I don't know... every member of the Pitchfork crowd?

some people like it more than doolittle. i was in this boat for a while. :finger:

i appreciate them both but will put on doolittle more than sufer rosa. they are different monsters, doolittle works better as an overall album and is a bit more, overall, accessible while surfer rosa, to me, is a collection of fun and crazy songs

Agreed, except I'd put Doolittle country miles ahead.

awesome!:bowdown:

i agree that doolittle has more of an album feel overall. at times, depending on my mood, surfer rosa hits me as a mish-mash, doesn't quite have cohesion. plus i can listen to doolittle without batting an eye or reaching for the skip (except maybe on silver), whereas SR has kinda started to grate on me because of the dated recording sound ... great songs, but the production is ... errr

of course i say this having listened to both albums obsessively by times ...

I agree doolittle is better there are so many great songs debaser,here comes your man,monkey gone to heaven,gouge away,there goes my gun and mr grieves if you ignore the first 40 seconds

What are people's favorite Pixies songs? Mine is probably a tie between Debaser and Wave Of Mutilation.

Hmmmm it's always hard to pick a favourite song, but my contenders are Here Comes Your Man, Gigantic, Dig For Fire, Velouria, Ed Is Dead and Monkey Gone To Heaven.

'Gigantic', 'Where Is My Mind?', and 'Tame'...

Tame
Monkey Gone To Heaven
Hey
Where Is My Mind?

i refuse to believe Here Comes Your Man is a Pixies song. I mean I like it. But it doesn't include what makes Pixies one of my favorite bands... anyways it is kind of mediocre.

Here Comes Your Man (not your typical Pixies song I know, but I can't resist that lovely riff)
Something Against You
Brick Is Red
Debaser

They're my definite favourites, in no order.

Caribou
Hey
Vamos
The Holiday Song

Surfer Rosa>Bossanova>Doolittle>Trompe Le Monde I'd say.

My view is the exact opposite. :D

YES!
You rarely hear anybody lauding the album anymore. Personally, "Surfer Rosa" is one of those albums that I'll throw up on the stereo when I'm in a dark mood. The album really laid the foundation for a load of artists who followed the Pixies. Listen to "Where is my Mind" and do a quick comparison to Weezer's "Say it Ain't So". The structure (soft, melodic verse; loud chorus; soft verse; loud chorus; bridge; etc) is very similar, if not virtually the same. The Pixies were very influential, so I think it's a bit obtuse to claim that "Surfer Rosa", the pinnacle of their musical prowess, is "overrated". I think the term is a bit overused anymore....I'd like to see some legitimate critique, cogent arguements as to why the album is undeserving of whatever praise it has recieved.

ughhhhh
bossanova sucks

I think Doolittle is slightly better than Surfer Rosa, but they're both so good that it hardly matters. It's like having £10trillion or £11trillion*, you're rich either way.

Substitute '£' for '$' for our yankee friends :)

You just proved that your Pixies opinions are useless

ditto

I'm rubber and you're glue..
But seriously - stop discussing the Pixies so haphazardly and explain yourself better.
Like yourself, the Pixies are one of my favorite bands - that's because I like their music. None of it 'sucks' and especially not Bossanova.

*cough cough* go away.

its not so much that I think it sucks. its just that I enjoy come on pilgrim, surfer rosa, and doolittle infinitely more.

Pixies had a pretty high quality control system throughout,and their later stuff is perfectly good-to-great college rock, Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde do what you'd expect flawlessly.

And yet both of those albums are still better than 80 percent of the following generation's music.

Every generation makes good music and awful ****e.I don't think this "following generation" stuff should hold much credibility.

I'm not saying the Pixies were part of some magical era of music. I'm saying the years of rock music that followed, which I enjoy by the way, can't compare.

So what you're saying is the 90's and 00's didn't spawn any bands you like as much?Personally I think the 90's and 00's are on a par with the era Pixies were operational during.

I guess I'll try to weigh in on this:
I think, for me, it comes down to the fact that the Pixies really set the standard for the following decade. I've said it before, compare "Where is My Mind" to "Say it Ain't So" by Weezer. The influence is clear. The problem with the 90's and 00's when compared to the Pixies' era, is that no one band (and this is topic for a whole other discussion) really set such a clear and dynamic influence. Maybe Nirvana, but Cobain's style was, again, largely a product of what he had picked up from groups like the Pixies, if not the Pixies themselves.

radiohead?

Yeah, but we're talking influence here. Radiohead has definitely influenced groups that came out of the 90's/00's. Muse is probably the most obvious. But their influence hasn't been as far-reaching or as lasting as the Pixies. Radiohead is without a doubt a very influential force, but the Pixies really set the pace. I could easily be proven wrong, and I'm waiting for people to chime in with points that I hadn't anticipated, but I still feel like the Pixies were a massive inspirational pressence.

It is hard to top Pixies in terms of influence, I agree.

I'd say Radiohead probably are slightly more influential worldwide than Pixies, mainly because they've got more albums out. Don't think it's really that important though.

Also, Muse are nowhere close to having the same impact on music as Pixies or Radiohead. Or several other 90's and 00's acts for that matter (The Strokes, Weezer, Blur, Oasis, Pavement, Coldplay to name a very small portion).

I think he was saying Muse was influenced by Radiohead. I don't think Radiohead has, as a whole, done more to influence rock music than the Pixies however.

Yeah, you're right - I misread the post - sorry Million Dollar Basher.

No worries, Grotesque Head.
You bring up a good point though. Radiohead did spark a lot of worldwide creativity, whereas I was focusing mainly on the progression of American rock in the 90's and 00's.

R.E.M. had a huge influence around then. Also, I don't think a lot of people think of My Bloody Valentine when thinking about this, but didn't they pretty much create and popularize the ethereal layers of sound and buried vocals? Still, I guess they might not be on par with the Pixies. I mean you could ask pretty much every great rock or alternative band from the early to mid 90's who influenced them and I think Pixies would be the common name.

Absolutely, and you're right about Radiohead. They've got longevity on their side.
R.E.M. definitely had a huge influencial pressence in the 90s, but their's was more generic. Buck and Stipe definitely carried on in the Jagger Richards, dual-leading man tradition (and I certainly prefer that duo to Bono and The Edge), and they filled the roles well, but Oasis, in my opinion, really propelled alternative rock to new heights. There was an endless deluge of pop-rock bands following in the tradition of Oasis after they'd exploded, both here in the States and abroad. I mean, you can still hear their influence in the pop/rock stuff on the radio today. But they layed the foundation for pop balladeers--The Pixies set the rules for the underdog groups that eventually came up through the charts...

oasis?!? no way jose.

Actually that's bollocks.REM's influence in the 1980's was defining how what became known as "college rock" would sound by reinventing classic pop songcraft for the post-punk era and by establishing a touring circuit which would form the backbone of the indie scene.
Firstly,I fail to see how Oasis' music fits into "alternative rock" at all.Lyrically and sonically it has nothing in common whatsoever with the post-punk from which alternative rock stems, and if anything they're a traditionalist rock band.The template for contemporary pop balladeers was set by Jeff Buckley on Grace and Radiohead on The Bends, with most groups that followed cloning their synthesis of electric and acoustic structures.
Pixies did not set the rules for "underdog" groups.The Nirvana loud/quiet loud template is descended from them, but Pixies themselves were very heavily influenced by Husker Du in terms of songcraft, and loud/quiet/loud was deployed by British post-punk groups that followed in Gang Of Four's wake.

The main impact of Pixies is that they were, along with REM, what blazed a trail for the huge commercial success of Alternative Rock by suceeding where the Replacements and Husker Du had failed in crossing over to a mainstream audience and proving the commercial viability of the music.