I don’t know what history will write for the Pixies after 2004… Maybe they’ll put out an album, not quite as good as their old stuff, and fade into uncomfortable oblivion. Or perhaps they’ll never play again. Whatever happens, I’m happy I’ll be able to look back on this tour and say I got my fill. Before this year, my hopes for seeing this weirdly great band, whose music I don’t even know if I would like if I hadn’t started listening to it at age 15, were slim to none. A year later, I’ve been lucky enough to catch them once on their international tour, once in the midwest, and now last night, for their first gig in Massachusetts since opening for U2 in 1992, their homecoming show at UMass in Amherst. And I have to say, I think this show might have been the best one of all. Seeing the Pixies in Iceland still takes the cake for most memorable; it was the first time I’d seen them, it was small and loud, and I was in the middle of an energetic crowd. But last night’s show had a lot going for it – a blistering set list, the weight of history, and great energy. And to top it all off, someone actually talked in between songs, just once. Kim asked Joey, as Frank went to get a different guitar, which hall he’d been in while he and Frank attended UMass. “Sylvan,” he replied. Frank then came to the mic and said “308B…our suite had a mural of Che Guevara outside. We thought it was Jimi Hendrix for a long time.” And that was it ? but that was a lot more onstage banter than we’d heard at either of the other shows. It also helped that I had my earplugs, I’m not ashamed to admit; Frank Black still has an insanely powerful scream that he used to great effect last night. They managed to cram 29 songs in a set that lasted almost exactly 90 minutes, and if you take into account time for applause plus Joey’s long, goofy theremin feedback show during “Vamos,” that’s a lot less than three minutes a song. They hardly finished one song before going into the next, and with each song, I was reminded how great they were: “Oh, yeah, they wrote this song too!” I couldn’t be happier with the way this improbable reunion turned out, and I’ll be interested to see where they go from here.

Add to that some Bueno y Sano before the show and Antonio’s for the drive home, plus the excellent company of friends in the car, and it doesn’t get much better.