Today I relived past glories—most of them other people’s, but a few of them mine. Pitchfork.tv started up this week, and the inaugural offerings range from “obvious attempt at positioning the new site” (Tim Harrington from Les Savy Fav interviewing prospective VJs) to “interesting if I cared about the band” (Man Man blowing up a trash can while recording their new album) to “amazing thing I wouldn’t have thought would be so great.” That last one is the Pixies reunion tour documentary, loudQUIETloud (online for one week only starting today), and it’s what made up most of my nostalgic musical roadtrip today. The Pixies have never been anywhere close to my favourite band, but seeing the forty-something members attempt to regroup and go back on tour after their long hiatus was really interesting, even to someone who has pitifully few Pixies albums and doesn’t really know very much about the band itself.

While watching the documentary and seeing the huge crowds at every show, and the teenaged kids giddy over meeting Kim Deal, and all the people who felt the band could do no wrong even as the band itself was wondering if they’d end up looking like fools, I reflected on why the Pixies didn’t seem to matter to me as much as it does to other people. I’ve had conversations with people where they’re shocked, shocked to find that there are people who could possibly not like the Pixies. “Everyone likes at least one song,” one of my friends told me, and it’s kinda true: people who know the Pixies generally like at least one of their songs. But that’s not the same as the undying devotion, the gratitude on display when the Pixies came back from the dead and blessed sold-out crowds with their mere presence. I don’t have that for the Pixies or for a lot of other bands that are often considered seminal or influential. I’ve always wondered why this is—is everything I listen to just weird, or mediocre, or is there something else to it?

One of the concerts I regret missing the most was a Sleater-Kinney concert some time in the late 90s. I would eventually see them three or four times, but it’s not Sleater-Kinney I feel bad about missing, but another band that opened for them: Versus. It turns out that the Sleater-Kinney show was the closest I ever came to seeing the long-running New York City indie rock band, who broke up shortly after touring 2000’s Hurrah. Versus will never have anywhere near the same clout or critical acclaim as the Pixies; besides the very small core group who still remembers albums like Secret Swingers and songs like “Fredrick’s of Hollywood,” no one seems particularly interested in Versus, except maybe as “that band before +/-” and even that’s stretching it.

But evidence of a Versus resurgence matters to me far more than the Pixies reunion ever did. On most objective metrics, Versus doesn’t even compare, but from a personal standpoint Versus wins hands down. It wasn’t the Pixies I would listen to constantly on the subway to and from high school. It wasn’t the Pixies that provided the soundtrack to my first year of college. It wasn’t Doolittle that I’d put on the radio late on a school night, or Surfer Rosa that I lent to my then-girlfriend; it was Secret Swingers. Incidentally, my friends laughed at me for giving my significant other that album because the first song was called “Lose that Dress.” I didn’t mean for it to be a come-on…

None of the above is any knock against the Pixies, of course. But the albums that have stuck with me over the years were the ones I made an acutely personal connection with, ones that ended up becoming markers for past lives. I remember running a bunch of errands on a Sunday afternoon the fall I went away to university, Hurrah blasting away in my headphones. I realized that for the first time ever, I was pretty much doing stuff on my own—no parents to have to ask for a drive, no curfew I had to meet, no house I had to be in that night besides my own dorm room. Nothing the Pixies have ever put out can possibly compete with that sort of personal attachment.

Seeing and hearing the footage from the shows Versus played late last year was a revelation. The band sounded just as good as they did eight years ago; the songs sounded just as vital, as if they hadn’t been sitting in a dusty box in the attic for a decade. It’s probably a sign that I’m getting old that I should hope for a full-blown Versus reunion, but at least I’m not the only one—people keep asking about Pavement reunions that probably won’t happen for a while, and Polvo’s getting back together for All Tomorrow’s Parties, and wait, isn’t there a Portishead album coming out in a few weeks? Maybe it’s time for my micro-generation to accept our fates and give in fully to nostalgia. If it means I get to listen to new Versus material, I’m willing to file my “too old to be cool” papers.

P.S. Two live versions and a whole bunch more available at the Versus MySpace. And seriously, watch that Pixies documentary, even if you’re not a fan.