I started writing a short story for this week’s column, but halfway through I realized that a) I’d made a fairly big and obvious error; b) I couldn’t think of a decent way to end it; and c) all visible paths to the end looked like they headed towards crap. Since finding bad short stories on the Internet is only slightly more difficult than finding pop-up ads for “security” cameras (“Damn it! Those girls broke into my bedroom and took off their clothes again!”), I scrapped it. For now. Maybe I’ll drag out its half-completed carcass one day and, er, add the brain, I suppose.
I have, over the past week or so, gone on a CD buying spree. “Spree” might be overstating the case, as I’m referring to all of four CDs. But, since I go through months-long (3, 4, 8…) dry spells, and then buy a bunch at a time, “spree” works well enough. Not all of them are relevant here. But the first leads to a confession: I just don’t much care for The Pixies.
Now, I’ve long thought that. I like a few of their songs, but not enough to have ever previously made me want to buy their albums. But I recently read an article in The Wave which listed Doolittle as one of the “20 Most Important Albums of All Time.” Now, who cares, really? I already own four of the twenty, so that’s not too bad. But, see, the desire to appreciate The Pixies has been taunting me for a while. A friend of mine was really into them, and that always has an effect on my all-too-suggestible mind.
The description in the magazine should have warned me away: “If the Pixies hadn’t introduced the stop-start (or heavy-soft) guitar dynamic, then you would have never had Jane’s Addiction, Smashing Pumpkins or…” While undoubtedly true, I’m not a fan of those bands, either. Thinking about Jane’s Addiction draws forth a hearty “Eh.” But Smashing Pumpkins? Horrible. The singer’s voice…Billy Something-or-other, is just awful. Whiny, grating, and just, frankly, awful.
But, dammit, I had to be fair, didn’t I? So I picked up an album of Pixies b-sides for, thankfully, a few dollars. And what’s my rating? Another hearty “Eh.” I don’t hate the songs, but they don’t grab me in any way, either. Listening to them, they seem more like inside jokes than anything else. The band is there, playing songs that they like, and that, more importantly, they get. I just don’t seem to get them; the songs have no effect on me. They aren’t bad, but I don’t feel the need to listen to them again. Oh, I will, just to be sure that I didn’t miss something, but there really wasn’t even the glimmer of hope that they could grow on me. The Pixies seemed to enjoy singing/playing, but I’m obviously not in their clique, and don’t get the point. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt by assuming that there even is one.
I think the dangling “or…” in the article referred to Nirvana (it might have referred to the Beastie Boys, but I doubt it). Nirvana is another band that I just don’t care for. There, I said it. It’s like a weight lifting. Or would be, if I had ever even pretended to like Nirvana. Going to college in the early 90s, I couldn’t avoid the whole Grunge music thing, but I just never liked it. The fact that everyone else did and that Live105 played “Smells Like Teen Spirit” every fifteen minutes (with “Come As You Are” thrown into that yawning fifteen-minute void) and that my roommate had the damn album only solidified my non-appreciative position. Again, I don’t hate their music; I just don’t care for it. I was also dreading the effect that they would have, and, honestly, just looking at all the utterly crap Nirvana-copying bands that appeared, it’s difficult to say that I was wrong.
I did like Pearl Jam for a while, but that was only a brief fling. There was an initial attraction there, but it faded quickly, and I just drifted away. It was me, I think; or maybe it was both of us, but, either way, it ended. No real regrets there.
Now, I’m willing to admit that because The Pixies were so influential, listening to their songs a dozen years after the fact isn’t completely fair. Of course I’m going to think that I’ve heard those chords, that style before, because I damn well have. Over and over, in vast numbers of mediocre songs. Ok, maybe even in some decent ones. Or maybe my expectations were set too high.
I doubt it, though. My expectations really weren’t that high, and I think that it’s more likely that The Pixies are yet another band beloved by other bands and pretentious reviewers. Sure, they might have been influential, but that doesn’t mean that they were any good. The article in The Wave does, in fact, include that caveat. Anyway, professional music reviewers are pretentious twits. They like Weezer, for god’s sake. Weezer. Anyone who likes Weezer needs to be punched in the head, for their own good.