Earlier this year, I spent an hour or so desperately clicking "reload" on a ticket booking web site. Last night I wandered over to Brixton and reaped the reward: I went to see The Pixies play live.

They've consistently been my favourite band since I was 15 or so - I can vividly remember first hearing Surfer Rosa one Summer whilst at boarding school - and they're the only music I've consistently loved since then. And I'd never seen them play before, so I was pretty excited.

They didn't disappoint. After meeting up with old chums (Steve, Tim, Jude, Phil, PeteS, Rach, Nicki and Martin) in the Dogstar for a few drinks, we meandered into the venue (where I'd not been since a Valentine's day Big Chill event about 6 years ago), dumped bags, and sought fluid. And it was whilst waiting in the queue for the bar that I heard the first notes of Winterlong and dashed in.

It's difficult to write about this without sounding like some music journo wanker - but during the gig it occurred to me that over the course of 15 years I've listened to this band an awful lot: at the beginnings and ends of relationships, when hanging out with friends, sober, drunk, during GCSEs, A levels, at university, when I started working, through all sorts of ups and downs. And I'd not appreciated how much I'd invested in it - to have the band playing 30 feet in front of me, every song throwing up a load of associations and memories, was absolutely fucking fantastic.

Oh, and they ended with my favourite song - Into The White.

Update: PeteS has pics too...