–The Pixies brought their 20th anniversary Doolittle tour to the Hollywood Palladium last night, and it was incredible. I know there are plenty of arguments to be made against this sort of thing, and against this thing in general (i.e., playing one album in its entirety): it’s obviously a cynical cash-grab, they’re not writing anything new, they’re not even altering the songs in performance, they’re just mechanically running through 20-year-old songs for an audience of aging hipsters, etc. All of that is true. BUT: this show was practically a religious experience, and I mean that in a very specific way. It was a heavily codified ritual designed to bring the faithful to a state of ecstasy (and boy, did it ever). The Lord’s Prayer and the Doxology don’t change from Sunday to Sunday, do they? No they don’t, and neither do “Debaser” or “I Bleed.” The spontaneity you might normally expect from a rock show was replaced by a sense of history and inevitablity that was just as powerful, if not more so. What once might have seemed disturbing or abrasive–Black Francis’s murderous shrieks or Joey Santiago’s drill-press guitar lines–is now a source of joy, and what was always comforting (the distinctive warm, bouncy sound of Kim Deal’s bass) is now even moreso. (It also helps that the band was in really excellent form; Black Francis hasn’t screamed this well in years, and drummer David Lovering convincingly made the case that he was always the band’s greatest strength.) Chide the audience for wallowing in nostalgia if you must, but what I felt last night was not a desperate clinging to past glories but a communal celebration of songs that sound as exciting now as they did 20 years ago, even though you know every word, every beat and every note. Sometimes getting exactly what you want is as good as you think it will be. (Also Black Francis now looks like Vic Mackey after spending a few years behind a desk. He’s got some extra pounds but he’ll still beat your ass.)

Go here to download a free EP of live tracks from the tour.

–If you’ve been staring at that “The Boy in the Tunnel” ad to the left and wondering what the hell that is, now is the time to find out. Four years ago I began writing a novel about an underground war between secret societies at a fictional Southern university whose students are issued Student Handbooks that can tell the future; since that initial burst it’s been kind of slow going, but now I’m determined to finish the rough (very rough) first draft. Yes, I’m doing it as part of NaNoWriMo, and yes, I’m aware that there is a certain lameness associated with that endeavor, but mostly I don’t care. I work best with deadlines, and here’s a big fat one. Done and done.

As I’ve done since the beginning, I will post new chapters to the GLFC every weekday starting on Monday. So check that out. I recommend you spend the weekend getting caught up to speed. I also recommend you please keep in mind that this is an extremely rough draft and will be rewritten, and that there are certain plot inconsistencies and just plain bad writing. I also also recommend that you ignore chapters i, iii and 2, which have nothing to do with anything.

–If you care, I may be Twittering under the name @lilgardner in the near future. Novel updates will probably be posted there, since the GLFC is running on donkey-powered old-school Blogger whatnot and doesn’t seem to have an RSS feed.

–Gardner

This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 3:46 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.