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Pixies play 'Here Comes Your Man' on Conan


zero

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I know but they shied away from playing it live for exactly that reason even choosing not to play Arsenio at one point because they inisted they play the 'hit'. In the Pixies case it's a little more stringent then say the Lips and She Don't Use Jelly or Pavement and Shady Lane or something. They play those tunes or probably will.

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I'd tend to agree about the overrated part I'd take a Caribou any day over it. Then again I did just purge all the Pixies off my ipod in what seemed like a much overdo and sweeping blow. I also destroyed Nas from the face of my ipod making Jay-Z the undisputed King of New York/ Hip Hop as far as my portable music player is concerned.

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I agree with the perfect pop tune bit too though (even opens with the Hendrix chord) ... it's one of the finest examples of an indie rock song reaching mainstream status. Push The Lil' Daisies didn't quite get there even with the It's Pat movie.

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I mean overrated in the sense that Pixies fans drool all over it and I never understood why. Sure if you compare it to the mainstream pop of the time then I'd probably take it over a lot of other songs but as a Pixies song I find it very middle of the road.

zero is correct. The single crossed over from alternative to the mainstream, which was almost unheard of in the sucky '80s. The Replacements wrote some awesome power-pop singles, but they never crossed over, although I doubt they could have handled the fame if they did have real hits.

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The song was released as a single in June 1989 in the United Kingdom and the United States, and reached #3 on the U.S. Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.

"Modern Rock" = "Alternative", no? I don't know if I'd consider that crossing over to the mainstream.

It was also released as a single at the tail end of the '80s. Hardly qualifies it as an ideal single to compare to the rest of the decade. The '90s popularization of alternative was already in motion.

Enjoying this discussion, btw.

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There was a quiet switch from alternative to modern rock in the late '90s. Alternative started to be perceived as a genre.

The Pixies were certainly embraced by the alternative scenesters, but their sound had/has lots of mainstream appeal, even though they had just one real hit.

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It's a good song, but I would hardly even put it in their top 10 tracks. Ok, maybe at the the bottom of it, but regardless I wouldn't EVER say that, at any point, it was a mainstream single. Yes, the ALT genre was making the turn to popular, but the pixes called it quit before the genre really got legs and had time to expose some of their best work.

Trompe le Monde had just been released about 8 months prior to their demise and any single that was being played, was from this album. Either Head On, Palace of The Brine, the Sad Punk or the eminently wicked cover of the J&MC's Head On.

I'm sure there was play for HCYM on college stations, but that's hardly considered mainstream.

Great band. In my top 5 of all time for sure.

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I'm sure there was play for HCYM on college stations, but that's hardly considered mainstream.

Great band. In my top 5 of all time for sure.

It was played and played and played on college radio back in the day - and still is - but the song was still a cross-over hit; not Top 40, but a cross-over - or breakout - single nonetheless. The Pixies abolutely weren't a mainstream band, but their sound certainly flirted with straight-up pop from time-to-time, even with Black Francis' oft-disturbing lyrics.

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