“Stopping touching my breast Charles!”

(Image via the always informative Brooklyn Vegan)

By sheer luck I caught the final half of a 2001 British documentary on the Pixies called “The Pixies: Gauge” on channel 25 last night. Since I am a very loyal fan of the group I viewed it with great interest and got a kick out of the retrospective on their albums as well as the slight foreshadowing when Joey Santiago and Frank Black touched on a reunion tour. (That was done in 2004).

I was in ecstasy when in mid-2004 I first got word that they would play in NYC. I remember the day that they started selling tickets for their December gig I got up at the crack of dawn and headed to the Hammerstein Ballroom where they were going to play I mistakenly thought the tix would be sold there and it wasn’t until I had waited several hours into the mid-morning that I hightailed it to Irving Plaza. Unfortunately, that was the second erroneous venue I went to and I quickly ran to the now-defunct Tower Records store on Broadway and East 3^rd Street (I think). By then it was 11am and I was the only guy there at the Ticketmaster counter ready to buy tix. A long hour later and the counter opened and I was the first of about fifty people there to buy Pixies tix.

Unfortunately by the time of the December 12^th concert I was exceedingly busy with my studies and I eventually sold the tix at no profit to a then-close friend of mine. That was the closest I got to see the Pixies on stage, though I don’t regret giving the tix up since I was in a bind at the time.

Someday I hope to see them. In the meantime I’ll make do with programs like “The Pixies: Gauge.” Sans regrets.

MP3: Pixies – Radio Interview (July 1987)