With the last batch of artists announced yesterday, the San Miguel Primavera Sound festival has a superb line-up for its tenth anniversary, held from the 27th to the 29th of May in the Parc Del Fòrum of Barcelona.
The popular independent music event has been generating a growing buzz since both Pavement and Pixies were confirmed as headliners – thus putting two of the most eagerly anticipatedreunion tours of recent times at centre stage.
The organisers of San Miguel Primavera Sound launched a poll for fans to vote for past acts they would like to see play the festival again. The winners included the fore-mentioned Pavement and Pixies; Wilco; Shellac; Orbital and Panda Bear from Animal Collective. Other heavily influential artists such as The Pet Shop Boys, Gary Numan, Marc Almond, Les Savy Fav, The Slits, Sunny Day Real State and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry have also been confirmed. Added to this Low will be performing their classic album ‘The Great Destroyer’ in full and Charlatans will do the same with their LP, ‘Some Friendly’.
Barcelona’s popular San Miguel Primavera Sound festival has just announced the first batch of artists for their 10th anniversary edition, which will take place on May 27th-29th. Panda Bear; Wilco and The New Pornographers, among others, will be joining the already confirmed Pixies and Pavement on what’s shaping up as one of the best line-ups in 2010.
As part of the celebrations, the organizers have asked the fans to vote for their favourite artists of the nearly finished decade. The 10 most popular will be invited to be part of the event. You can check the promising results to date in the festival website’s forums.
The full line-up so far includes:
THE ANTLERS BIS THE BLOODY BEETROOTS CAMARON, LA LEYENDA DEL TIEMPO 30 AñOS DESPUES DELOREAN DUM DUM GIRLS THE FALL GANGLIANS HERE WE GO MAGIC HOPE SANDOVAL & THE WARM INVENTIONS JOKER FEAT. NOMAD THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS PANDA BEAR PAVEMENT PIXIES WILCO WILD BEASTS THE XX
The event will be also holding its cosier autumn version, “Primavera Club”, on December 9th-13th. Full list of participating bands can be checked at MySpace.
If you missed their storming “Doolittle” tour, in which they played the classic album in full; Pixies are giving away a four track download EP recorded at their recent gig in Paris, the last of their European shows.
Back in the US, the Pixies have been generating headlines thanks to a much talked-about collaboration with comedian Weird Al Yankovic and Chili Pepper Flea scheduled for December the 8th at the Echoplex in L.A – one of two benefit shows to raise money for the Winston’s Village charity.
The Live EP tracklist includes:
Dancing The Manta Ray Monkey Gone To Heaven Crackity Jones Gouge Away
Pixies brought the O2 Brixton Academy down during their first of four nights in London with their ‘Doolittle’ tour. The influential band celebrated the 20th anniversary of its release by playing their timeless second album in full, plus its singles’ b-sides, to a rapturous audience comprising two generations of fans that sang-along to every single song. A lively Kim Deal introduced some of the tracks, most of them backed by excellent audiovisual works.
Label mates The Big Pink opened the gig claiming to be as excited as the rest of the audience by playing next to such legends.
The set began with four B-sides including “Dancing The Manta Ray” and ‘Bailey’s Walk’, followed by a rendition of the fifteen songs of the album in running order – from the incendiary “Debaser” to the ending “Gouge Away”. The four-piece performed two encores; the first one with two more B-sides, beginning with the slower UK surf version of ‘Wave Of Mutilation’; The second comprised three all-time favourites: ‘U-Mass’ from ‘Trompe Le Monde” sandwiched in between ‘Surfer Rosa’s highlights ‘Bone Machine’ and ‘Gigantic’.
Five years from their 1994 reunion tour –Pixies disbanded in 1993 and went to pursue solo projects with different fortunes- it was no less than surprising to see how well Black Francis; Kim Deal; Joey Santiago and David Lovering can revive the band’s mind-blowing energy and how relevant its music still is. Someone who saw the band during the original tour promoting the album – twenty years ago – couldn’t help feeling like a Grandad, falling into cliché territory by wondering why “No one make records as good as ‘Doolittle’ anymore”.
The tour will certainly reignite the appetite for the band’s flawless back catalogue, soon to be compiled and given an exclusive deluxe treatment on a lavish box-set named ‘Minotaur’. Details of which can be found in the video below.
