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Cactus by The Pixies
In the ‘70s, the Velvet Underground’s reputation was summarized thusly: Not many people heard their records, but everyone who did went out and started a band of their own. By the early ‘90s, that summary was being applied to another newly defunct band called the Pixies.
The Pixies’s influence on the alternative-rock movement that took over the music world in the ‘90s cannot be overstated. Kurt Cobain himself claimed he was trying to cop their style when he wrote “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke was appalled by the idea of a freshly reformed Pixies opening for his band in 2004, saying it was “like the Beatles opening for us.”
“Cactus” was recorded in 1988 for the Pixies’s first full-length album, “Surfer Rosa”. The song is unique for its nod to one of the band’s own influences. Before the second chorus of the song, band members shout P-I-X-I-E-S. This was lifted from the band T. Rex, who spelled out their own name in their song “The Groover”.
The lyrics to “Cactus” are a bit more obscure than the typical love-letter song. They feature a protagonist who misses somebody, and requests odd, sometimes macabre mementos be sent through the mail. It is emblematic of the Pixies’s style that they would take a frequently recurring theme in rock music and put their own twist on it.