I saw an article about the Pixies in the freebie paper “Metro”.
The Pixies, of course, are the art-noise-punk-pop band out of Boston. They reunited after 13 years. (If you don’t know this band, by golly, stop reading Wetmachine right now and go find them.)
I couldn’t find the story online (but I did find a bunch of nifty stories by googling for “pixies metro”). So let me retype the interesting part relative to Wetmachine themes of the media ecology:
“. . . Not bad for a band who doesn’t even have a new album.
‘Record companies, schmecord companies,’ lead singer Charles Thompson says, ‘Who needs ’em?’
Not them. Instead of working up new material, the Pixies sell tickets, T-shirts, and CDs mass-produced on site at the venues. Hear the show, then buy the disc.”
Evidently this is a growing practice, but not being a trendy club-hopper, I first heard about it in the Metro story.
Speaking of Pixies and Metro, by the way, remind me to tell you about the last time I saw the Pixies play. It was at Club Metro on Landsdowne Street, and they opened for the Zulus. During the Pixies gig I was standing next to Rich Gilbert, the Zulus guitarist, whom I had met when he was in Human Sexual Response (I was good friends with Humans member Casey). So that’s my moment of “almost hanging out with a Beatle.” I mean, Gilbert probably had no idea who I was, but he was friendly enough. And he is Boston rock royalty, after all. Stop me when you’re getting bored, OK? Zulus drummer Malcom Travis was also from the Humans — so was singer Larry Bangor, for that matter — and anyway Travis went on to play in Bob Mould’s band Sugar. Now, Mould, of course, is best known from his days in the legendary Husker Du. . .
gosh, it’s great that you’re so interested in hearing me bloviate about this. . . Pull up a chair why don’t you. . .