The Pixies – and Gans – and don’t mention the War (s)

I was taken to a Pixies gig last night in St john’s Castle Limerick, as a kind of surprise. I’m a huge fan of the Pixies. In these rather toxic times while Israel is genociding away ( I hear they are refusing visas to dissenting speakers and critics of this terrible unjust and unjustifiable war in the UK, which is sad and shocking), and then we have Trump, a supporter of Israel, is installing his own brand of psychotic twisted cult of personality fascism in the US with its camps, and the Ukraine war is destroying lives and economies, and the price of everything is going up in a World riddled by war, terrible choices, division, and a serious lack of peace and understanding, art, in the form of the Pixies and opened by Gans – a new rather excellent band I had never heard of – really made for a marvellous evening and a relief from dark times. As it was Limerick it rained, and, as the rain came pouring down while we listened and were entertained in St Johns Castle to some fine music, I had a marvellous time. As we walked home our discussion veered onto the topic of just how it is that some artists ‘peak’ then decline and become bland and fake and a parody of their former selves. Others, like the Pixies, slowly continue to produce top notch not only performances but really excellent music. I remember when someone in the late eighties or early nineties put a tape of Dolittle into my hand and said ‘I really don’t like this – here’. I took it, smiled a thanks, looked at it, the cover, with its rhesus monkey and as a animal right guy i knew what they do and did to those monkeys. So I took out the tape and popped it into the deck and cranked up the volume and was immediately enraptured by this funny brilliant post punk experimental rock, something I have never stopped listening to and found to be a profound influence. Listening to them last night they are just as good, if not better. The craftmanship is better. The timing is on the atom. Their work I think is not about what we think of it. They love doing it, whether popular or not. Loving what you do, an ikiagi as the Japanese put it, making it come from the core of your being makes for a consistent life of top notch productivity. And that is all. May peace come soon. We need more art, Methinks.