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brickisred
- FB Fan -
France
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 Posted - 04/20/2004 : 08:11:10
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http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/CalgarySun/Showbiz/2004/04/20/429247.html
Pixies dust off classics
Rock legends hit the right notes
By MIKE BELL, Calgary Sun
Sometimes being used can be a wonderful thing. Provided both parties go into things eyes wide open and emotions in check, it can be a mutually beneficial relationship.
And make no mistake, any one of the 2,000 people entering the U of C's MacEwan Hall last night was being used. We were little more than a paid rehearsal for reunited legendary alterna-rockers the Pixies.
We were merely gawkers at a band practice as they honed their chops after a 12-year hiatus to ready themselves for an official coming out in a couple of weeks at the Coachella music festival in California, which then gives way to a proper tour in the world's major centres.
But we knew it. We wanted it. And we loved every minute of it.
From the moment the quartet took the stage and launched into a brash cantankerous version of Bone Machine, it was game-on.
Frontman Frank Black (known in the heyday as Black Francis) screeching and growling poetic fragments like bloody shrapnel. His female yang Kim Deal, the picture of sexy cool, clad in black and banging out her baseline while sweetly harmonizing with Black's bully bark.
Guitarist Joey Santiago and drummer David Lovering adding their angry instrumentation to the glorious din.
It was a wonderful sight to see the four sharing a stage, working their magic and even at times having fun such as during a version of the silly and pretty La La Love You.
It was wonderful to hear alt-rock masterpieces such as Cactus, U-Mass and Debaser played the way they were meant to be -- a decade later but neither slowed nor dulled by time one little bit.
Maybe some of the young punk energy has left the 40-something frames of those playing the songs -- there was little by way of movement and less by way of audience interaction -- but out of those singers, out of those mouths, came the same Boston band changing music in the late '80s.
Monkey Gone to Heaven, Broken Face, Nimrod's Sun -- gem after gem was hammered out almost as a defiant middle-finger to those who would dare dismiss it as mere nostalgia.
Sure, maybe some of the aging hipsters in attendance singing along to Wave of Mutilation and Here Comes Your Man were there for a reminder of what they once were.
And maybe some of the younger audience members were partially there for a piece of what they unfortunately miss.
But ultimately everyone was there to be used. Used and abused by one of the best. We were. They were. What a wonderful thing.
As a bonus, local one-man band Chad Van Gaalen was a surprisingly appropriate opener for the big show. He may have been playing to a half-empty room -- thanks in large part to a Flames Game 7, and the fact that, for this show, the bar and the bar service and a TV tuned to CBC were located outside of the hall -- but he did an incredible job of filling the room and engaging the audience all by his lonesome.
Like a less-dour, less-indulgent Hayden, Van Gaalen built surprisingly luminous and moody folk rock songs -- including a pretty superb cover of Bruce Springsteen's Dancing in the Dark -- with his harmonica, drum, guitar and voice.
It wasn't overwhelming but considering who he was opening for, anything more would have been entirely unnecessary.
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Calgary Sun review for 5/19
