I lived in Boston when the Pixies were still playing the local club circuit and I saw them at least a dozen times and they were a hellaciously good live band.
A better either/or proposition would be the Pixies vs. Mission of Burma, another band that played the Boston club circuit in the '80s. Mission of Burma predated the Pixies by about 5 years and started the post-punk scene in Boston that nurtured the artistic development of the Pixies in the late '80s. All things considered, I think Mission of Burma was a better live band but Mission of Burma was over and done with before anybody outside of New England noticed them. The reunited Mission of Burma that re-formed in 2004 doesn't play with the same fury as the band did in 1980, even though the three principal MoB players are in the reunited edition of the band.
It's hard for me to compare the Pixies to Nirvana because I never had an opportunity to see Nirvana live before Kurt Cobain's death and I think it's not possible to fully evaluate a band without attending a live performance. Kurt Cobain was a talented songwriter and I like Nirvana's albums almost as much as I like the Pixies' and Mission of Burma's studio recordings.
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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt
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