This Promise Ring cover was my first introduction to the Pixies in 1999. It was on Where Is My Mind: A Tribute to the Pixies, which featured a ton of bands I was really into at the time (Get Up Kids, Promise Ring, Weezer, Reel Big Fish, Superdrag). I remember taking Phil’s CD and making a cassette-tape copy of several of the songs and just playing that damn tape over and over at the video store on Main Street in Saltillo on lonely nights when we’d have three customers and I’d be the only living, breathing animal inhabiting downtown after sundown.
That memory came crackling back into my skull last night as I was watching a later episode of the fourth season of Lost. Jack’s all bearded and drunk and rolls up to a funeral home with the original “Gouge Away” blaring in the car. There are only a few scattered Pixies songs in my music library, and that’s not one of them. So I scrunched my face in faint recognition and instantly thought of the Promise Ring version first, even though I haven’t heard it in ten years. Weird.
Anyway, here it is. I still like it:
8th grade (1991 holy shit!).
A girl I ended up following around like a puppy all through high school shows up with 1/2 of Doolittle on a busted-ass maxell cassette tape and 2 22oz. colt 45s.
…love at first listen.
YES. Now that is what I’m talking about.