Californication

Tuesday the Pixies were in town; San Jose downtown, that is, and of course I had to be there. I had seen them last September in Berkeley as well. They’ve also done a couple of shows in San Francisco, besides having been on tour in the rest of the US and Europe for the better part of the past year. So I guess some Pixies-fatigue had set in the Bay Area, as the venue didn’t seem to be sold out. Unfortunately the first part of their show appeared a bit anemic to me - perhaps the band members suffered from fatigue too as they had played a midnight show the night before in SF.
But soon the magic was back: after scorching renderings of ‘Nimrod’s Son’ (sounding simply amazing live), ‘Mr. Grieves’ and ‘Vamos’, I felt once again humble and grateful for being able to witness this wonderful display of raw energy and harmonic chaos. Another highlight was ‘La la love you’ where drummer David Lovering had to give his vocal chords a rare workout. And the best part came during the encore: an absolutely blistering version of ‘Isla de Encanta’, featuring a death metal drumbeat, flesh-eating guitars and angelic lyrics. R also seemed to have enjoyed the show (even though she only knew ‘Here comes your man’ ) and I don’t believe she was just being polite.
On another note: I will be very very envious at the folks being able to go to Pukkelpop this year: Pixies, Nick Cave, Sophia, Posies etc, it would almost tempt me to book another plane ticket (a temptation that is quickly being tempered by the outrageous transatlantic ticket prices).

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