#155 ‘Here Comes Your Man’ by Pixies (3 Nov)

Album: Doolittle, 1989

Justification: “Andrew,” you may justifiably ask, ‘do people need to rediscover songs like this, considering that it’s probably the band’s best known single?” Yes. Yes they do. Because it’s awesome.

There are amazing videos, and there are inventive videos, and there are videos where the band clearly just don’t give a fuck. Pixies were never a band that seemed to give much of a shit about their visual impact which might explain why the handful of extant videos include such classic themes as “dressing in leather and being driven to a stadium gig” (‘Dig for Fire’), “out-of-synch rehearsal footage” (‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’) and ‘ten seconds of footage of the band running towards the camera slowed down to fill a four minute song” (‘Velouria’). It’s odd since Frank Black’s solo singles generally had pretty interesting videos (many directed by They Might Be Giants’ John Flansburgh, as it happens) and the Breeders at least made a bit of an effort. But this, one of the first songs Black Francis ever wrote, was the only one that really got a proper, grown-up video with an actual concept, even if that concept was basically the band pretending to play and giving creepy looks to camera. And the best lip synch, obviously.

Despite the song being obviously awesome, the band were clearly less enamoured of it. It appears on their first demo tape but wasn’t included on Come On Pilgrim, and it was re-recorded around the time of Surfer Rosa as a possible single before being nixed by the band (and if you happen to have this version somewhere, Pixies completists, feel free to let me know…). In fact, Pixies reportedly pretty much refused to play it live during their lifetime, but damned if I’ve been to a gig since their reformation where it hasn’t been included. Which is good.