The Pixies Have Gotten Fat and So Have I

Today I went to an old Tex Mex haunt of mine. I needed something to shake up my taste buds as I’m recovering from what appears to be The Flu Light. I slept away the middle of the day, so I ended up there around 3 pm. This being a Monday, I was one of five customers, tops. I ordered a chicken taco, chili taco and chips and queso. That ought to do it, I thought.

I took my food out to the patio where nobody was eating at the moment. So it was just me, a bunch of little gray, hopping birds that have grown accustomed to being fed and Warren Zevon shaking the speaker over my head as he sang about Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.

When I was in college, back when there was still a Soviet Union, the music you would hear on that patio would be underground stuff that was just starting to break, like REM, the Pixies, Husker Du. Now, for some reason, you hear mostly music from the sixties and seventies. Often it’s the more interesting, slightly obscure choices, but still I wonder about this evolution.

I remember what it was like to hear those songs back then. I grew up in a small town out of range of radio stations that played any such music, so when I went to college, it was as if I had tapped into a secret frequency broadcast from a world of jangly guitars and urgent voices. The sounds were raw and honest, the energy fresh. I had never heard anything quite like it.

That music became my soundtrack. It was on the college radio station when I was driving; blaring at parties where I got drunk and kissed girls I never saw again. It was on my Tex Mex patio.

But I suppose soundtracks last only as long as the scenes they accompany. I don’t get as excited by music. I don’t go to shows. I don’t kiss strangers anymore.

Last week I tasted the old passion a bit. It was sparked by a film, a concert film. It was the compilation of six years of filming the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. I saw bands I had never heard of, some I had. It was electric with human, personal energy, the kind that happens when many people get together to feel, to listen.

And the Pixies were there. The mentors to many of the other artists present, they were deservingly received with reverence by their fans and peers. They sounded as great as ever, but looked different. Of course they were older, but the lead singer, Frank Black/Black Francis, and bassist, Kim Deal, had gained quite a bit of weight. I thought to myself, as I shoved another handful of popcorn in my mouth, “so have I.”

When the Pixies finished their set, the crowd – most of which were toddlers at most when the band first rattled college airwaves – offered up a messiah’s tribute in applause and shouts. The band stood at the lip of the stage, humbly waving in gratitude and absolutely glowing.

I glowed most of the next week, too, with scenes of happy people dancing on grass and singing songs about the sun playing over and over in my head. I was hardly cynical at all for nearly seven days. It was strange, but nice.

Then I found my way to the patio.

As I was enjoying my chili taco, a college-aged girl and boy came out onto the patio with a man that I assumed was the girl’s father. I’m not sure why I didn’t consider that he could be the boy’s father. “I’ve Seen All Good People” by Yes was now playing on the sound system. The girl kind of shook her hips and pretended to dance a little. She was pretty. I thought, “Ah, youth,” and took a second look.

Then I took a good look at the father. He was no doubt around my age. Maybe a year or two older, but no more. That’s when it hit me. I’m getting to the age when the daughters of people I went to school with will be starting college. It’s very likely that I’ll be sitting on this patio when they come out here with friends and I’ll glance at them, not as the daughters of friends, but as beautiful young women that make men sigh.

I sat there as napkins blew across wooden boards at my feet and little gray birds hopped on chairs and tables around me like some kind of barbiturate Walt Disney scene. I looked at my chili taco and thought about the Pixies. Some acid seventies version of “House of the Rising Sun” with bombastic fuzz guitar was now playing. And so unfolded my moment of clarity. I understood why the music had changed on the patio, why I hear mostly songs dating back to my birth and earliest years. It’s a new soundtrack for the reality of my now. It's another reminder of my age that plays as I watch others dance along the precipice of youth, glimpsing adulthood with their buckets of beer and all night eyes.

Not to worry, my old friends from school. In the standoff for my attention, the chili taco always wins out over your daughters these days. And as far your daughters’ interests go, I don’t need to assure you that they have to do with everything but me. So, not even after two or three Negra Modelos will I be walking across those beer-stained planks to make the inevitable old fool of myself.

But if by some fluke the Pixies’ “Gigantic” can be heard some cool, spring night over the clinking of bottles and collegiate chatter, I can’t promise we won’t both be chair dancing.