What a crazy day. After a relaxing Wednesday recovering from illness and seeing my friend Umar give a talk at UCSF, i put the pedal to the metal on Thursday. First off: prepare two 20 minute talks for our departmental research retreat on Saturday morning. I plugged away at that diligently in my office, all the while listening to mp3's on my newly downloaded iTunes 4.5 (Marion keeps popping up in my random playlist for some reason, but i'm not complaining). Come 4pm i ran over to the Clark Center for our biweekly molecular imaging admin meetings. I needed to leave at 5pm for a planning meeting for the weekend retreat, but naturally things ran over so at 5:15 i was running back across Stanford to the CCSR. At 6:15 i again had to divest myself so i could haul ass home to get Veronica, after which we began our trek up to Davis to catch the Pixies reunion show at Freeborn Hall on the UC Davis campus. Even with last minute modifications to The Plan by Gary and Robin, we made it there at 8:45pm and met those two, getting inside about 5 minutes before the Bostonians took the stage.

My friend Lance had given us a heads up that a little company called Disclive was doing something interesting on this tour. A clever idea: record the show from the soundboard, and as soon as it ends, use a mass cd burning machine to generate 1000 copies of it. Presell the cd's before and during the performance, then distribute them ten minutes after the show's conclusion. So we paid the $25 for that, and also got a baby T for Veronica and a black hoodie for me. A lot of cash shelled out, but the Pixies' performance was definitely worth it. They opened with a fierce rendition of "Bone Machine", with Frank Black/Black Francis letting everyone know that he can still scream with the best of them. The hour and a half set dealt mostly with Surfer Rosa and Doolittle, with only "Velouria" representing Bossanova and "U-Mass" and a fantastically moody version of "Subbacultacha" drawn from Trompe Le Monde. But i have no complaints, it was a wonderful show and had no trace of the "we're all financially and artistically bankrupt, so let's cash in on past glories" stink so common of reunion shows. We left around 11pm after picking up our freshly burned cd of the show. Really a terrific idea: perfect sound quality, a great souvenir from a great show. We stopped in Dixon to get a long overdue dinner at In'N'Out Burger, and arrived home at 1am to an overjoyed Cobi who miraculously had not peed on the carpet during our six hour absence.

From the "PIX" section of the discography to the "PIZ"s, Pizzicato Five are a not-so-guilty pleasure of mine. I'd quote some lyrics but unfortunately i can't transcribe Japanese.