Old is the new new. I wrote this months ago and forgot to submit it - doh!
I was never much of a music snob growing up. I listened to most of the same crap that everybody else listened to at whatever point in time it was - Dave Matthews, Metallica, R.E.M., U2, Nirvana, and the countless forgettable bands that enjoyed equal popularity but with shorter lifespans. I had my share of 80s music first, but at this point it's mostly a blur - maybe there was some Don Henley or some AC/DC or some Billy Joel or some Dire Straits floating around in there, but even though I *heard* the 80s music at the time I wouldn't say I was very musically *aware* until the early 90s - and even then, not so much.
So alterna-rock probably left the biggest impression on me, given that I was at that point old enough to have some notion of what I liked and didn't like. But really, I didn't ever get into the indy music scene - it was all stuff that I'd heard on the radio, or rarely something a friend picked up from somewhere.
So a decade or so later I see this movie called Fight Club, and at the end of this movie is this incredible guitar riff as the financial district crashes down around us. The song continued on into the credits and it was somehow perfect for the movie - I liked it, but had no idea who did it or what it was called.
Later I found out who it was - the Pixies - and finally broke down and bought one of their albums ("Surfer Rosa") when I heard a David Bowie cover of "Cactus." If Bowie thinks they're worth covering, then they must be for real...
So fast forward to now - I finally get the chance to see the Pixies in concert, after solo careers and a long seperation, they're back in the game.
The Pixies rock. They rock in a way that all the wanna-be alterna-grungers clearly wish they could emulate. You can hear Nirvana and Soundgarden and all the other Seattle bands give it their all, but the Pixies came first and they did it better. And man, they still have it - other than an early misstep on "Bone Machine" they were nearly flawless. Too bad the house audio equipment was so lousy and the amps were jacked up way too high, but it was a killer concert nonetheless.