Pixies @ Hammerstein, Sat 12/11

So this is my first posting. Here goes...

Last night I went to check out the Pixies at the Hammerstein Ballroom with my friend Alexis who is an associate fashion editor at Vanity Fair. We went to high school together in Houston. I was never able to catch them back in the day, so this was awesome. The other band I wish I had seen but never did was Nirvana. Their last show in Houston was in Nov '93 when I was abroad in Japan for a few weeks my senior year. I thought I'd just catch them the next time around. So it goes. 

TV On the Radio opened up and sounded great. I wasn't familiar with their music. Gotta check out some of their stuff now. Charles and company were in top form. They started off with a long string of some of their quieter songs and eventually kicked it into gear with Bone Machine. I love the way Dave Lovering plays the drums. He looks like one of those monkeys at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, banging voraciously. Kim was smoking cigarettes the whole show and looked a bit haggard, but her voice sounds exactly as it always has, great. Charles was screaming like crazy and got the crowd into it by his voice alone. Does anyone else get nervous before seeing a show? I felt like I was about to go onstage or something. The crowd was mostly in their 20s/30s, but there were also a lot of yungins who were probably funneled to the Pixies via the self-proclaimed Pixies rip-off band, Nirvana.

Songs played (out of order except the first two and last two):

in heaven

wave of mutilation (uk surf version)
isla de encanta
hey
tame
i bleed
here comes your man
bone machine
u-mass
caribou
cactus
where is my mind?
ed is dead
no. 13 baby (i like this song even more now after hearing it live)
vamos
velouria
broken face
something against you
dead
subbacultcha
debaser
crackity jones
mr. grieves
gouge away
head on
monkey gone to heaven
encore: gigantic

They played a couple other songs I have never heard, so feel free to let me know what they were.

Afterward, we went to my friend Dylan's holiday party on the Upper East and eventually the party moved down to Session 73, one of the lamest bars in NYC. But they were playing Sweet Child O' Mine really loud when we got there so I decided to stick it out. I didn't see my apartment in the ABC's again until noonish this morning. Blaaaaaah.