Pixies, Dinosaur Jr
Pixies - Meadowbank Stadium and Alexandra Palace: My favourite band, twice in one week. Life is good. The first show was outdoors at Meadowbank stadium in Edinburgh, and the second was indoors at the (huge) main hall in Alexandra palace in London. Tthe sound was much better at the first show, but it was evened out in the second by the fact that I was right at the front and was able to drink (I was driving home after the Edinburgh one.) All shows are better when you’re half-cut.
They played a lot of stuff that I hadn’t heard them do live before, either in the bootlegs of concerts I have or during the one time I’d seen them before, and the setlists were pretty different both nights. (Note to Ian: He caught the drumstick on the second night)
The support acts for the first show were My Latest Novel, Teenage Fanclub and Idlewild, all of whom were utterly forgettable. I learned my lesson for the second show and turned up during the last half of the support act’s final song. (The Futureheads, apparently. What little I heard sounded suitably generic.)
Dinosaur Jr - KOKO: Older, fatter, more grey hair, but they still sounded great. This was part of the Don’t Look Back series, where a band plays all the way through one of their best known albums. (With luck, I’ll be going to a lot of the other shows during the season.) They played You’re Living All Over Me, and including encores managed to fit in a fair bit of Bug too. It was apparently the last night of their reunion tour and they seemed pretty enthusiastic. It was also one of the loudest shows I’ve ever been to. I could hardly hear the next day.
The crowd was a weird mix, which was probably something to do with the venue. It seems to be one of those places where people go to be seen, so there was an enthusiastic crowd at the front (as my bruised kidneys will attest after a night spent clutching the barrier at the front,) but the rest of the place was filled with people who seemed to have never heard of the band.
I’m not even going to bother trying to look up who the support act was. It was a solo show by some crusty space-hippy guy playing irritating King Crimson droney guitar-wank. He certainly kept the venue’s bar busy while he played.