On Classic Album Tours

We've been in the thick of the reunion tour craze for some time now, with bands that threw in the towel years ago emerging from their mansions (or hovels, depending on their popularity) to (optimistically) get another taste of that roaring crowd spark or (cynically) milk a few more dollars from their success. Such is the success of these tours that I suspect that the market has reached saturation, because a new trend seems to be emerging: touring a classic album. Judas Priest is doing it, Bruce Springsteen is doing it, and now, according to a press release I found this morning, the Pixies are, too:

On this tour, the Pixies will perform all of the songs from Doolittle and its related B-sides, "Weird at My School," "Dancing the Manta Ray," and "Bailey's Walk" among them. Doolittle, the band's third album and the first to chart on Billboard's album charts, includes classics such as "Debaser," "Wave of Mutilation," "Here Comes Your Man," "Hey," and "Gouge Away."

I write this post more as a bemused commenter than anything else; in today's highly Balkanized music culture, these reunion tours don't seem likely to steal the segment of the music-loving public looking to listen to something new. Reunion tours in general - and classic album tours in particular - may not do much to advance the state of the art, but they don't seem to be doing any real damage, either.