Pixies

The Pixies: Club Date Live at the Paradise in Boston delivers the goods with lots and lots of material, not only from the 2004 Paradise show but with additional footage culled from a 1986 T.T. the Bears amateur video added as the "bonus tracks." It takes them a while to launch into "La La Love You," the surf rocker that opens the set after some playful chatter between Frank Black and his bandmates, but once they do it is a perfectly filmed good time of pop music played by a band that knew and still knows how to find a groove. Kim Deal's girl group gone grunge hit, "Gigantic," doesn't rivet like the studio version, but who cares? It's a fun moment on a DVD chock-full of many more. The culture shock is going from the 2004 concert to 18 years previously at the tiny club in Central Square Cambridge, T.T. the Bears. Black Francis has his added Elvis Presley latter-day pounds at the Paradise, while the grainy footage from Halloween 1986 has a spirit and an energy -- an all-out abandon -- that the self-assured elder statesmen of the Boston punk scene have traded in for refinement. Both angles from the different decades work, making this DVD an essential slice of Boston rock & roll that certainly does the city proud. Boston Phoenix music editor Matt Ashare goes a bit overboard in his praise of the band's "genius" -- and how he feels they were "ahead of their time." Actually, they're a garage band and a damn good one! No Cars innovation, no Willie "Loco" Alexander & the Boom Boom Band exploration, just a group of four musicians who got it right. Where El Loco and his group tore chord changes apart on the pioneering "Rock & Roll Riff #78," the Pixies bang away at traditional chords and fun times -- and for that they deserve thanks. There's a lot of material to absorb on Club Date: Live at the Paradise in Boston, and all of it is good. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide