed 2 more feet. The second problem was the t-shirts. I've wanted a "Death to the Pixies" t-shirt for 14 years, but that was just the point. I should have had it 14 years ago and then I could have been way cooler over that span. I realised that every slack-jawed gawker at the show would be wearing these things now, thus ruining the enjoyment the shirt would have provided. Moreover, because I had this shirt I would now immediately be grouped as a poser and the shirt would not provide the aura of "cool" that I desired. In fact just the opposite would have happened. What happens when a guy that isn't cool adds something that makes him look like a poser? I'll let you do the math on this. I didn't get the shirt (you knew that lines ago, right). Instead we purchased a 2 CD recording of the show, which was available 15 minutes after the event. Much cooler in retrospect. The opening band was a bunch of local (I'm assuming Hot Hot Heat inspired) dudes called Despistado and they were excellent. I recommend seeing them when there's no chance of them getting blown off the stage by the Pixies, which is what happened. It wasn't their fault, the Pixies were just that good.

Frank Black and Kim Deal on stage at Doris Knight Hall

So let's cut to the chase: the Pixies rocked. That's all you really can say. Oh wait, they fuckin' rocked, hard style. They tore through the early part of their set, starting with "Planet of Sound", one of the few songs they played from Trompe le Monde. They didn't waste time between tracks to soak up the love. No way, that would have interrupted what turned out to be non-stop rocking. I can only presume that this was what the Scorpions were talking about when they wrote "Rock You Like a Hurricane". Most of the songs played were taken from the Surfer Rosa and Doolittle albums, which is a bit of a shame because I think that in particular Bossa Nova is an underrated album. I haven't heard the playback of the concert yet so I'm not entirely certain about the play list but certainly "Velouria" was played off the Bossa Nova (I'm disappointed that "The Happening" wasn't one of the songs because I really enjoy it) and "UMass" from Trompe le Monde (no Subbacultcha, but what are you going to do). That notwithstanding, I still consider Surfer Rosa and Doolittle the best of their albums and apparently Kim Deal had more creative control on these releases. What were the highlights? Well, they were considerable but certainly "Debaser" and "There Goes Your Man" were excellent, as was the now over-popularised "Where is My Mind". In the encore they played one of my favourites, "Gigantic", during which Kim Deal forgot the words to the second verse. This is always a cool feature during a live show and should not be considered a disappointment. For example, Ella Fitzgerald was notorious for forgetting the words during live performances and improvising new words. In one of the classic instances, she forgets the words to "Mack the Knife" live in Berlin (1960, I believe) after prefacing the song by saying "I hope we remember the words". That song is still commonly played on jazz shows. The final song of the second encore was "La La Love You", a song where drummer David Lovering sings the lead. Another highlight was the guitar playing of Joey Santiago. He makes some fantastic noises with his guitar even inspiring Dr. Jimmy to ask how they were making a noise at one point. I should point out also that all of the musicians, while excellent, were very inanimate. Don't expect to see a dance show if you see this band. They weren't out there to dance after all, they were out to rock and trust me, motion wasn't necessary. Do I have rating system for live shows? No, I don't, but basically if you can get out to see these guys on this tour, do it. They definitely did not suck. My "dream come true" live show was just that. I have seen 3 other concerts in my days that I would consider conscious altering experiences (by the way, I tend to never become impaired for shows I suspect will be excellent, I want to see what happens not be so drunk that it's all a wash): 1) Pearl Jam shortly before the release of their 2nd album; 2) Neil Young and Crazy Horse; and 3) Bob Dylan. I can tell you that I think I enjoyed this one the most, mainly because this band is definitely on right now and have been gone for so long. They certainly didn't sound rusty. Definitely check this tour out.

-"Sweet" Lou Ambrosia