I dig all of their albums except Surfer Rosa.

Fuck you, Fight Club!

i bought doolittle when it came out and within a month was completely obsessed with the band.

to this day (how many years later), I still get a rush when I listen to them just like I did when i was a teen. How many other bands can i say that about?

uh, not crap

Okay, I wasn't predisposed to like The Pixies initially for the reasons I outlined above, but when my buddy Bill Waltz made me a tape of Surfer Rosa and whichever record came after it, there were things I found enjoyable in them--as pop music, as Angus suggests. But I asked then as I ask now: WHAT'S THE BIG FUCKING DEAL?!!

Against my better judgment, I went to see The Pixies. I'm not sure when it was, but it was right after they came off that big tour with The Cure and Love and Rockets. Some time around 1990? I didn't really want to go because I was not a fan, but all of my grad school classmates (who adored this band) were going. Since the show was at Northampton's Pearl Street, it would amount to a kind of homecoming and, they assured me, promised to be a fantastic show.

It was not a fantastic show. In fact, it was one of the most joyless, bloodless lackluster sets I've ever had the misfortune to sit through. When it occurred to me (and it occurred to me once about every fifteen seconds) that I'd paid fifteen dollars to see this shitty band--fifteen bucks in 1990 dollars!--I realized that I truly hated these people, who despite the exorbitant cover charge, despite their headlining status, despite playing a few miles away from where the band had been formed, had opted to play for a mere forty minutes, never even breaking a sweat and acting as if there were about a million places they'd rather have been. For this I have never forgiven them.

If I liked their records, I might have given them the benefit of the doubt. But I don't. So fuck 'em.

Crap.

Yikes, they were ecstatic and sweating from the get-go when I saw them in 1991. I guess you had to be lucky to catch 'em on a good night, maybe?

I'm not going to defend Black's prickery at the time, though. Eegad.

Uninteresting music, to say the least. I don't understand this current lionization of the Pixies.
Crap.

Crap. If they hadn't been on 4AD, nobody would have given a shit and this thread probably wouldn't exist (okay, maybe it would here). If you tried to argue with a Pixies fan that, say, Saccharine Trust were obviously a far superior band, they would give you a look which says 'that's why I have lots of friends and you don't have any'.

Isabelle Gall wrote:Crap. If they hadn't been on 4AD, nobody would have given a shit and this thread probably wouldn't exist (okay, maybe it would here).

They started up when I was still in high school, and I had little idea what 4AD was other than it had something to do with boring shoegazer music. Yet I still managed to love the Pixies.

They're my favorite band, and I've never tired of them.

Isabelle Gall wrote: If you tried to argue with a Pixies fan that, say, Saccharine Trust were obviously a far superior band, they would give you a look which says 'that's why I have lots of friends and you don't have any'.

Erm, they would, would they? Right. OK. Well, that's that sorted out, then.

That's a very specific generalisation about a pretty diverse group of people, isn't it?!

I stumbled into liking them when they first came to the UK, and I still do. I could be wrong, but I think the way they were perceived and/or were put over was different in the UK to the USA. I don't think the 4AD connection made them cooler - not to me, anyhow - though the Vaughn Oliver stuff maybe added something. Maybe we didn't have as much of the hardcore scene to compare them against as in the states.

Dunno - a long time ago, but NOT CRAP

kinda crappy innit.

Isabelle Gall wrote:Crap. If they hadn't been on 4AD, nobody would have given a shit and this thread probably wouldn't exist (okay, maybe it would here). If you tried to argue with a Pixies fan that, say, Saccharine Trust were obviously a far superior band, they would give you a look which says 'that's why I have lots of friends and you don't have any'.

Guys, is this the Straw Man Fallacy?

Anyway, I enjoy the first two Pixies records, if I am honest w/ myself for mostly sentimental reasons, but I like them just the same.

I don't like them nearly as much as I like Saccharine Trust, though. I have a decent amount of friends.