The Pixies are icons in the college radio world, and that's an understatement.
I picked up the Live at the BBC Sessions by The Pixies at a used record store a few months ago and finally got a chance to listen to it. Overall, the Pixies make a decent live band. What they lose in precision, they more than make up with energy.
The lead off track on Live at the BBC (and also included in their 1988 Peel Sessions, where the track is taken from), is a version of The Beatles "Wild Honey Pie". This is an interesting choice for a cover, considering the original is widely considered the worst song on The White Album. The original is a shrill, meandering and short slice of psychedelic pop. At best, it's just a couple of minutes of filler on an otherwise incredible Beatles album.
The Pixies, however, turn it into a noise-rock paean. Instead of the high-pitched singing of the original, the lyrics are screamed by Black Francis. The music is sped up, noised up and brutalized. In a lot of ways, the cover resembles "Rock Music", a primal, unhinged song with the power of punk, but none of the subtlety of alt-rock.
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