A friend of mine once told me his theory that everyone’s favorite album is one released in the same year they start college. It’s a flawed proposition, not least because we don’t necessarily hear albums for the first time in the same year they are released (nor does everyone go to college, obviously), but the guiding principle behind it is surprisingly accurate.
For example, most of my all-time favorite bands are ones I was listening to when I was around 18 years old: Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Pavement. So it’s probably no coincidence that now they are all hitting the nostalgia market at around the same time too.
While the emotional scars caused by seeing one of the Velvet Underground’s unfortunate European dates in 1993 have largely healed for me, I still have mixed feelings about reunion tours. One constant is that my levels of enthusiasm seem to depend largely on whether or not I saw the band in question the first time round.
For example, I was thrilled to finally get the chance to see the Pixies in 2004, as I had missed my one previous chance way back in 1991 (although in the end I didn’t miss much in Glasgow that night as part of the stage collapsed just a few minutes into the gig: you can read more here).
In contrast, I’m much less enthusiastic about seeing The Jesus and Mary Chain when they play San Francisco next month (they appear at the Fillmore on October 26 and 27, 2007), or about the rumors that My Bloody Valentine might reform for next year’s Coachella. I saw both bands play on the same bill of the Lollapallooza-inspired “Rollercoaster” tour in 1992, and it was almost certainly the greatest concert I’ve ever been to.