The Home Stretch

A few days ago I posted about the remaining Pixies songs left to tab. Since then I finished "Weird at My School" and I realized that "Wild Honey Pie" is essentially done too. Beyond that, let's drill down.

Remaining songs that are incomplete:15 songs

Album-based: 1 song
Lovely Day

B-sides: 7 songs
Rock A My Soul
Make Believe
Velvety Instrumental
Santo
Bam Thwok
Boom Chicka Boom
Theme from Narc (kind of a cover too)

Unreleased: 1 song
Brackish Boy

Covers: 6 songs
Evil Hearted You (Yardbirds)
Ain't That Pretty at All (Warren Zevon)
I Can't Forget (Leonard Cohen)
Born in Chicago (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
Hang on to Your Ego (Beach Boys)
I've Been Waiting For You (Neil Young)

I am going to make a judgement call and say that the unreleased song and the covers are totally and completely unneccesary. Not that I won't still try to learn them...but really these just don't count.

So that leaves only the album-based song and the b-sides...and that's 8 songs. I'm nearly done with "Lovely Day"...so that's only a matter of time. The 7 remaining b-sides may or may not ever get done.

"Rock a My Soul" and "Boom Chicka Boom" are songs that they only played early in their career and no one but a die hard Pixies fan would have ever heard them. I think "Rock a My Soul" is only on the purple tape and that "Boom Chicka Boom" only exists in early performance video. "Bam Thwok" while being a song that I love, really isn't part of the core catalog. I don't think it was ever released anywhere but through itunes and I don't know if it is still available. The fact that they have toured widely after recording it but never play it speaks volumes. The other four...Make Believe, Velvety Instrumental, Santo, Theme from Narc...are b-sides that they've also chosen not to play in the modern era. "Velvety" Frank Black recorded later in his career with lyrics, so I feel like that's really one of his songs, not a Pixies song proper and I suspect that they feel that way too. I read an interview in which Kim Deal said that she should be killed for writing "Make Believe" even though I think it is kind of hilarious. Still it is by far the most jokey and most dated of their songs and probably better left alone. "Theme from Narc" is just fucking hard to play I think. I've not attempted the bass line, but the right foot bass drum is fast and I don't want to put EH through that. It's another "only a die hard Pixies fan would care about this" song. And that leaves "Santo"...which I recall the last time it was brought up in rehearsal being given a certain "Ah...Santo" dismissive tone. I don't know that it is such a bad song...but not well known for sure.

For my personal sense of completeness, of course, I'm never gonna feel right unless I tab all 89 songs. But reasonably speaking, I'm also getting tired of this project and know that these last few serve no purpose. We will never play them live...or if we do we'd play them once only in some special kind of "weird songs" set. Even if we did that...there are plenty enough good b-sides and rarities that these don't seem to rise to the call.

And so I'm left thinking that Lovely Day may end up being the last Pixies song that I tab. Which seems both weird and anti-climatic. At the start if one would wager what the last song would be...I doubt Lovely Day would have been the bet. That said...I didn't even know the names of all the songs at the start...so I wouldn't have been able to make an informed wager. In the end Lovely Day falls to the end because no one else has posted the bass tab on the web yet...which either means that no one cares about the song or that the bass line is so easy that it isn't worth tabbing. I don't think the latter is completely true (since it is taking me a bit to figure out)...nor has it guided whether other tab has been posted...I mean "Where Is My Mind" is tabbed in a billion places...and that's pretty damn easy. So while I'd argue that "The Navajo Know" is the worst Pixies song...perhaps the bass players out there in the world think it is "Lovely Day."

More likely...I've been caring about this far longer than any reasonable person should.