Carla and I were celebrating one year of being together so accordingly we wanted to do something special. We thought to take a trip, though nothing extravagant since we were both working at the time, then we wanted to tie some special event to it, since neither of us are much for lounging around for a weekend. Bakersfield isn't the most exciting place to go, and I got a lot of crap from friends when I said I took my lady there, but I explained it all completely with one word: Pixies. The band was playing Bakersfield the Friday after our anniversary (we were busy the actual weekend of it anyway) and that fit for us. It didn't matter to us where the show was -- it was within a few hours' drive of home and tickets were still on sale. (Our first choice was the Fonda show the night after the one in Bakersfield but it had sold out before we even heard of it and we were busy that night anyway.) So we got tickets, made reservations at the nearby hotel for one night, then that Friday both of us got off work early and we drove up there, listening to the import album of Pixies covers by Japanese garage-punk bands. Most of the show itself was actually unextraordinary. The band was still touring off of the Doolittle anniversary, still flogging playing it in its entirety after two years, though the twist with this tour was playing in cities they hadn't played before (not surprising that they had never gotten to Bakersfield, though a surprise that there are actually corners of the Earth that they hadn't gotten to by that point). Both Carla and I had seen the Doolittle show already, both of us going to the show (or shows) at the Palladium, but of course it was special because we were both seeing our favorite band together (and actually together, rather than being there but separate, like numerous times before we met each other). It was all I could ask for for a very special event. And the band played well, by now being fine-tuned to playing that whole album of material, as well as the attendant B-sides, as we've seen before. They seemed a little more relaxed (though that would always come and go in all the shows I saw). The most special part of the concert itself, and what made the show for us, was a run-through of "Dig For Fire," which neither of us had ever seen them play. We both lost it. The band never played that back in the day, even when touring Bossanova, and they hadn't played it at any of the shows that Carla or I had been to up to that point. They started it over once and it was still pretty rough but that they made the attempt was spectacular to us. We were over the moon. It would have made our night, if not the whole weekend -- if the rest of Bakersfield wasn't actually kind of great. The Padre Hotel, where we stayed, is next to the Fox Theater (why so many concert venues in California with that name?) and it is a great, swanky hotel, a place that would fit in L.A. (though if it were we wouldn't be able to get into it). The rest of the city was a little run-down; maybe not the kind of place I would go to if my favorite band wasn't playing there, but for that trip and that occasion it was extraordinary. Imaginary Cities, a female-fronted pop-rock band, opened the show and they were pretty good.
Pixies' set-list:
"Dancing the Manta Ray"
"Weird at My School"
"Bailey's Walk"
"Manta Ray"
"Debaser"
"Tame"
"Wave of Mutilation"
"I Bleed"
"Here Comes Your Man"
"Dead"
"Monkey Gone to Heaven"
"Mr. Grieves"
"Crackity Jones"
"La La Love"
"No. 13 Baby"
"There Goes My Gun"
"Hey"
"Silver"
"Gouge Away"
"Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)"
"Into the White"
"Planet of Sound"
"Dig for Fire"
"Vamos"
"Where Is My Mind?"
"Gigantic"
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