Come On Pilgrim is the debut EP by the American alternative rock band Pixies, released on September 28, 1987 on 4AD. Produced by Gary Smith, the release consists of eight tracks from a seventeen-song recording session that the band had recorded at Fort Apache Studios in March 1987. Signing the band based on the quality of the recordings, 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell whittled its track-listing down to eight songs, remixing them to become Come On Pilgrim. The remaining nine songs were subsequently released in 2002 as Pixies. Background In March 1987, Pixies entered Boston's Fort Apache Studios with Fort Apache owner/record producer Gary Smith to record a demo tape. The resulting 17-song cassette, later dubbed "The Purple Tape", eventually found its way to Ivo Watts-Russell, president and co-founder of the influential British record label 4AD. Pixies' manager Ken Goes was also the manager of Throwing Muses, who had become the first American band to sign to 4AD a year earlier. Goes passed Pixies' demo tape on to Watts-Russell, who walked the streets of New York listening to it on his Walkman and "absolutely adored it from day one". Despite initial hesitance to sign the band, seeing as how 4AD had already signed an American band from the same manager, he was convinced to do so by his girlfriend, Deborah Edgeley, a secretary for 4AD. According to frontman Black Francis, the Purple Tape was recorded "with the intention of releasing it as a record." However, Watts-Russell felt that "there was too much that was just not that good" and insisted on choosing only eight of the 17 songs for release. "I felt that those eight songs were a bang in the face, left you wanting more, and I thought that the recorded versions of the other songs that were on the Purple Tape were not that great." Original session producer Gary Smith differed, thinking the songs "should all be served up at once because that's how you would get a sense of how colossally important this band was." Watts-Russell intentionally chose not to include "Here Comes Your Man", feeling it was "too obviously commercial". Expressing regret that some other previous 4AD debuts had failed to live up to the power of their demo versions, Watts-Russell decided to slightly remix the eight Purple Tape songs for release, rather than have the band re-record the songs. Pixies re-recorded eight of the nine remaining