If Proust wasn't such a fattie he would have written those books about listening to the Pixies.
1989 Doolittle Comes Out
I am too young to give a shit.
1990 Pump up the Volume
I watch this movie in a tent in my best friend Kevin's cavernous living room in Potomac MD. He is bored because it has no drug dealers heads exploding. I fall in love with being a loner rebel dork and with the soundtrack, especially the echoing surf-rock version of Wave Of Mutilation and the whispering creepy voice of the lead singer. It sounds like it's coming out of the wave and suicide is much easier than fighting the ocean. When I get hold of a tape of the album the mix on there is raucous and multi-layered, with these big fat drums way out in the front and the guitars going loud-soft-loud-soft in the dumbest and most direct way possible. I listen to at a new friend's house, in Silver Spring, on his brother's stereo looking out into the creek where the homeless dude drop their trash.
1991 Punk Breaks
I start buying CDs like Bleach and Smell of Female and the Pixies are right inbetween those two. WHFS plays HCYM on heavy rotation and I copy it off the radio and put it on a mixtape for a girl who lets me touch her boobs during a John Larroquette movie.
1994
Catch the video for 'Monkey Gone to Heaven' on 120 minutes during an all-night D&D session. Notice Frank saying 'Rock Me Joe' is the only part of the video in sync with the music. Feel special for noticing.
1996 Metal farts
I hear U-mass at a UW kegger in Madison WI and realize Joey Santiago was always kind of a cheesy guitarist kept in check by FB's scatting and Kim's simian bass playing. I sell Trompe Le Monde for beer money, along with all my other CDs. Retain Doolittle cassette for road trips, belting out 'crackcrack, crackity jones' to keep myself awake late at night. Later, hear the Fastbacks cover of 'Allison' and realize cheese is what keeps the Pixies from being too, sour, fall back in love with Santiago's noodling.
1997 Nostalgia Sandwich
There's a bar called the Caribou in Madison where the burgers are 1.50 for lunch and the beers are a quarter, so there's plenty left of my paycheck to play the joint's theme song once a day and moo along with the locals.
1998 Bad Mojo
A girl puts 'I Been Tired' on a mixtape, which should have been a warning but instead was irresistible.
2000 Inadmissible
Steve Albini claims that the Pixies are just another band in some interview, that they weren't special and that he was bored while recording them. This is so libelous that I can't even find where he said it online anywhere, its falseness erased by the weight of history.
2002 Universal Health Care
Somehow still in college, I finally learn how to throw a party. Acquire Early Times-->Barricade Hallway of Dorm-->Pump Doolittle (or Pinkerton)-->Jump around on Furniture and off walls screaming until RA shuts it down-->Find new hallway.
2003 Reunion, Modernity
It's great for them that they got back together, and it's even better that the Breeders and the Amps and Black Francis have kept making totally listenable records over the years. But those first records are unlike anything anyone's ever made (except maybe Nirvana) and still are the best slant of that middle school light that comes through the window at dinner time, beautiful but too sharp and crumbly, promising to disappoint you.
What are your Pixies memories?
God loves a cheerful giver.
'preciate the hell out of that Cafe du Monde pic
memories -
Kim Deal putting me under a spell with her/their version of "In Heaven." Seeing them on their 'reunion tour' was already rapturous enough, but that put the show over the top.
and to stay Proustian:
hhmmm, yes, these madelines are vaulting me back to 1999. I'm...I'm seeing David Fincher?
Oh shit -- it's Fight Club -- and the unwashed masses have just heard "Where Is My Mind?" I'm sitting there thinking, "Am I going to be more annoyed by the 'bro, THIS IS THE TIGHTEST FUCKING MOVIE I'VE EVER SEEN' talk or by the fact that these same loathsome individuals will latch onto and snub out a decent tune?
Just kidding (...kinda), that was an excellent use of that song in the movie.
proust was fat? wat.
This is one of my favorite things I've seen on here.
1991 I got into Nirvana with everyone else and my friend's older brother told me to listen to the Pixies. Two weeks later said friend and I were in the woods smoking cigarettes playing "Gigantic".
2004 Saw them when they reunited and got totally emo when that song came up.
2005 For about 7 months of my life I had my computer set up as my alarm clock and WinAmp would play the entire Pixies catalog on random while I got ready in the morning. "Bone Machine" was always the first song , and I was glad for it.
2009 Skipping the show because I'm not paying that much money to see *anything* at fucking DAR.
Oh yeah, I second the "Proust was fat?"
My Pixies memories are a bit roundabout, as I found out about Frank Black first. I was a big TMBG fan, and when Frank Black was doing stuff with them, and John Linnell guest-saxxed on his self-titled debut, I decided to look into this Frank Black guy that people on alt.music.tmbg kept talking about. This was around 1994 or 95, as Teenager of the Year had just come out. I picked up his self-titled debut album and Teenager of the Year and liked them both.
Soon after I eventually did decide "hey, i like this frank black guy - i should probably check out this Pixies band", and the rest is history.
I think though that perhaps the way I came about becoming a Pixies fan is probably one reason why I also like Frank Black's solo stuff on its own merits (since I essentially did encounter him as a solo artist, and then with the Catholics, before I became a Pixies fan), and perhaps don't worry about comparing it to the Pixies stuff.
Of course, my greatest memory is still seeing them during the reunion tour at constitution hall - just because i only became a fan of the Pixies after they broke up, and having read about how they broke up, it never occurred to me that it would ever be possible to see the Pixies in person.
Quite the fail on my part, but until I saw Fight Club for the first time, I was only dimly aware of the Pixies. Where Is My Mind resonated with me, so I stuck around for the credits to roll and saw who wrote the song. I promptly bought Doolittle and Surfer Rosa, and listened to them incessantly.
Six years later, I saw the Pixies perform at UMass' basketball arena. When they played UMass, everyone understandably went apeshit. It was awesome.
The caribou! I used to go there while my laundry got clean next door. That nostalgia sandwich was delicious.
First time I heard the pixies I got kicked out of some bar downtown for being under age and then got into a fight with some heroin addict looking to steal my harmonica for drug money. He scratched me up pretty bad with his dirty nails, shoved me to the ground and stole my harmonica. As I lay there in front of CB's the doors swings open and I see this beautiful girl walk out, and hear "where is my mind" playing from the inside of the bar, and I was in love.