Vamos

We weren’t going to go.

I discussed the 30th anniversary ‘Come on Pilgrim’/’Surfer Rosa’ shows at the Roundhouse in London with my brother. We both agreed that they were a spicy enchilada and that we weren’t going. Fine. But then…I started thinking ‘Well fuck, it is a special show and I’ve never been to The Roundhouse before…’ then I got a load of Extra work and then the next thing you know…I’d bought us two tickets.

To cut down on the spiciness of the endeavor I decided to take the Megabus up. Lordy lord I thought it was never gonna end! It was busier than it had any right to be on Wednesday afternoon and had a stuffiness unique to UK buses. We circled Victoria coach station twice and I thought that was my life, to be damned to live forever on a Megabus looping round Victoria.

Eventually I wobbled off to Camden where I hooked up with Mr Floyd jr. God it was good to see him. We’ve both had life stuff going on so it was good to catch up. I’d picked the 31st of October as our gig in the 5 night run. Camden was warm and buzzing with Halloween high jinks as we went for drinks then to the Roundhouse.

What a bloody great venue! Mark was very happy to learn that it was the location of a legendary Doors gig back in the 60s. There was no support just some wonderfully arty films about the making of the Pixies album covers narrated by scary uncle Vaughan Oliver and sound tracked by Joey Santiago.

“Mark and I shared a moment when during ‘Nimrod’s Son’ we turned to each other and gleefully sang the line “You are the son of a mother fucker!” Ah. memories. ”

Pixies came on to joyous applause and I had a massive shit eating grin on my face from beginning to end . They just banged through ‘Come On Pilgrim; the visuals announced each song and amazingly they managed to retain the rawness. Joey took central stage for the first of his two Vamos wig outs. Dave Lovering threw him a drum stick, he played his guitar with it, he threw it back and Dave dropped it. I love love love you Pixies. As has been the tradition for Pixies shows of late Black Francis didn’t talk to the crowd, despite that the band seemed to be in high spirits. Even to the extent that Chuck read out the ‘You fucking die!’ piece of dialogue from ‘Surfer Rosa’. Mark and I shared a moment when during ‘Nimrod’s Son’ we turned to each other and gleefully sang the line “You are the son of a mother fucker!” Ah. memories.

Pixies are a lesser band without Kim Deal but I don’t love them any less, so did enjoy hearing ‘Gigantic’ get an outing. I had heard that the night before that the band had done ‘Debaser’ as part of the encore, which was more that I expected. So for we went to the mosh pit which was actually quite lively and had a good old fashioned ruck. The only song I can remember was ‘Into the White’. With a bit of change from 10:30 we were back into the Camden Halloween night.

The Roundhouse gig is one of my top five Pixies gigs for a number of reasons. The band were in a good mood, getting to spend quality time with my brother and the amazing venue. Crikey though, I was evil the next day.