"I Saw the Pixies" by Andrew Menzies

[Ed. Note: Andrew saw the Pixies and I've been too busy to post this article about it, so apologies to him and you, the readers. Without further ado, here it is...]

There are two driving forces in my life. One is the pleasing arrangement of words into succinct thoughts, ideas and suggestions that provoke a reaction within the reader’s mind. The second is the pleasing arrangement of musical notes designed to do much of the same thing but vocally, and sometimes with auto-tune. The former- writing- I can safely say I know how to do as well as I know how to absorb. I can’t play music worth a God damn but I’m really good at experiencing it.

I hadn’t bought a record in a store since maybe Wilco’s last album a year or so ago, and as I recall I leant it to some bitch who still hasn’t given it back. (I always use “bitch” without gender bias. It’s a pejorative bitch. But in this case yes, I am totally referring to a woman.) So it was a special occasion, stoned out of gourds and wandering through a big-box electronics store a day after the album in question came out. Sure, we could have purchased it on iTunes, downloaded it, maybe saved the effort to get to a store, but it’s been a tradition in my life that when the Beastie Boys release a new album, you go outside and buy the motherfucker.

“Hot Sauce Committee Part Two” is a very good album. I told someone it was their best since (hands-down the greatest hip hop album of all time,) “Paul’s Boutique” and they didn’t know what I was talking about so I walked away and cursed under my breath.

I had a point. Rewind. Facts? Okay. I love the Beastie Boys. Last album was in 2004, so this was a big deal. I got it a day late. The point… why? Yes, why. Right. Why was I day late to grab the first album in seven years from a group I love? Well, because the night before I was at a Pixies concert. And I love them more.

They played “Doolittle” in its entirety, with a few b-sides and an absolutely skull-fucking encore of “Where Is My Mind?”, “Broken Face” and others. Up until the lights dimmed and some weird-for-weird’s sake Dali short film was projected onto a massive make-shift metal screen, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the chance to see the Pixies play in person. They broke up before I was nine years old. Everything I read told me they hated each other, that Frank Black was over the songs and didn’t want to play them anymore. But hope was renewed when they came to Vancouver in 2004- a year before I made the move- though I missed what I figured was my only chance. So imagine the grin plastered across my mouth and cheeks as Frank screamed the chorus to “Crackity Jones”.

To quote Ben Affleck in an otherwise shitty movie: “Ear to ear, baby!”

It was a moment. Wilco was a moment. Metallica was a moment. The third Matt Good show I saw- the one where I got punched in the face during “Apparitions” because the crowd was swaying and I bumped into some dude’s girlfriend and may or may not have broken my fall with a full-on palm to the breast, (instinctively, not on purpose)- was a moment. You grow up or grow with bands, artists, songs, albums. It’s so easy to associate a song with a person or memory so that every time you hear it until you are dead those feelings swell, for better or for worse. And, for me at least, when you break the plastic curtain of compact discs and whatever material you could associate with MP3s and get a chance to see a beloved artist play live, it’s kind of fucked up. They’re they are: the dudes who made the music you previously enjoyed alone with earbuds on transit, or perhaps one or two times when you tried to share it with a friend but they didn’t give a shit because it wasn’t their thing, though at the time you resented them because of their missive attitudes towards your taste in music and it drastically altered the course of your relationship. But that’s neither here nor there.

(And yeah, Kim Deal is still gorgeous. If I had a time machine, I’d go back to 1989 and press my luck.)

[Ed. Note: As always, Andrew has his own project over at http://www.bobandandrew.com/ where he makes a webseries and you should check that out too!]