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Archive for the ‘Pixies’ Category

Pixies (Fillmore Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, July 23, 2025)

Posted in Band of Skulls, Kurt Vile, Kurt Vile and the Violators, Philadelphia, PA, Pixies, The Fillmore Philadelphia on July 24, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: July 23, 2025] Pixies

I have seen Pixies four times in the last eight years.  I didn’t really know if I wanted to see them again–indeed when these two shows were announced I was iffy about the whole thing.  I did want to go to the first of two nights–where they were playing Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde (since they don’t play very much from either of those albums in their sets–I’ve only seen 2 songs from Bossanova and only 4 from Trompe).  But that turned out to be the night of The Decemberists concert, and I wasn’t going to pass up The Decemberists.

A couple of days before this, I asked my wife if she’d like to go to this show–mostly because Kurt Vile was opening.  She loves Kurt and, as she says, doesn’t know anything by Pixies (except, it turns out Here Comes Your Man).  She agreed and we wound up buying tickets at the box office day of (the first night sold out this one did not).

The Kurt show was great and I told my wife that Pixies are interesting because they do not talk between songs–indeed, they don’t talk at all.  And they will play like 30 songs in 90 minutes.

She felt bad that she didn’t know anything going into the show, but I told her afterwards that they played nearly ten (out of about 30) that I had never heard before.  But it was the 2o songs in between that I was really psyched about.

I was unsure who their new bass player was–it’s Emma Richardson of Band of Skulls.  The biggest difference between her and Paz (who I really liked) is that Emma has blonde hair.  Otherwise, she is an excellent addition to the band.

She sang the first song (and what I assumed was the final song).  The first song was a David Lynch cover “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)” that apparently Pixies released a long long time ago on a B-sides record.  She also sang Into the White.  Interestingly (or not) they did not play Gigantic (the most famous Kim Deal sung song).

Heaven is a slow, meandering song, something unlike most Pixies songs, so it felt like it was building to something.  Which turned out to be a song from their 2019 album that I didn’t know.  So, yes, I’m an old school Pixies fan and haven’t listened to much of anything they ‘ve released since they reunited. (more…)

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Kurt Vile and the Violators (Fillmore Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, July 23, 2025) [PIXIES]

Posted in Kurt Vile, Kurt Vile and the Violators, Philadelphia, PA, Pixies, The Fillmore Philadelphia on July 24, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: July 23, 2025] Kurt Vile & The Violators

I had seen Kurt Vile in 2018, but since then, my wife has become a huge fan.  We saw him and the Violators at Union Transfer in 2022.

I know we enjoyed the UT show, but somehow, this opening set was a lot better.  We both felt that way.  Not that we had bad feelings about the UT show, but this just felt bigger, like he was just having a ton of fun.

But it is weird to have him opening since he is a pretty big deal (especially in Philly).  I don’t know if he could sell out the Fillmore on his own, but maybe…  Anyway, he strolled out said he was Kurt from Philly and these were his boys around him.

He started with a song from his new(ish) EP, the only song that we hadn’t heard him play before.

Like last time, he switched guitars pretty much every song and the Violators switched instruments from time to time. (more…)

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Pixies / Modest Mouse / Cat Power (TD Pavillion @ The Mann Center, Philadelphia, PA, June 12, 2024) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in Cat Power, Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Modest Mouse, Philadelphia, PA, Pixies on June 12, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: June 12, 2024] Pixies / Modest Mouse / Cat Power

This is the same tour that was going on last summer.  I was vaguely interested in it, but knew I wouldn’t go.   Here’s the same thing I wrote last summer.

I saw Pixies for the first time in 28 years at The Stone Pony Summer Stage and it was glorious.  I’ve since seen them two more times and I don’t feel the need to ever see them again.  Even though each show has been very good, and there is some mixing up of songs, I feel like I’ve seen everything they’re going to show me.

I would see Modest Mouse every time they came around.  The shows are totally different and each one feels like a new version of the band.

I have never really liked Cat Power (blasphemy!).  She just doesn’t do anything for me.

With this line up, the nays overrode the yeas.

 

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The Breeders: 30th Anniversary Tour / Screaming Females (The Fillmore, Philadelphia, PA, September 20, 2023) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in Philadelphia, PA, Pixies, Screaming Females, The Breeders, The Fillmore Philadelphia on September 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: September 20, 2023] The Breeders / Screaming Females

When The Breeders released “Cannonball” 30 years ago (!), I fell in love with the song (and the video).  It had so much Pixies in it and Kim Deal sounded great.

I believed that I loved the whole album, but it’s possible that I only really liked a couple of songs.

When I saw that they were doing a 30th anniversary tour, I thought that I had to go to it since I’ve seen Pixies without Kim a few times now.  But this show turned out to be the same night that Igorrr and I’ve had tickets for that show since December and there was no way I was going to miss it.

I guess realized I liked The Breeders a bit more in memory than in reality.

Screaming Females opened the show.  I really liked them a few years ago.  I bought most of their records and saw them live twice. But recently, for reasons that are completely unclear to me, I’ve gone cold on them.

Oh well, no biggie.

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Pixies / Modest Mouse / Cat Power (The Stone Pony Summer Stage, Asbury Park, NJ, August 20, 2023) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in Asbury Park, NJ, Cat Power, Modest Mouse, Pixies, The Stone Pony, The Stone Pony Summer Stage on August 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: August 20, 2023] Pixies / Modest Mouse / Cat Power

I saw Pixies for the first time in 28 years at The Stone Pony Summer Stage and it was glorious.  I’ve since seen them two more times and I don’t feel the need to ever see them again.  Even though each show has been very good, and there is some mixing up of songs, I feel like I’ve seen everything they’re going to show me.

I would see Modest Mouse every time they came around.  The shows are totally different and each one feels like a new version of the band.

I have never really liked Cat Power (blasphemy!).  She just doesn’t do anything for me.

With this line up, the nays overrode the yeas.

Recently I looked to see how much the tickets were, just in case I wanted to go and I found out it was sold out.  So good for all of them.

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Pixies (The Met Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, June 9, 2023)

Posted in Bully, Franz Ferdinand, Philadelphia, PA, Pixies, The Met Philadelphia on June 13, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 9, 2023] Pixies

I saw Pixies in 1989 and assumed I’d never see them again.  Then they reunited and started making new music.  So I saw them in 2017 and they were great.  Then I saw them the following year when they opened for Weezer (!).

That second show was shorter but they played a couple of songs that I hadn’t heard them play before and that was awesome.  I assumed I’d never need to see them again.

And now, five years later (holy cow), they were doing a headlining tour for a new album that I hadn’t listened to.  I wasn’t going to go until I saw that the two opening acts were bands I really wanted to see.

Bully is a great young band with a massive 90’s alt rock sound and Franz Ferdinand are a great 2000’s band who has been touring a lot lately but whom I missed when they were in town last time.  So I mean, Pixies are great and that’s cool, but that’s not who I was actually there to see.

In the six years since I last saw them headline, not a lot has changed.  They play a ton of songs, they don’t talk between songs and they sound fantastic.  The one difference was that they really seemed to be having fun up there.  Not that they didn’t before, but they had a few moments of levity on stage this time. Like when they messed up a song and were all smiles about it. (more…)

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Franz Ferdinand (The Met Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, June 9, 2023) [PIXIES]

Posted in Bully, Franz Ferdinand, Philadelphia, PA, Pixies, The Met Philadelphia on June 12, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 9, 2023] Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand played a Greatest Hits show in August of 2022.  I wanted to go but it was the same night as Elvis Costello’s show–and I promised myself I’d see him no matter what (shame his show was so disappointing).

So when Franz Ferdinand was announced as an opening act for Pixies I grabbed a ticket right away.  I wouldn’t have gotten one if I didn’t like the headliners or anything, but hey, Pixies are great, so it was a double win.

It turns out that for this show they played an hour.  And for the greatest hits show they played for an hour and twenty minutes, so I really did get a double win.

For some reason I forgot that Franz Ferdinand were Scottish.  So that was a fun surprise.  As was Alex Kapranos’ energy and fun bouncing around the stage.  He was constantly jumping and getting himself in photographable poses.   It was a blast. (more…)

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Bully (The Met Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, June 9, 2023) [PIXIES]

Posted in Bully, Franz Ferdinand, Philadelphia, PA, Pixies, The Met Philadelphia on June 11, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 9, 2023] Bully

I was excited for both opening bands at this show.  I had wanted to see Bully back in 2021 at Underground Arts.

But I had a ticket to see Baroness that night and couldn’t make it.  That show looks like it was great.  She played around twenty songs from throughout her catalog.  I don’t know if she had a band or was solo.

For this show, my first time seeing her, she had a band.  And they sounded great.  Singer/guitarist/really everything that is Bully, Alicia Bognanno, was right in front of us.  Wesley Mitchell was on drums right behind her.  Nick Byrd was on bass on my right.  And a guitar player and backing vocalist was on my left.  I never caught her name but she was an essential component to the sound.

So they played eight songs, all from the new album.  I see that at other shows she threw in a couple of older songs.  But whatever.  I like her sound and her voice and while I didn’t know that many of the songs, they sounded great and Bognanno’s intensity is wonderful. (more…)

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J.P. Oakes–City of Iron and Dust (2021)

Posted in Adventure, Art, Death, Drugs, Goblins, J.P. Oakes, Pixies, The Fae, Violence, War, Yuck! on February 28, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: February 15, 2022] City of Iron and Dust

Like a bird attracted to shiny things, when I see an interesting-looking book come by my desk at work, I decide to read it–no matter how big my tipping over pile of other books to read happens to be.

I dithered about reading this book and I had a slightly hard time getting into it (probably because I wasn’t exactly sure if I wanted to read it).  But it got very good and very exciting very quickly.

The book is broken up into chapters and each chapter is broken into subsections about a particular character

Jag.  She is the daughter of one of the big goblin families in the City of Iron.  But she longs for a world where goblins don’t dominate and persecute the rest of the fae.  She’s an idealist who goes to fae bars trying to feel something more than the money and power her family has.

Sil.  Sil is half goblin half Fae.  She is Jag’s half sister.  But she was brought up to be an assassin.  And her only purpose in life is to protect Jag.  Later on, we are shown the brutality she suffered to become such a formidable creature.  She has no opinions of her own. (more…)

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Nathan Rabin–The Weird Accordion to Al: Every “Weird Al” Yankovic Album Analyzed in Obsessive Detail; with illustrations by Felipe Sobreiro (2020)

Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Beastie Boys, Crosby Stills & Nash, CSN, Don DeLillo, Dr. Demento, Felipe Sobriero, Film & TV, Food, Frank Zappa, Funny (ha ha), George Harrison, Happy Birthday, James Brown, Jeopardy!, Johnny Dangerously, Jurassic Park, Language, Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Nathan Rabin, Nostalgia, Pac Man, Pixies, Ramones, Smarty Pants, Sting, The B-52's, The Beatles, The Police, Tonio K., UHF, Video Games, Wendy Carlos on January 2, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: December 20, 2021] Weird Accordion to Al

After writing the “Weird Al” biography, with “Weird Al” himself, Nathan Rabin dug even deeper into his “Weird Al” fandom to write a detailed account of, as the subtitle says, “Every ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Album Analyzed in Obsessive Detail.”

“Weird Al” wrote the (short) introduction and then Nathan drops the needle on “Weird Al” Yankovic, Al’s 1983 debut album.

Nathan goes into varying degrees of detail on each of the songs.  Nathan was a rabid “Weird Al” fan from when he was a little kid.  And when he talks about how much he loves Al, you can see his deep abiding appreciation for everything Al has done.

Some songs get a paragraph, nut most get a page or so.  He usually talks about how much he likes (or loves) the song (and occasionally dislikes).  There’s nostalgia in the older songs and jokes and observations about contemporary things as well (Rabin’s politics poke through once in a while.  Good thing he’s a smart guy.

Because he did the Al biography with Al, he presumably got a lot of insight into the man and his work.  So although sometimes his insights seem like maybe he’s reading too much into a goofy parody, perhaps he’s on to things.  Maybe Al’s depth is deeper than rhyming Sharona with Bologna.  Which is not in any way to diminish Al’s intelligence.  He’s obviously very smart, especially as his later songs indicate.

Rabin’s tone throughout the book is smart and snarky.  He talks about the songs and the video (if there is one).  He talks about the production quality (or lack thereof) on the first album.  He references Dr. Demento (because the Dr is essential to Al’s career).  He also references Don DeLillo’s White Noise and says things like “Al is in deconstructionist mode.” (more…)

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