It's a concert novelty that should happen more, but life isn't perfect.

On June 16, 1989, upon their first appearance at Glastonbury, the Pixies played their entire set alphabetically.

Beginning at "Bone Machine" and concluding with "Where is My Mind?," the Boston legends who broke in the UK, performed 23 songs in a way that would make a librarian with OCD smile.

In the summer of 1989, the band was high on the hog.

They were touring on what would many would call their best album ever, Doolittle, a record they still play many songs from, and if they were ever going to show off or wink at the crowd, that year would have been the one.

A couple of days later in Germany, they took "The Holiday Song" out of the set and replaced it with "Into The White."

But instead placing it in between "I Bleed" and "Isla de Encanta," they made it the last song with the two others that begin with W.

Did you hear what I said?

They took a perfectly good alphabetical setlist and placed a song that clearly begins with an I and pretended that just because the third word began with a W, it should go down there.

Pleased with themselves, the Pixies used that exact setlist for many of its shows that summer in Europe.

That is, until they came to Kilburn, England where they played their set reverse-alphabetically, until they got to "Tony's Theme," a song many think is their finest tune, which they played as an encore of sorts.

“The idea behind that was you’re only as good as your last song," Black Francis told NME in 2022.

"Again, I like to downplay the importance of things. For years, ‘alphabetical’ would be the running sequence that I’d suggest for an album, and I never got away with it until I was making more obscure records with a band called Frank Black and the Catholics, ‘cause nobody gave a shit so I finally got to scratch that itch," he said.

"When people say: ‘No! Don’t do that! Don’t take a piss on your own work’, my instinct is to take a piss on it!," Francis continued.

"People think there’s a special magical running order that’s going to give everyone goosebumps, but until they can prove it, I just think let’s not get up our ass here," he said.

In September of last year (9/15), Widespread Panic decided their second set and encore should be performed alphabetically, ending with The Guess Who cover "No Sugar Tonight."

They got such a kick out of it, they began the next night where they left off by playing "One Arm Steve" until "Walkin'" to end their first set.

Then they played the second set and the encore the boring way like everyone else does.

Or did they?

If you agree "Saint Ex" should count as an X, so that "You Got Yours" could be a Y. That means their version of the Skip James hit "I'm So Glad" that went into Zambi Jam is the Z.

Don't like that? Then tough.

Tuff shit, that is, according to the band. That is what the next eight songs in the set spell out from "Tackle Box Hero" through "Tall Boy."

But it doesn't end there.

The encore was three songs, beginning with the live debut of "Blue Carousel," the Tom Petty classic "You Wreck Me," and Bloodkins' "End of the Show."

Or: BYE.

WSP hit the road again starting on Valentine's Day in Atlantic City. Get your tickets on their website. The Pixies will wait until April to get back at it. Go to the Pixies website for those gigs.