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Out
The Pixies at Avalon; cellars by penlight
BY WILL SPITZ

Ever since the Pixies announced their reunion earlier this year, local fans have been waiting eagerly for signs of a homecoming show. As new dates were confirmed each month without a Boston gig, we began to get nervous: given the band’s volatile personal history, the reunion could be called off at any moment — via fax perhaps? When a pair of December dates at Lowell’s Tsongas Arena were confirmed back in September, the lack of a proper Boston show hurt our collective feelings a bit. But then, Boston has always taken more pride in the Pixies than the Pixies have in Boston. (As Frank Black reminisced to Spin recently about recording Bossanova in LA, "It wasn’t like, ‘We’ll never leave our beloved Boston.’ We didn’t give a shit!") So maybe it’s no surprise that the Pixies show at Avalon last Thursday, the band’s first headlining show in the city since playing the Orpheum in 1991, was hastily arranged only after a gig in Syracuse — Syracuse! — had been cancelled. No, there was no acknowledgment from the band that maybe it was good to be back. And if you’d caught the Tsongas shows the previous week, the Avalon set might have come off as a bit anticlimactic; the band and the crowd weren’t as electric as expected, despite the joint’s being packed tighter than the 50s in Frank Black’s wallet. Maybe the crowd had already blown its "Oh my God I'm hearing the Pixies live!" wad. Still, the band played a long set culled primarily from their first — and best — two albums. And Black’s near-gleeful "Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, ooh!" at the beginning of "Broken Face" — as well as his guttural screams at the end of "Tame" — were worth-every-penny money shots. Even when Kim Deal and Joey Santiago flubbed the intro to "Here Comes Your Man" for the second time, the older, mellower Black, rather than kicking a guitar at Deal, as he once did when she showed up late to a gig back in the early ’90s, just smiled and shook his head. Fears that a disgruntled fan might pounce on stage, shout, "You broke up Frank Black and the Catholics!", and open fire proved utterly unfounded.

The Pixies’ reunion finally over, it was back to the basements. The police have recently been cracking down on underground gigs (not our fault, we swear), but upstate New York’s Charming Bastards had a run-in with the law before they even made it to the Allston basement (which we’re not going to name) they were scheduled to play last Friday night. Apparently, that’s what happens when you let the bassist drive with a suspended license and a 40-ounce in hand. Bravely, his mates left him behind and played the show down a man. Friday marked the return of music to this location, which stopped having shows a couple of months ago thanks to the aforementioned crackdown plus problems with theft and damage. The show also marked the first time this particular basement had charged admission, which it did less to make a killing than to keep the riff-raff out. ("2 Bucks please to be respecting this place. Aight?", read the sign on the back door.) Brian Mattarocha, the singer/guitarist for the local avant-noise duo Spiders, noted that the last time they’d played a show, Ol’ Dirty Bastard had just died — and now they were playing right after the death of Dimebag Darrell. "Stop playing shows!" suggested someone in the crowd. "You’re not the first person to tell us that," Mattarocha joked. Then the band tore through an ass-mauling set of White-Stripes-gone-art-metal freakouts and Def-Poetry-Jam-gone-gospel sermonizing as an audience of beer-guzzling disciples sang, screamed, clapped, and "Amen"-ed along.

Basement shows have their pros (cheap admission; BYOB; intimacy) and cons (shitty and/or earsplitting sound; uninvited guests; cops). But on Saturday night at another place in Allston whose name we can’t disclose, Josh Benash summed it up best when he said, "It’s better than the Moose lodge we played last night." Bonash’s Kiss Kiss — another upstate New York band, this one an avant-indie-pop-with-a-violin outfit — were followed by local punks the Call Up, who gave an impassioned performance that included some of the new songs they’re currently recording for a future album on Lonesome Recordings. They also played a spot-on cover of the Replacements’ "Left of the Dial" (gee, wonder which box set they want for Christmas?), and singer/guitarist Chris Amaral punctuated the night with a violent leap into the drum kit that would’ve made Kurt Cobain proud.

Will Spitz can be reached at wspitz[a]phx.com.


Issue Date: December 17 - 23, 2004
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