Check out our favorite tracks from two artists coming to the Encore Theater in June. Plus, take a deep dive into how these songs have impacted popular culture through the decades and influenced artists.
Listen to the performers coming to Wynn Las Vegas and Wynn Field Club at Allegiant Stadium in 2025.
June 13–14
Pixies with Special Guest Kurt Vile + The Violators
With a career spanning nearly 40 years (their ninth album, The Night the Zombies Came, was released last year), and having influenced any number of alternative rock and post-punk bands—think: Nirvana, the Smashing Pumpkins, PJ Harvey, Bush, the Strokes, Arcade Fire, the White Stripes, Modest Mouse, Radiohead, and Weezer—with their surfer-punk vibes and extreme dynamics featuring bombastic, howling choruses framed by more calm, hushed verses, Pixies have never been more relevant than they are today.
Here’s what some of their fans have had to say about Pixies:
“I found [the Pixies] just about the most-compelling music outside of Sonic Youth in the entire 1980s. I always thought there was a psychotic Beatles in them.”
–David Bowie, who covered the band’s song “Debaser”—from their second album, Doolittle (1989)—while touring with his band Tin Machine in the early ’90s.
“[Pixies] are one of the great rock bands,” with each member “integral [both] to their collective sound and influential in their own right. Their influence on bands that came after cannot be understated, and I personally owe them a huge debt of inspiration. Pixies forever!” –Paul Banks (Interpol).
“I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band—or at least a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard.” –Kurt Cobain (Nirvana), on writing “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
Numerous covers of “Gigantic” [the only single from the Pixies’ debut studio album, Surfer Rosa (1988)] have been done, including by Reel Big Fish (1999), OK Go (2007), and Phoebe Bridgers, who performed it in a worldwide commercial for Apple’s iPhone 5 (2014).
“Where is My Mind?” [Track from the Pixies’ debut studio album, Surfer Rosa (1988)] was most famously used in the final scene of Fight Club (1999); as well as on an episode of Criminal Minds (2006), in the film Observe and Report (2009), and even by NASA as one of the ‘wake-up calls’ used to rouse the team working on the Spirit Mars rover (2004). Covers have been performed by Nada Surf (1999), Placebo (2003), James Blunt (2006), Weezer (2017), Puddle’s Pity Party (2018), Kelly Clarkson (2021), and Postmodern Jukebox featuring Allison Young (2022).
Many covers of the song have been used in film and on television, including versions by Storm Large (2009) in Big Ass Spider! (2013); Yoav featuring Emily Browning (2011) in Sucker Punch (2011); Safari Riot featuring Grayson Sanders (2019) in Malignant (2021); and Tkay Maidza (2021) in a commercial for Apple AirPods (2023) and the television series Swarm (2023); but none more so than the instrumental cover by French pianist Maxence Cyrin (2009) which has appeared in the tv shows The Leftovers, Mr. Robot, and black-ish, in the television commercial for the video game Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2016), and in the films It’s Kind of a Funny Story (2010) and Man Up (2015).
There’s even a kazoo cover used on an episode of The Tick (2017), and a xylophone cover from Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Pixies (2009) was played to particularly creepy effect during an episode of Criminal Minds (2012).
“Here Comes Your Man” [the second single from the Pixies’ second studio album, Doolittle (1989)] was written by Pixies frontman Black Francis (nee Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV) while in his early teens. Joseph Gordon-Levitt performed it in the karaoke scene from 500 (Days of Summer) (2009). It was used in films [including Say It Isn’t So (2001), Stuck On You (2003), Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005), and Daddy’s Home (2015)] and on television [The Simpsons (2013), and Mr. Mercedes (2017)], as well as in a commercial for Citi (2017).
June 20
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass & Other Delights
Michelle and Barack Obama awarded Herb Alpert the National Medal of Arts at the White House in 2013, and it’s no wonder why. Look at the records: In addition to selling more than 72 million of them worldwide, he’s held the record (since 1966) for being the only artist to simultaneously have four albums in the Billboard Top 10 (a feat that was only recently matched in 2023 by Taylor Swift), and he’s the only artist to have reached Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 both as a vocalist and as an instrumentalist, for “This Guy’s in Love with You” (1968) and “Rise” (1979), respectively.
He’s won eight GRAMMY Awards and two Tony Awards—as one of the producers of back-to-back “Best Play” winners Angels in America: Millenium Approaches (1993) and Angels in America: Perestroika (1994)—as well as the El Premio Billboard award from the Billboard Latin Music Awards in 1997, for his contributions to Latin music.
Alpert’s 2024 album, 50, is named because it was his fiftieth album and celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary to Brasil ’66 lead singer and frequent collaborator, Lani Hall. Alpert’s current tour, “Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass & Other Delights,” celebrates the 60th anniversary of his seminal album, Whipped Cream & Other Delights (1965).
And lest anyone forget, Alpert was the “A” in A&M Records, which he co-founded in 1962 with Jerry Moss (the “M”)—which within ten years of its founding had become the world’s largest independent record label—and sold to PolyGram in 1989 for $500 million (with a $200 million kicker in 1998). A very abridged list of A&M artists includes Burt Bacharach, the Carpenters, Quincy Jones, Liza Minnelli, Toni Basil, Joan Baez, Billy Preston, Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, Carole King, Cheech & Chong, Styx, Supertramp, Squeeze, Peter Frampton, the Sex Pistols, Janet Jackson, the Police, Falco, the Go-Go’s, Bryan Adams, Jeffrey Osborne, the Human League, Amy Grant, and Sting.
“Taste of Honey” [from the album Whipped Cream & Other Delights (1965)] won GRAMMY Awards for “Record of the Year,” “Best Instrumental Arrangement,” “Best Instrumental Performance,” and “Best Engineered Recording – Non-Classical” (1966).
“Rise” [lead single from the album Rise (1979)] won the GRAMMY Award for “Best Pop Instrumental Performance” (1980). The entire musical groove from Hypnotize by The Notorious B.I.G. (1997) is a sample of “Rise.”
“Rotation” [second single from the album Rise (1979)] is an exceptionally sexy song that was played during early “Luke and Laura” scenes on the soap opera General Hospital.