There's always something memorable in the Pixies pit - ummmm, any pit. Well, sit right down my wicked son, and let me tell you a story...
October 25, 1989: I took my little brother to his first concert, the Pixies playing with Bob Mould. It was at UCSD and my brother was 14 years old. We all went right up to the front, started dancing around and getting all into it, and I sort of forgot about my brother. Then there he was, crowd surfing above me. And then the next thing you know... he was asking me to drop him off at Danzig shows. Oops!
December 18, 1991: The Hollywood Palladium, opening for Jane's Addiction. Someone threw a shoe at Perry during the intro to "Mountain Song," and he fell right over. No one had noticed at first, as the whole crowd yelled, "THREE FOUR" in anticipation of the song... He didn't get up for a minute, then was helped off the stage. A poor roadie was sent back out to tell the crowd that the concert was over, thanks to whoever threw that shoe. A riot ensued. Like, really. I think it's documented in "The Gift" which I have yet to see. I lost the people I'd come with, got so thoroughly stomped that the steel was torn from my boot and the next day I found out I had a greenstick fracture in my foot. But I still went to the next show (I'd already been to 3 that week). By the way, as I stumbled out onto Sunset Boulevard, I did find my friends.
April 16, 1992: The frat boy show at the Warfield in SF. I used to hang out with a lot of frat boys, even though I was weird indie girl. These frat boys were all in the same house, and a guy I'd pretty much grown up with had joined that house, so I was there a lot. They weren't date rape types (well, not all of them) and the house almost got de-Greeked because they were so anti-social, but I talked a bunch of them into going to see the Pixies with me and had my own bouncers for the night. They were a rowdy crew and it was a blast.
June 2, 2005: The Wiltern Theatre in LA... There is no moshing or stage diving around. But a guy that kinda looks like that dude from Anthrax was shoving people around anyway. A tiny little man with big hair got in punker dude's face, waved a finger and yelled, "Stop it!" Punker dude shrugged, and started doing it again. People were all excited, and nobody really cared, except for the little guy, who got all up in pinker dude's shit and practically got postal on him. "I said STOP IT!! What do I have to do?" I leaned over to the punker dude and said, "Somebody needs to take that guy out." Evidently, this was seen as a come on, because when the pit really kicked in, the punker dude swung over to me, put a hand on my chest and the other on my back, and swung me out into the mess. It was a nice fluid move, all the way up to the second my foot slipped on ice from somebody's drink and I went straight up and back down onto the floor. I put my hands up and was immediately thrown right back onto my feet.
Good times, good times. Celebs I spotted at the past few shows? Karen O, Dennis Miller, and Tracy Ullman. They were all standing right next to me, and Tracy Ullman introduced her kid to Dennis Miller's. Tracy is a Kim fan, and she was rockin' it pretty hard. Who wasn't? It was the Pixies.
