donde no hay sufrimiento!!

i saw the pixies!!
years went by when i thought i would never get the chance. nathan and i had a blast tonight. they played just about every song you could want them to play (minus allison and la la love you).
when they played "where is my mind" i suddenly remembered the first time i heard it in christina g.'s room when i was about 17 years old. that sinking feeling in my stomach when it was just the acoustic guitar and frank crooning. then it flashed to watching buildings collapse at the end of fight club...with frank crooning. when they played the one about jose jones, i suddenly remembered the lyrics that christina painted on her door when she was just a young'un. if i had my cell phone on me, i would have called her and let her listen for a while. so that we could have seen them together.
we saw our bike mechanic, josh, and his girlfriend. they're nice kids. well, the girlfriend's kind of dumb. or just rude. she decided to plant herself standing up right in my line of vision. (i was seated in the risers, where the seated people should be). i was pissed for a while. but then, i just got my ass up and got into the crowd like i should do, and bounced around at appropriate times.
i screamed along a bunch. all those years when i listened to the pixies in my car, i imagined what it would be like at a pixies show, and how i would screech along with every word. and i did. somehow, though, i always imagined not seeing them in a stadium. i imagined small club with tables. anyway, i'm a little hoarse now.
how many road trips did i go on that i needed to put in a pixies tape to screech along with in order to keep myself awake?
i finally figured out why it's ok for the pixies to go on long crazy solos, but it's not ok for any jam-bands to. you know that long, long craziness in the middle of "vamos"? well, i found out the secret. the reason that "solo" doesn't make me want to puke and then pound on some hippie ass is that there is no actual playing involved. mr. santiago plays a note, sets the guitar down in front of an amp, and lets distortion do the rest. sure, he goes up to it after about a minute, and toggles some buttons, plucks a string, then he goes over here and steps on some effects, then he picks up the guitar again and toggles that switch around and then the solo is basically over. it's almost like what tom morello does. then he plays feedback while the drummer pounds away and then the song starts back. all with frank calmly playing the same two logical notes over and over again to remind you that there is an actual song going on that makes sense.
i also decided that when i get rich, i'm going to take a summer, buy a video camera, and follow some hippie band around for a couple of shows. i will record footage of dancing hippies, and post them here or somewhere else accesible, and let you guys go hog wild. hehehe.
if my kid ever decides to grow dreadlocks, i'm going to move into a ghetto school district, and force him to go to public school.
what a huge part of my life the pixies have been for the last 8 or 10 years. absolutely irreplaceable.