<\/p>\n
Sam and I went to the Dublin music festival.<\/p>\n
I was excited about seeing the headliners, Arcade Fire;\u00a0I had been enjoying their second album Neon Fire, since I got it two years previously.<\/p>\n
The day had been scorchingly hot.<\/p>\n
We’d wandered through Dublin city centre, and found a bus that took us straight to the venue, the rather stunning Marlay Park, a few miles south of the city.<\/p>\n
We pitched up close to the stage, spread ourselves out over the grass, and read the Twitter messages to the festival, sent from the people in the park and projected on a large screen to the side of the main stage.<\/p>\n
The many warm-up bands came and went, and they all impressed us with their ability and professionalism.<\/p>\n
When the warm-ups had been and gone, we had the big names at the top of the bill.<\/p>\n
But before Arcade Fire came out, they had to cool their heels for 50 minutes while Pixies took the stage.<\/p>\n
For ten minutes short of an hour, Pixies owned the park.<\/p>\n
And they owned the heart and soul of everyone within earshot of the mountains of loudspeakers.<\/p>\n
There were so many highspots in that single\u00a0Pixies set that it’s difficult to point out one thing in particular.<\/p>\n
Difficult, but not impossible.<\/p>\n
I can not listen to ‘Bagboy’ without recalling every single detail of that day, and every single detail of the cuttingly awesome way that song was performed.<\/p>\n
Check out the guitar-work.<\/p>\n
No, really.<\/p>\n
Put the vocals of this song to the back of your hearing, and listen to the riffs and the refrains, and listen to the magic that Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV (aka Black Francis) makes his guitar perform.<\/p>\n
BTW, after Pixies had done their thing, Arcade Fire were disappointingly mediocre.<\/p>\n