Black Francis / Frank Black / ex. Pixies - Areena, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Wednesday 1st October 2008.

Black Francis / Frank Black / ex. Pixies lead singer and rhythm guitarist. Areena, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Wednesday 1st October 2008. Supported by Violent Soho.

Charles / Frank / Black and his band know how to rock. Some might say that this happening tonight. Given what I'm about to say I'll throw in that there were some nice sounds coming out of them and for the most I was grooving.

Now to give a one word conclusion of the night - dissapointing.

I have loved Pixies and Frank since the early 90's (and a bit upset I didn't catch them from the very beginning in the late 80's). The guy is a legend. He is is a musical genius. All the sounds are amazing. The sounds were certainly there and I really enjoyed the night. However when I walked out I just felt like there was something missing - though judging by the feeling, there were many things missing. I've walked out of so many concerts in shock at the brilliance I've just experienced. I just didn't feel that way tonight.

The reasons I didn't feel satisfied are listed below. Perhaps I'm being picky though I can only go on the feeling i had. Ultimately he's been playing the crowds for over 20 years and should by now have a good idea about how to get everyone moving in his time. He couldn't pull that tonight.

• Charles/Frank/Black did not interact with the Crowd. About 1/2 way through he got up to the microphone and said "I had a sheet of anecodes but I left them at the hotel". And then quickly introduced the 2 other band members. Maybe he nodded to the crowd as they went off the stage also.
  
• He played nothing from before the last 2 or 3 albums (this would cover maybe the last 5 or 6 years). Aged rockers are seen by many people for their "hits and memories". So many of his newer songs sound like older ones but we were left waiting for "Los Angeles" or "10 Percenter". Forget Pixies tracks - that was never going to happen (would have been nice though)
  
• No Encore. They played for close to 1.5 hours and then left the stage. The crowd stood there banging and cheering for about 4 mins before the fluro lights came on. We were like "wow, this has never happened before". This was the anti-clincher - if he'd done an encore but didnt' talk or play older songs it wouldn't have mattered as much. This is what helped me cast the night as dissapointing.
  

I just though arrogant fucker. I should give him the benefit of the doubt though - he might have had heart palpatations or some other concern.

I hope he's ok.

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BTW I haven't posted for fricken yonks. Reason:

• Have a 5 month old daughter (born 3rd May 2008)
  
• I've been involved in Environmental activities - I've done posts to http://climateactionbrisbane.blogspot.com/. To round off this point - I am extremely scared about the future of the human race and all current life on planet Earth. Little is giving me hope that we will avoid the catastrophe we seem to be approaching. In my living memory, there has been little in the way of fixing up or restoring the environment in contrast to the amount of destruction there has been. Even people who would not intentionally damage the environemnt do so through complacency. Society and namely the companies in it care more about profit than people or the planet.
  
• I've been cocentrating on finishing a project at work that has been going on for 8 years. We're in the last couple months and its behind schedule;
  
• I've been trying to develop my software engineering and software development skills.