This Thursday and Friday, the mighty Pixies played two fan exclusive shows at The Troxy in London, a venue I’d never even heard of before. It’s in Limehouse, which is surprisingly close to where I’m living and quite easy to get to from here, thanks to the magic of the new London Overground service.

The venue was a cute, old fashioned style theatre. We were upstairs in unassigned seating, and though we arrived before the support came on, it was fairly full already. There was a section of reserved seats in front of us, which had tables. I wonder how you got those seats, they weren’t on sale on the pixies website.It was warm in there. I was sitting, like everyone else (the upstairs crowd only got to their feet at the encore) and I was drenched from just dance-bouncing in my seat. And I wasn’t really expecting all that much, but I was blown away. Hit after hit, and then they played Caribou, by far my favourite Pixies song. It was just like I dreamed it would be live, intense and powerful. I was beside myself with joy. I loved every second of the gig.

On my way home, @nikki randomly came up behind me and said hello, I turned to face her and had a “oh shit this person seems to know who I am and I have forgotten them who is it come on brain come on brain” moment before she revealed her identity and I blurted out “you look nothing like your picture!” – that came out wrong Nikki, so sorry! You know what it’s like with people you know online sometimes, you have an idea in your head of what someone looks like, and some times these ideas are utterly wrong. Case in point – this time! And those seconds before nikki revealed who she was, I was racing through my mind trying to find something that fit the person in front of me. Funnily enough, her boyfriend looked entirely like what I thought he would.

All in all, a pretty good night!!

Setlist
1. Cecilia Ann
2. Rock Music [aborted]
3. Bone Machine
4. Monkey Gone to Heaven
5. Gouge Away
6. Hey
7. Velouria
8. Dig for Fire
9. Allison
10. Debaser
11. Planet Of Sound
12. Alec Eiffel
13. Caribou
14. River Euphrates
15. Cactus
16. Is She Weird?
17. Break My Body
18. The Sad Punk
19. Head On [The Jesus and Mary Chain]
20. U-Mass
21. Tame
22. Isla de Encanta
23. Broken Face
24. Wave of Mutilation
25. Nimrod’s Son
26. Holiday Song
27. Gigantic

Encore
1. Where is my Mind?
2. Here Comes Your Man