Um chagga lagga at Vector Arena

Lines of people in flannel shirts start to form outside Vector Arena in Auckland on Saturday night, March 11. Most of them are unable to stay still, they’re so excited. Or they’re on drugs. These people are all here for one thing, an amazing night.

The doors open and the crowd pours in. Some go and buy t-shirts, others go and buy beer. Men, women and kids file into the arena, trying to get close to the front. Trying to get a good view of the band that brought them the songs that influenced their lives.

For some people this is their first Pixies concert.

For others, it’s their 15^th.

“Reckon they’re going to play songs we can mosh to?” I overhear a mosher ask his friend.

“What the hell are they doing here?” Dad whispers to me, meaning surely the mosher’s question doesn’t need to be asked.

The lights dim and cheers fill the room. They’re coming.

Black Francis, aka Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Joey Santiago (lead guitar), David Lovering (drums) and, newest member, Paz Lenchantin (bass, vocals), walk on the stage and pick up their instruments. The first few chords of Where is my Mind ring out through the speakers.

“Way out in the water, see it swimming.”

The girl next to me dressed like Hansel waves her arms all over the place. She flops over the barrier like a flailing space case.

“This was my song during my Ritalin phase!” she yells to her friend.

The crowd surges forward, people at the back trying to get closer. The people at the very front are being slammed into the metal barrier.

Halfway through Mr Grieves, the music abruptly stops as Black Francis re-tunes his guitar. The stage is silent but the crowd is not.

“I love you Black Francis!”

“Paz, you’re so hot!” 

“Pixies rock!”

The music starts up again and the crowd continues going crazy. Especially the space case. Her arms fly all over the place, almost hitting the people two down from her, earning dirty looks from the people around her trying to enjoy the show.

“Scream, shout, yell,” shout members of the audience.

Santiago’s guitar solo in Vamos wows the crowd as he switches between playing with his fingers to playing it with Lovering’s drumstick, to pulling out the cord, waving it around and somehow playing it. It’s not something you see every day.

The band doesn’t say a word between any of the 28 songs they sing. They don’t need to. The music does the talking.

The band take their bows and wave to the audience before picking up their instruments again for the final song, Into The White.

“And there ain’t no day, and there ain’t no night, into the white.”