Pixies and Mars Volta invade Verizon venue

By Brian Spiegel
Online Forty-Niner
Staff Writer

There's an old saying that a real football game is played in halves. You can have a horrible first half and be down 17-0 then storm back in the second half and pull out a 21-20 victory. I think this analogy works well with the Pixies/Mars Volta concert I witnessed last Saturday night at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre. If their sets were split in two halves then both bands scored big in one half and were destroyed in the other.

While this might sound confusing I think it's really the only way to describe both band sets. After the first 20 minutes of Mars Volta, I was convinced that their set marked the second coming of Christ, only to feel rather bored when they reduced themselves to playing a Led Zeppelin-esque slow down for the remainder of their stage time. On the other hand, the first 30 minutes of the Pixies made me feel the band was going through the motions for the sake of the money (a fact which they don't really refute in interviews), only to watch the band follow up with 50 minutes of inspired music.

The Pixies' 80-minute set began with "Where Is My Mind?" an interesting opening song. The song, which usually elicits the biggest sing-along of the night, was met with tepid response.

This probably had to do with the fact that the song generally is near the end of the band's set. Having that song played at the beginning felt out of place and didn't start their set on a high note.

It took the Pixies about ten songs before they finally hit a stride. The second half of the set featured faster songs from their earlier catalog which really got the crowd riled up. Besides some of the earlier "punk songs" the band mostly only played its hits, rifling off "Debaser," "Caribou" and "Gouge Away." The band finished their set with "The Monkey's Gone To Heaven" and the great "Nimrod's Son" (which they split in two and sandwiched "Holiday" in between). The band then milled around the stage for a while, seeping in the crowd's thunderous cheers. The crowd showed them love so they returned it with a two-song encore concluding with "Gigantic" before walking off stage.

The band says that they will tour again in the spring, which I wouldn't object to, but I do have one suggestion: they should forget the money and only tour if they truly feel it. It would be sad to see the Pixies reduced to playing their hit songs at Stateline in five years. I shudder to think.

As Mars Volta walked onstage for their opening set they were bathed in a red light that reminded me of the good old days when Rage Against the Machine used to storm the stage to virtually bash your face in (I miss those days). What followed with Mars Volta was a 20-minute explosion of power, the likes of which I haven't seen for years.

Nobody quite controls a stage like Mars Volta's lead singer Cedric Zavala. He stalked it, swung his microphone, did handstands and, at one point, even did the worm. The band announced that they would be playing three songs (though I swore it was more like five), which meant that each song was around 15 minutes in length (the third song clocked in at around 30 minutes).

The first two songs were masterful, pulling out all the stops. The six-piece band never let up an inch. Drummer Joe Theodore pounded the skins with little mercy only stopping when the song gracefully floated to an end.

I did have a problem with the set's third song. Instead of the unabashed power that is their trademark they instead played a slowed down 20-minute Led Zeppelin-esque breakdown that involved lots of long guitar solos. I think when a band has such sheer power as Mars Volta, it doesn't need to resort to long musical breakdowns. Overall I still thought their performance was amazing. A band like Mars Volta, much like the Pixies were in their time, is truly vital to today's music scene, and I hope to hear them continuing to make music for years to come.