Pixies: Classic or Dud

Give me answers that are new.

I don't really care that much for the Pixies, so that probably puts me one level above a child eater around these parts. I shall now move to an undisclosed location for an unknown length of time.

(pun unintended.)

obv. one of the best bands of the 80s, and i lurve, lurve lurve em. but i know we've done this.

Tim Hopkins thinks they're atrocious.

Tom: "...being a Pixies agnostic leaves you NOWHERE TO HIDE."

Almost done packing. Now where's my razor?

The docu stimulated - even moved - me. Sense of PERIOD, mainly. We can't ultimately separate the Pixies from their time (late 80s / early 90s) - is that right?

So - I like them in the way that I like Steady Mike's SNUB TV video: A LOT - BUT thoroughly 'conditioned' and 'historical'.

Most of what was said by rockers went way OTT. It's great to see Bowie and certain others talking (but not the utter tosser Coxon - he'd be OK maybe if he never spoke) - but no, no, they overrated.

Period, this is the key. We need to understand the Pixies in History. No?

And in Space, too. This is the thread I didn't start, but intend to.

When I was a kid, yeah they were fantastic. I'm starting to realize that kids really like music that makes them feel at odds with everything in an abstractly alienating way that is somehow a comforting cacoon. It's kind of a depressing feeling that's hard to identify as "depressing". It sounds passionate and interesting, with dissonance and screaming and yelling, lyrics that identify no real problem but are delivered with a sombre tone and offset with just the right amount of cutesy tongue-in-cheekiness. That stuff bores the piss out of me now.

well, duh.

well, duh.

(pinefox and alex in NYC in agreement shocker)

(me too shocker, come to that, tho i often agree with em separately) (also secretly)

I'll be quoting that for as long as I'm writing about pop I think. But you can't have any performance royalties.

He seemed far more charitable towards them in the C4 documentary that sparked this thread - but then I missed the first 20 minutes... perhaps he was slating them then. Strange docu - the only footage they had was from the Town & Country Club show (supporting Throwing Muses) in '88, so by the time they moved on to "Bossanova" and "Trompe", there was no illustration of the music at all. Maybe it's difficult to get the rights to the (never very interesting) videos.

"Monkey Gone To Heaven" changed my entire perception of loud-guitars- and-shouty-voices and I really did Buy The Record The Next Day. "Doolittle" remains my favourite. They may have quickly lost the intensity, but there are still traces of the ol' magic as late as '93 (4AD's last good year) with "The Last Splash", and FB's solo thing. However, the high regard in which "Teenager of the Year" is held by a certain forum contributor baffles me like few other of his opinions.

I love the Pixies dearly (and the doc made me want to dig out Come on Pilgrim again). But here's the thing: when I first heard Surfer Rosa, in a small, cold student flat in Norwich 1989, I thought it was abysmal, shouty, formless and stupid. One year later, driving around downtown Portland, Oregon it all made fantastic sense. Which makes me wonder: how does location and geographic cultural space affect the way you hear music? As an English box bedroom boy I grew up favouring the intimate confessional indie (Smiths) and domestic disco (Pet Shop Boys) one would expect, and I'm not sure the Pixies could ever make sense to me in that context. However, blasting out of a car stereo on an open Oregon highway there was suddenly *room* for the music. Maybe only a certain type of uptight, claustrophobic Englishman needs to actually go to the US to understand rock, but it puts me in mind of something Gertrude Stein said - what makes America what it is "is that there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is". And I think I heard something like that in the sound of Surfer Rosa.

The only Pixies album I ever had was Doolittle. Now I want it back again!

What is "guitar tone", and should I know about it?

And Frank Black's 1st album has just as much to offer as _Teenager of the Year_. I have no idea how his other stuff is (though the word is to beware of later albums, regardless of his semi-newfound fondness for the 2-track demo get-it-on-the-first-take ethos).

Plus, great lyrics.

Vamos (Come on Pilgrim vers.)
Isla de Encanta
Bone Machine
Break My Body
Something Against You
Gigantic (album vers.)
River Euphrates (album vers.)
Where is My Mind?
Debaser
Wave of Mutilation (album vers.)
Here Comes Your Man
Monkey Gone to Heaven
La La Love You
Hey
Winterlong
Cecilia Ann
Velouria
Allison
Ana
Dig for Fire
The Happening
Havalina
Evil Hearted You
Trompe Le Monde
Alec Eiffel
Palace of the Brine
Letter to Memphis
Motorway to Roswell
The Navajo Know

(80:36)

Caribou
The Holiday Song
Nimrod's Son
Bone Machine
Something Against You
Broken Face
Gigantic
River Euphrates
Where is My Mind?
Debaser
Here Comes Your Man
Monkey Gone To Heaven
Mr. Grieves
No. 13 Baby
Gouge Away
Velouria
Dig for Fire
Trompe Le Monde
Planet of Sound
Alec Eiffel
The Sad Punk
U-Mass
Letter to Memphis

(It's been a while since I've heard Bossanova, so I may be forgetting some other tracks I like from that.)

1. Debaser
2. Break My Body
3. Gigantic
4. River Euphrates
5. Where Is My Mind?
6. I've Been Tired
7. Nimrod's Son
8. Brick Is Red
9. La La Love You
10. Hey!
11. Ana
12. U-Mass
13. Subbacultcha
14. Monkey Gone to Heaven
15. Here Comes Your Man
16. Wave of Mutilation (UK surf)
17. Dig for Fire
18. Head-On
19. Alec Eiffel
20. Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons
21. Vamos (Surefer Rosa version)
22. Gouge Away
23. Velouria
24. Is She Weird?
25. Planet of Sound
26. The Navajo Know
27. Havalina

But it's so fun! Best lyrics ever!

although this might be. maybe not though.

"Frank Black has earned the right to do whatever the hell he wants, and he unfortunately seems to know it. The man who brought you the Pixies and, by extension, the alternative rock boom of the early 90s. . . ."

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/b/black_frank/honeycomb.shtml

That's right, The Pixies brought us the alternative rock boom of the early 90s. Forget REM, Dinosaur Jr., Replacements, Husker Du, Galaxie 500, Meat Puppets, Butthole Surfers, Flaming Lips, Mission of Burma, etc. Bow down before The Pixies.

Doolittle's alright, but could a band possibly be more overrated?

**** You kyle you kyke.

Hold on, what's this? I thought the remasters were cancelled because nobody was happy with them? And now I get this mail from bleep.com that links to this:

http://bleep.com/?bleep=EADD803A

???

Do they need remastering? They sound fine to me.

Or LOL maybe they've fixed that pesky LOUD-quiet-LOUD problem they had by mushing it all out with the louderizer.

i certainly think they're overrated and would much rather listen to a great number of bands, even some who supposedly derived their sound from the "wildly influential" pixies.

i had a passing interest in all their records, fished around for a bit, then left them alone. digestible like coca-cola, thin like water crackers.

i had a passing interest in all their records, fished around for a bit, then left them alone. digestible like coca-cola, thin like water crackers.

Hey, me too! They pretty much define overrated for me. And their concerts border on insulting. I'm not asking for jumping jacks, but could you please try to pretend to be the least bit enthusiastic about what you're doing? No? OK, bye.

: )

nice to hear that you concur, sara x 3

Dunno what yr on about. They were good when I saw them x2.

Massively over-rated rent-a-quirkiness.

Listened to "Monkey Gone To Heaven" for the first time in years the other day, and was suprised at how obvious the dramatic construction appears in retrospect. Almost like it was created from a manual called "Dramatic Affect In Rock Music - A Beginners Guide" by S. Ridgway and P. Murphy.

Dud, then.

Effect.

At the time, they were massively classic, though. And I still really like them for that.

I bow to that excellent comment, Stan.

still classic

Overrated, overplayed, misunderstood - heard Dinosaur Jr. described the other day as a band "influenced by the Pixies". Still classic.

i'd rather listen to frank black's 'cult of ray' than any of the pixies records ('cept for 'surfer rosa') these days. for some reason it's considered awful, but i find it to be one of the better things he's been involved with

i mostly listen to 'trompe le monde' and 'bossanova'. even to this day, little things that i've never noticed will pop out at me. those recordings are really lush and deep, i love they way they are mixed. they just keep giving. i also like the frank black s/t

Cult Of Ray is not considered awful by me, but it's nowhere near any of the Pixies albums.

Trompe Le Monde is great. I like Surfer Rosa, Doolittle & that about equally.

did spencer ever bring one of his 'c80 portable _______ go!' comps in under the 80-minute barrier??

Overburn!!! I've been able to burn CDs up to almost 82 minutes. Alternately, edit out all the silence at the beginning and end of each track. Finally, a couple tracks could be faded out early.

Listened to "Monkey Gone To Heaven" for the first time in years the other day, and was suprised at how obvious the dramatic construction appears in retrospect.

To me the song is purposefully trying to be shallow based on the aesthetic of the lyrics. It's the proto-hipster irony.

Tis why they are absolutely CLASSIC.

...and "massively influential".

"To me the song is purposefully trying to be shallow"

Well, there you go then.

It is indeed shallow for a history of the world in what like 10 lines

I'm so drunk I've pulled out the Pixies. That means I'm really, really drunk. Surfer Rosa with those extra tracks which are my favourite, COME ON PILGRIM RULES. But I got Doolittle too. No one cares.

I'm drunk and I've pulled out Prince tonight. Looks like we're both in the 'P' section at least. Huh.

Fucking goddamn hell I know. And I've got to go back to watching the movie Purple Rain if only Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures would leave me alone instead of leaving me in absolute awe.

But I want this goddamn Time album, whatever they had with Jungle Love, I want that damn thing.

Oh shit I thought this was a Prince thread. I'm so sorry.

hahah, nice one.

there's a Purple Rain thread open so, you know, it happens.

The 33 1/3 book on _Doolittle_ is among the most classic in this series, and serves as a good reminder that the Pixies, were, in fact, classic. There are some songs I consider among their greatest ("Debaser," "Caribou," "I Bleed") that I can imagine other people objecting to, but also lots of perhaps minor but perfect songs like "Manta Ray" which it's really hard for me to imagine _anyone_ not loving.

On the other hand, people who, when you talk about "The Pixies," correct you and say "It's just "Pixies," no "The"" are MASSIVELY DUD.

It's that moment when you realize...you don't have any Pixies on your iPod. You almost want to commit suicide.

I sold Doolittle a few months after getting it on release day because I was so disappointed. I thought it was crap compared to Surfer Rosa. Only a few years later people were starting to call it a classic, and I thought, my god, was that really the best 1989 had to offer? I've grown fonder of them over the years, saw their reunion show, etc. Though I still have to skip through some songs, classic.

I hear Dean Wareham disses them in his book. Anyone read it and can elaborate.

Pixies are Classic.

Anyone seen the Thomson holiday advert lately ? the piano tune sounds extremely like Where is My Mind

i think it's maxence cyrin's cover? or a cover of his cover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8B1ZNv9m4s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NZdggNUvq0

It's that moment when you realize...you don't have any Pixies on your iPod. You almost want to commit suicide.

I still haven't removed Bimble from my phone or chat contacts. Seems like he never got around to adding the Pixies to his iPod.

I'm sorry -- I was born in 89, Pixies have a handful of amazing songs but largely sound dated. Nirvana was a better actual band, could play better, were better performers, wrote better songs, etc. More than any other band of the era that felt like you "had to be there" for (the Replacements might be my favorite band, and I wasnt fucking even close to being there for it) I don't see it with Pixies. I can't say C or D, but I can say that their catalogue doesn't hold up nearly as well as many other 80s bands. Best band of the late 80s/early 90s Bush-era malaise was Uncle Tupelo, in my opinion, hands down. And it's not even close.

When Come On Pilgrim & Surfer Rosa came out, it was the freshest, most spontaneous and fun thing a lot of people had heard in a long time. It made your heart beat that tiny bit faster when you got slapped in the face by their youthful enthusiasm, even though there were still some obvious influences (Violent Femmes, e.g.) it was fresh and new. So um yeah, you had to be there - you can't describe the impact of something like that accurately 20+ years after the fact.

I can understand that. I just wish I could figure out what that band would be for me, in this music era.

nah fuck that i was born in 88 and i listened to doolittle last night at work and it was soooooo swagged out. dunno at all how it sounds dated.

I first really started listening to The Pixies in the early 00's and it sounded weird and fresh to me then. "Dated" is kind of a strange criticism to throw at these guys imo.

I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89
I'm sorry -- I was born in 89

Hah, I deserve that. Still, there's something about the band that just doesn't really click with me -- maybe I'll give TOTY another spin or something.

Nirvana was a better actual band, could play better, were better performers, wrote better songs, etc.

I stand second to none in Nirvana stanning but as guitarists go Joey Santiago > Kurt Cobain. I mean come on.

I pulled out surfer rosa a few days ago after 2-3 years of not listening to it and was pretty amazed at how fresh it sounded. the pixies had a talent for these sparse arrangements that sounded much larger than they actually were.

answering machine: I saw both of these bands many times not long after you were born and trust me, the Pixies were far better performers and far more diverse musicians, and now that I'm an old fart, they have aged much better as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0almdLf6yn0

the key with surfer rosa is that it's kind of mastered kind of low - because of the soft loud dynamics, I think. you need to turn it UP. listen to vamos with the speakers all the way turnt up. 1000x better than nirvana

Nirvana's angst and guttural crunch sound extremely dated to me, so much so that I haven't actually purposely listened to a song of theirs in at least a decade, while randomly hearing a Pixies song is always welcome. Something about their sense of whimsy; for a respected canonical band, at least 20% of their catalogue is wicked goofy. Also they had Kim Deal, which automatically makes any band better.

I totally went through Pixies fatigue at the time of their first reunion tour, saw them like 3 times during their NYC week, and afterwards couldn't really bear to hear those songs (which were generally all from Pilgrim/Surfer/Doolittle). Which made the "lesser" following albums pop more, and now even songs like "Havalina" and "Blown Away" and esp "Letter To Memphis" really hit me hard, just as much as "Debaser" or "Gigantic." Of all their A+ great songs, I think the relatively minor "Letter To Memphis" might now be my favorite. Or maybe it's "Break My Body." Too many good songs. Even their B-sides were awesome.

For me, they're like the Violent Femmes - not a band you can grow old with. The whiny / shouty vocals, the lyrics about aliens and Mexicans...I don't mind the guitars (though the rhythm section does nothing interesting), but it's the singing that makes it all junior novelty music for me.

Lovering is an awesome drummer, that's insane.

The surreal Dada-ist elements of the music and lyrics is part of what keeps it from sounding dated, imo. It's insane to me that anyone could call this stuff dated and then cite Nirvana as the alternative.

It's also insane to me that anyone was born in 1989.

answering machine, while we're (you're) talking Pixies and Nirvana, how do you rate Husker Du?

I like the Huskers better than both, I only use Nirvana as an example because they'd always talked about ripping off the Pixies' soft-loud-soft dynamic -- Nirvana's just as dated, if not more so. FTR I don't dislike the Pixies at all, I really like a lot of their songs -- was just kind of wondering why they tend to get more recognition than groups like Husker Du or The Mats or whoever from that era.

it's probably because they like un chien andalou and the mats didnt

can't deny they have loads of great guitar riffs. they got more and more cloying as they went along but their songwriting may have gotten better.

wondering why they tend to get more recognition than groups like Husker Du or The Mats

I feel like this has gone in circles - when I was a teenager in mid-90s UK (so I wasn't "there" for Pixies or the Replacements, but while I was too young to see Nirvana live I was at least of record-buying age when Nevermind broke, so they were a big deal to me), Husker Du and the 'Mats were bands you should have heard, whereas Pixies I barely remember hearing anything about until Death To... came out

(and I was already a Breeders fan and had some Frank Black solo stuff by then, so I dunno why it took me so long, really)

of course, being in the wrong country, I have no idea if the same applies in the US or anywhere else. but if Husker Du had put out a best-of in say '99 instead of SST disappearing and making their back catalogue hard to find maybe HD would be talked about more now? I dunno, I don't know enough young people to be aware of them not being talked about, I guess

It was the opposite for me, also teenager in early-mid 90s UK - the Pixies were quite popular but nobody I knew listened to Husker Du (although I had at least heard of them because of Sugar) and I hadn't even heard of the Replacements until I started using the internet to find out about music in the late 90s.

"pixies vs nirvana" is a strange argument, especially if you consider an assessment of their musicianship.. In either case, I don't hear musicians who fail to match exactly what their music calls for.. Santiago's surfer-guitar is just as essential to the Pixies as Grohl's thunder-drums were to Nirvana.

Nirvana's angst and guttural crunch sound extremely dated to me
It REALLY bothers me that newer guitar-based bands who play a bit louder than most immediately get pinned with a "90's revival" tag.

I think at this point of my life, half of my friends were born in the late 80's so I've grown accustomed to people saying dumb shit about 90's music.

even though lazy writers bring up the pixies' over and over and over in regards to nirvana, these two bands don't really sound very alike. at all!

yeah i agree, i'm not sure why they're being compared in the first place.

if Husker Du had put out a best-of in say '99 instead of SST disappearing and making their back catalogue hard to find maybe HD would be talked about more now?

this could be true.. I've heard a lot more IRL talk about Replacements and Husker Du over the past 3 years.

yeah i agree, i'm not sure why they're being compared in the first place.

Because Kurt himself said many times over that all he was trying to do was "ripoff the Pixies"!

Okay, it was specifically in reference to "Teen Spirit", but:

“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.”

i mean, i *know* why they're compared -- because cobain said he was "ripping off the pixies" when he wrote "teen spirit." and i dunno, maybe that's the closest they got, but a quick listen to either of these bands should make it clear they were very very different.
xp

i mean, are there other nirvana songs that sound remotely like the pixies?

xpost I think that was just an abbreviated way for him to say "ripping off the pixies + 20 other bands"

The key element they borrowed from Pixies was the loud/soft thing IMO.

why they tend to get more recognition than groups like Husker Du or The Mats or whoever from that era.
best guess -- and it's just a guess, but an educated one because i was in high school during pixies heyday (and caught the tail end of the replacements, but they were making super adult music at the end and pixies weren't) -- everyone i knew had doolittle in 1989, even borderline normal people, and that is mostly because of "here comes your man" iirc

Not really and I get what you mean, I was just pointing out that that quote led to a lot of the "lazy" comparisons. They do use the quiet-LOUD thing in quite a few songs though.

(xpost)

"Francis Farmer" sounds like Pixies IMO

more so than Teen Spirit does

yeah i guess i can see that.
not making a big deal out of this -- the pixies should be listed among any "influences" nirvana might've had. but in terms of sound/vibe nirvana has more in common with, say, black sabbath than black francis and co.

I pulled out "Come on Pilgrim" a couple of months ago and it sounds brilliant, as fresh as it did when I got it (someone is doing surf music!) - I have such good memories of that period.

When Cobain says their breakthrough song was almost not included (allegedly) because he thought it sounded too much like the Pixies, then the link to the Pixies becomes direct. Same with Husker Du and the Pixies, for that matter. The Pixies rarely sound like Husker Du, but there are more than a few resemblances when you pay attention (compare "Wave of Mutilation" to "Green Eyes," say). One of my fave Black Francis quotes was that when he was in school, he only had something like five records, and three of them were Husker Du.

Hey, Musician magazine, 1992 (other interview subject was Mould):

MUSICIAN: Let's talk about how you both constructed such drastic style. Real huge sounds.
FRANCIS: I grew up in L.A. when bands like Black Flag were around, but I never listened to them. I was buying used records for 50 cents, and didn't socialize, really; I was lost in headphone-land. I did get to see a Hüsker Dü show when Joey and I dropped out of school and said, « Let's start one of these groups. » And I saw an excellent show by the Hüskers at the Paradise in Boston, where you did « Ticket To Ride » for an encore. Fantastic show, so I knew that Hüsker Dü was a tape I needed to get. I had those albums, a couple of Iggy albums, one Captain Beefheart and a tiny studio apartment. That handful of stuff got me through that particular season. I used to play « Green Eyes » [from Hüsker Dü's Flip Your Wig] over and over. A classic chord progression. Same thing with Iggy's « The Passenger » - one of those repeat songs. At the start of the Pixies I only had four or five albums and the Hüskers were two or three of them.

The Pixies' 'Caribou' owes a lot to Hüsker Dü's 'Find Me'. Chord sequences, Black Francis's vocals mimicking both Bob Mould's fury vox plus Grant Hart's more ethereal backing vocals. Both great songs but for me, it's all about Hüsker Dü.

CRAIG MONTGOMERY (Nirvana soundman)
We drove down to L.A. from Seattle to film the “Teen Spirit” video and do some shows. And I remember being in the van, and Kurt was in the back and he played me “Teen Spirit” on the boom box. And he asked me, “Do you think it sounds too much like the Pixies?”

Nothing more sublimely odd to me than Pixies being cited as the "influence" intermediary between Husker Du and Nirvana...

I agree with tylerw about Nirvana & Pixies being not that similar, though Kurt pays homage everywhere: the oft-cited similarity between SLTS & Gouge Away (the rolling bassline during the quiet verses of SLTS is an obvious lift), enlisting Albini for In Utero, assorted moments of angular ferocity all over the Geffen albums (Drain You is not soft-loud, but it sounds kinda Pixies to these ears)...

I've written this before, maybe even earlier in this thread, but I think the whole idea that 'soft verse-loud chorus' was a formula that Pixies came up with and Nirvana stole doesn't really hold up. Yes, Pixies used it, but they never banked on it, certainly never relied on it, and in their hands it never codified into a 'formula': none of these things can be said about how Nirvana used 'soft-loud.' I mean, they use it in 'Gigantic' but then use the exact opposite formula for 'Where is My Mind' where the most electric-loud rock element in that song--Santiago's seesawing lead--drops out completely during the chorus. Don't use it for "Here Comes Your Man", kind of use it in "Monkey" but there--even though the tension builds up in the verses to be let off in the choruses--the real dynamic movement is the way that the verses get progressively louder and how that contrasts with the melodically-fixed chorus (ie the loudest part of that song is not in the chorus but the "AND GOD IS SEVEN!" part in the 3rd verse).

Which brings me to my main point, which is that even though Pixies used 'soft-loud' frequently and with great effect (Gouge Away, Tame, Into the White), it was just one element among many in their experiments with structure--their desire to weld together what the SPIN Alternative Record Guide referred to as 'raw' and 'cooked' punk, or, as Simon Reynolds put it, 'luscious' sounds with 'haggard' ones--and they were just as apt to reverse it, to offset it with weird elements, or to jettison it altogether.

I feel a more common signature element of Pixies music was their fondness of the lopsided musical phrase, which is why I think the Toadies sound more like Pixies than Nirvana ever did...

Nirvana had way more metal/hard rock in their blood than the Pixies.

i always thought they sounded like the b52s with some hispanic chordage & the sexual content you would only at the time find on a prince record. as a teen i found that exciting. some hispanic chordage.
i love albini's oft-quoted typically trolly statement. not sure just how "superior" or different big black were - verse chorus verse songs with singing. how quaint!
for me it all went to pot with that awful JAMC cover & songs about UFOs, although i love love love alec eiffel & that 1st frank black solo record

U-Mass and Alec Eiffel are pretty rad but to me the real keeper off Trompe is Sad Punk...

Of all their A+ great songs, I think the relatively minor "Letter To Memphis" might now be my favorite.

Yes, but for me that song is inextricable from "Palace of the Brine" and "Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons". If I want to listen to one of them, I have to listen to all of them.

i think trome le monde is pretty great. it's different from what came before, maybe not enough kim deal, but i like or love every song. and yeah, it's got a great flow, feels like a big long song suite.

*trompe*

All of Trompe Le Monde is awesome fuiud

I turn it off after Motorway to Roswell...

For real, this whole interview c. Trompe is great:

http://aleceiffel.free.fr/bf_bm.html

lol that's funny about them having "Ratt or Ozzy" next door to their rehearsal space. makes perfect sense now!

I should really pick up Trompe Le Monde sometime

i really do think the reason it's less loved is because kim deal doesn't supply a lot of backing vocals -- or at least not as many as on previous albums.

I turn it off after Motorway to Roswell...

Me too!

In my case, I was super super super obsessed with Surfer Rosa and Doolittle and didn't get the same level of POW BANG AWESOME enjoyment from the subsequent albums (except for "Planet of Sound"), so I never got them. 20 years later, I'd probably like them a lot more.

yeah it'll probably sound fresher. i've pretty much had pilgrim/surfer rosa/doolittle inscribed in my brain, so bossanova and trompe are the ones i reach for more these days.
turning it off after "motorway" -- you've only got two minutes to go! and i like the playfulness of "navajo know"

I usually sort of forget that it's there though.

Trompe le Monde is my favourite Pixies album, haters = crazy. Though as I said upthread I wasn't there at the time, so maybe favouring the widescreen epic (ugh) over the pow-bang-rush is a luxury of not having been there at the time to build up an image of the band and be disappointed over the course of several years, of course.

yeah, i got into the pixies pretty much right after they broke up, so all of the albums were treats, didn't have the chance to be "disappointed" by any of them.

I've never listened to planet of sound I don't think

navajo knows ruins the ending of a perfect album

Seriously, all these albums are so full of so many good ideas. I remember another story of the record label taking issue with the songs on the last album being so short, and Black Francis basically handing them back a Buddy Holly best of and noting how if all of the songs on there were 2.5 minutes, then it was OK if his were, too.

I've never listened to planet of sound I don't think

navajo knows ruins the ending of a perfect album

Wait, what?

oh wait I thought planet of sound was an album

that was a poorly-formed "post" on my part, sorry

oh I see - in my mind 'planet of sound' was an imaginary pixies album that had the bossanova cover art because it looks like a planet, do you see

i dunno, i'm a big fan of those first two Frank Black albums, and "navajo know" is a nice lead-in to that style.

the way the piano fades out on motorway to roswell with two piano tracks is so perfect, save navajo know for an album opener then imo

never!
it's ok, we can agree to disagree.

you guys started talking about Frank Black and now Speedy Marie is racing thru my head <3

I started a thread once

Albums with a genius penultimate track, and sucky final track

good lord what is my govt name doing there

haha I was about to post Protection on that thread... AGAIN

Trompe le Monde is my favourite Pixies album, haters = crazy.

OTM. I got into the Pixies after Bossa Nova, and when Trompe Le Monde came out I fell in love with it immediately. It's been my favorite of theirs ever since.

In 1991 I remember thinking why would anyone listen to Nirvana when you have the Pixies?

I started at Doolittle (as I imagine many people did) and by the time TLM came out, it sounded really pop. Which is WAY better than sounding like adult contemporary with a slightly rough edge (All Shook Down), esp at the time. What was Bob Mould doing? Oh, just releasing the most depressed person album ever made (Black Sheets of Rain)

Pixies was still fun young people music, instead of being sad old people music (ie songs about divorce and being old)

That said, I p much never want to hear Doolittle more than once a decade from now on.

I recorded a radio show in April 1988 on the Dutch VPRO radio station when they first kinda started to explode in the the low countries and I wrote down what was in the charts at the time on the tape cover (I guess I had the feeling this new band was going to be important and it signalled the end of an era) - so this is what was in the charts over here in BE and NL when the Pixies first came over here:

Gimme hope Jo'anna - Eddy Grant
Stop loving you - Toto
Play it cool - Freiheit
Beds are burning - Midnight Oil
Don't turn around - Aswad
Tell it to my heart - Taylor Dayne
Yé ké yé ké - Mory Kante
Somewhere down the crazy river - Robbie Robertson
I need you - B.V.S.M.P.
Heart - Pet Shop Boys
One more try - George Michael
Wishing I was lucky - Wet Wet Wet
Can I play with madness - Iron Maiden
Alphabet Street - Prince

:-)

wow
kinda shocked!

and now compare that with the youthful Pixies charming the pants off everyone with the funnest music ever: Vamos, Broken Face, Isla De Encanta, Tony's Theme, Gigantic, Bone Machine, Something Against You, Ed Is Dead, Nimrod's Son, Where Is My Mind?, Levitate Me, Brick Is Red

Those are much more interesting choices for gateway songs -- i was reliant on the public library and local public radio station to inform me beyond what i found on newsstands and commercial radio (ie not much). As I mentioned, Here Comes Your Man was the song that I heard first because I heard it on 89.1 (local radio, not NPR) and then I pursued from there.

I got into The Pixies because someone played "I've Been Tired" for me on a bus ride back from German camp and I immediately decided to buy one of their albums; since I couldn't remember the name of the song or what release it was on, I just bought Doolittle.

would like to note that meanwhile, pants were being charmed off (occasionally), as many in my peer group heard "la la love you" on the mixtape that skater/weirdo/older/nerdy guy they met at the amusement park gave them
fess up now if you were that guy

This is pretty much the first live song I ever heard from them (I had heard some Come On Pilgrim tracks on the radio before, but not live)

http://rapidshare.com/files/857629830/01_-_intro___vamos.mp3 (from that April 1988 Dutch FM radio show & audio cassette)

haha I put "La La Love You" on several mixtapes

although I was much more likely to go with "Dead"

"Dead" a much better choice

My go-tos were "Dead", "La La Love You", "Silver" and "Gouge Away"

For the longest time I had a cassette copy of "Surfer Rosa" and "Come On Pilgrim" that a friend made for me - this was pre-"Doolittle" - and it wasn't until years later that I bought a copy of the album proper and realized he had cut off "Where Is My Mind?" for space. (This was before you were guaranteed to hear the Pixies all over the place).

I remember sending my brother a C90 tape with Doolittle on one side and Bandwagonesque by Teenage Fanclub on the other.

A C60 cassette tape made by a guy I met on summer holiday was my first acquaintance with the Pixies and it blew my mind. The same guy also taped dEUS' 'Worst Case Scenario' for me, mind was equally blown. I always think of Spain therefore, when hearing either of the two.

I started at Doolittle (as I imagine many people did) and by the time TLM came out, it sounded really pop.

Do you mean that Doolittle sounded really pop, or Trompe le Monde?

Yeah, to me, Doolittle is the pop album. But something upthread reminded me of why I don't ever listen to them anymore, and it's not exactly their fault. They were never exactly a secret band for me, even in the early 90s. They had pop appeal, and every cute girl knew the Pixies. They were never underground, in that sense. Maybe like the Shins today? Different channels of distribution etc, but the Pixies weren't a club, the way, say, the Wedding Present were at the same time. But over the past decade + half, Where is my Mind has become Blister in the Sun, and Here Comes Your Man has become New Slang. Again, not their fault, but it doesn't make me want to hear them. They just remind me of Urban Outfitters by now.

what hip and new bands do you listen to, paulhw

At the time it was released, I was talking about TLM; now, I agree that Doolittle is the poppier although neither are particularly challenging.

X-post. Dayo, this baiting thing is silly. I was just sharing my more general cultural sense of hearing them in 1989, and the cachet they have now. Things is they were *received* as slightly silly "college rock" then, not to be taken too seriously. Journalists were writing about, i dunno, House of Love or something then. Not that I would defend that. For me, they're funny college rock, which is fine. The reason they've stuck is the novelty value: Frank Black had a curious lyric, or a noisy bit, or an interlude, that drew people in. 17 year olds today say "there were rumors he was into field hockey players." fine. just not for me.

are you into field hockey players, paulhw?

I came into the Pixies backwards, because when they originally happened I was in junior high and the first couple years of high school (where I lived without MTV or any good radio stations or any record stores or any cool older friends/relatives). Once I got to college, iirc this happened within the first three weeks of my freshman year, I heard "Monkey Gone to Heaven" and "Debaser" on the school's alt-rock station and was sold. Doolittle was the first record I bought after that, from then on I was pretty much in love with these guys. So, yeah, I encountered it all with fresh ears and didn't have any larger career arc to tie my expectations to.

my initial exposure to them was the alec eiffel video on a taped episode of 120 minutes that I watched over and over again. then I gave someone a cassette of surfer rosa for her birthday, along with several other rough trade cassettes from the sam goody bargain bin and we listened to that tape a few times that evening.but i didnt really get into them until summer 94, when a friend of mine bought doolittle and trompe le monde on CD and they soundtracked the summer, which for us was the summer of learning to smoke pot.

I should note that we weren't total stoner shut-ins at this point. so we weren't treating doolittle like dsotm stoner headfuck material. it's more like when we weren't out in the woods getting stoned, we were inside listening to the pixies.

I do think there is a "you had to be there" element to the Pixies appeal. They were sexy, weird, funny, catchy, dark, pretty, abrasive. They were sincerely ironic - or was that ironically sincere? You couldn't hear them on the radio (except for college radio), or see them on MTV (except if you stayed up for 120 Minutes). They were cool and only a few people seemed to know about them. You accepted their strangeness as a kind of shibboleth, separating those hip enough to "get it" from those who didn't. No one worried too much about what it all meant. It's hard to hear all of that in their music now.

I have never gotten irony from The Pixies

(then again I couldn't tell you how "U Mass" went)

I think they were ironic in that free-floating '90s zeitgeist way. You could never tell how seriously to take them. This is part of how they seemed slightly (like 1-2 years) ahead of their time.

Somewhat perversely, "Pixies At The BBC" was the first album of theirs I had, and I hated it at first. It took me a long time to get my head round just how RAW it sounded. Now I think many of the tracks are preferable to the album versions, particularly the ones from Bossanova. The version of "Is She Weird" on there is just immense.

It's amazingly concise too, only two tracks out of the fifteen even top the three minute mark!

Btw, here's a great post on Nirvana and irony which I think also could go for the Pixies in a lot of ways:

http://agrammar.tumblr.com/post/241860089/nirvana-irony-90s

they were *received* as slightly silly "college rock" then, not to be taken too seriously.

I seem to recall them being taken very seriously by the UK papers.

A lot of you folks not getting or not impressed by or altogether not something the Pixies actually do kind of get it: they were both challenging and abrasive and perverse and catchy and accessible. Which is what made them the perfect bridge act from the college rock/Amerindie scene to the mainstream. It's not a coincidence that their relatively cultish career (at least in the US; they were pretty huge in the UK) coincided precisely with what may have been the nadir of American pop, and that mere months after their breakup Nirvana had become the new pop.

in the US, it's not like your mom knows who they are. at least not my mom.
i don't know, even with the mystique-deflating reunion, the pixies' records still seem to me to among the best american rock records ever.

Their whole career was squashed into about 15 months for me. Someone taped Doolittle for me in about May or June 1990, then I bought Bossanova when it came out a couple of months later, then I went backwards to Surfer Rosa in late 1990, then I taped Come On Pilgrim off another mate in early 1991, then got Trompe Le Monde when it came out (Aug? Sep? 91) and didn't like it as much as the others. Then they suddenly split up.

It's not a coincidence that their relatively cultish career (at least in the US; they were pretty huge in the UK) coincided precisely with what may have been the nadir of American pop,

sez you!

Says me, yeah, Not one, not two, not three, but four number one Paula Abdul singles!

Four!

two of which were terrific!

One with an animated cat!

(was that a terrific one?)

two steps forward

there's a great outtake of black francis/kim deal doing "opposites attract"

I think my challop-meter is on the fritz.

people would have really understood the subversive current of that song if they'd gone with the original name of MC Shit Snatch

Also: the Brit charts were not by any stretch at their nadir.

I said American pop, dude. No broadening the pool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1W6-ErrHls

Actually, that one's OK. Sounds like Cheap Trick.

Exactly. There's far worse examples.

Anyway, the Pixies song I'm always in the mood to play is "Hey."

woops -- I meant "Tame."

there's a great outtake of black francis/kim deal doing "opposites attract"

― tylerw, Monday, October 24, 2011 6:16 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

are you fucking with me?

ha, yes

but can't you just hear it

oh dammit, I was going to rickroll

is she weird
is she wack
cuz OPP-O-SITTES AT-TRACT!

I first heard the Pixies well after they broke up. I think I was 15, which means it was '96; I had to search them out, which I did because they were constantly being mentiomed in Nirvana and Breeders articles. My grandma took me on a shopping spree and I had her buy me Bossanova on cassette, mostly because of some derogatory comment on a review of Last Splash about how "No Aloha" sounded like an outtake from that album. I instantly loved Bossanova and a few weeks later the school druggie approached me asking to borrow it. He had a copy of Doolittle (one of maybe five irl ppl I've met that were into the Pixies; we're actually still good friends) which he lent me. I wasn't as big a fan of that one, though I like it more now.

But it wasn't long after that that I somehow procured Surfer Rosa on CD, and THAT hooled me. Still one of my all-time favourite albums...

Hooled = hooked

I love reading vintage ILM threads like this front-to-back, it's like examining the rings of a redwood trunk

"Every cute girl knew the Pixies" is totally OTM, and I initially was persuaded to like them by a cute girlfriend. Trompe Le Monde was where they lost the cute girls, and is probably the only album of theirs that I still play from time to time. Wasn't there an indie-schmindie song back in the 90's where someone (probably female) was berated for liking the Pixies? Dead Milkmen? Or someone else?

Ok, now I'm going crazy trying to remember that song. I think there was a lyric like, "You love the Pixies!" but I may be making that up....

Now I'm thinking it was, "You like the Pixies," and maybe it was an Irish/Scottish band. Fuck, this is killing me....

sounds like Noise Addict/Ben Lee imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7BE6t2CxYs

I think that may be it. Unless I can remember something else, I'm going to go with it.

I'm sure I didn't know any cute girls who liked the Pixies until I started hanging out in the outloud room.

Are you thinking of Pop Queen by Ben Lee, that has the line "you love the Pixies" in it?

Yeah, that's it, thanks! (Though I was probably kind of mushing that together with the other video in my memory). I should probably go back and listen to that Ben Lee album again, 'cause it's sounding pretty good in these videos...

Anyway, I definitely remember Pixies as having slightly surprising girl appeal in the early 90's.

What's so surprising about it? It's not like Killdozer or something.

Not exaggerating in the slightest, 95% of my female friends in high school and college were Pixies fans. Not just "I like that one song" but fans. To this day that is probably still true, but only 3-4 of them went to the reunion tour.

Well, them's the advantage of growing up middle of nowhere, I guess...

I always thought starting a Pixies cover band and playing high school dances would be a fun way to earn money.

This thread is making me want to listen to "No. 13 Baby" on repeat. That song is my jam!

Lots of people are mentioning Nirvana, but I checked out the Pixies because Blur used to talk about them a lot too! Possible girl connection? *shrug* They have catchy songs, we like catchy songs.

xp - well, not only that, but i also think it's a certain age of person (at least in my case with my friends, see also example above)
i went to high school 89-93 -- in the beginning the 80s were still happening and by the end everyone -- eeeeveryone, not just the weirdos -- was playing nirvana at their graduation bonfires and whatnot
different times. my friends who liked pixies were identifying as not-casual-nirvana people too.

They have catchy songs and KIM DEAL who is awesome.

And I reached them by going "hey I like Belly, I should check out this Breeders band" / "hey I like the Breeders, I should check out this Pixies band", which I guess is a pretty girl-friendly route for those of us catching up after the event, too.

I mean I sort of want to be all "can't girls just like bands too w/o it being a thing which needs special underlining and explanation" but on the other hand I do admit that sometimes it seems more unusual than maybe it should

(paragraph of inept sociology on this point removed on realising it was half nonsense and half tautology)

xp see LL, that's part of it; I knew LOTS of not-casual-Nirvana fans (tho most of them were metalheads)

never knew any girls into the Pixies until I got to college (ie after they broke up). got Doolittle when it came out, worked backwards from there. Didn't really like Bossanova apart from a couple songs, and never listened to Trompe Le Monde. nowadays... it's weird, I enjoy their stuff when I hear it but I am never really in the mood for it, I don't put it on. They were fun but they were not emotionally engaging really, definitely very heavy on the irony.

Feel like I have more of an attachment to the Breeder's Last Splash tbh - Black Francis' writing seems very opaque and gimmicky, very much a constructed "act" that doesn't require any emotional engagement.

^ OTM, except I'd replace Last Splash with Pod.

i don't know whether it's totally my own imagination, but i identified heavily w/ a lot of black francis' songs because they seemed to capture a distinctly southern california experience, which is where i grew up. which i know is weird -- they're thought of as a boston band, i guess. but he grew up out there and there are some tunes that just *sound* like socal to me.

I can see that (surfers + pollution = yep that's socal all right!) but there's sort of nothing there to identify with...? like there's no emotional content to Black Francis' writing, his songs have this odd POV that is bereft of thoughts and feelings and is more just a surrealist cascade of imagery. it's like he's more of a medium than a human being.

Do you have a similar problem with poetry, Shakey?

There is definitely a fondness for schlocky B-movie sci-fi and horror imagery that runs through those Black Francis lyrics. At the time, it seemed like a cool, absurdist gesture - but it's also kind of emotionally cold. Even when imitating the Pixies, Kurt Cobain wasn't capable of being as emotionally distant as Black Francis, which is partly why Nirvana lyrics seem more meaningful to me now, even though they traffic in similar kinds of absurd imagery.

yeah, i mean, he's definitely not a "confessional" writer, but there's an overarching persona that i can vibe with. or at least i did as a teen. "i live cement, i hate this street!"

I think their emotional content is p radical--they might be darker than Nirvana--but I think it's heavily refracted through surrealism, and only sometimes through irony.

I mean, these are fun and catchy songs but their main engine is an aggressive negativity esp. towards the self, so I can see how that approaches irony but not the usual sense of the word...

I don't see how you can listen to the delivery of Pixies lyrics and find them emotionally distant, personally.

to bring it back to nirvana v. pixies, i related a lot more to the b-movie absurdist schtick than the angst-o of nirvana (tho i know they had their own sense of humor). but that may have just been the kind of kid i was.

Do you have a similar problem with poetry, Shakey?

I don't see this as a problem per se...? Different works are engaged in different ways and that's fine, I'm just saying that I can engage with the Pixies on some levels (hooks, a great guitar sound, silliness/absurdism, childlike fascination with transgression) but not on others (emotionally, for ex.) This is not a value judgment. I do think it explains why their music doesn't resonate with me on a nostalgic level like some of the other music from this period (Smashing Pumpkins first two, Nirvana, etc.), because I didn't engage it in that way, there was nothing there for me to invest any emotion in.

I don't see what poetry has to do with this, really. I like some poetry. Cortazar, for ex.

I mean, I listen to the acoustic demo of "Break My Body" on Frank Black Francis and it sounds like the lament of somebody dying painfully of lust. And I mean that's there in the lyrics but BF expresses it through dissociated images raher than head-on. But I mean there's an almost operatic intensity...

their main engine is an aggressive negativity esp. towards the self,

yeah the only emotional underpinning I can detect in most Pixies stuff is one of self-loathing. But even there it's diffused and distant - Where is My Mind, for ex. literally references being dislocated from one's own thoughts/body/mind.

xp

A lot of poetry is built around using allusion and impressionistic phrases to build images rather than straightforward narrative, like a lot of Pixies lyrics. I was wondering if you make emotional connections via straightforward narrative rather than oblique impressionism.

I dunno if I could draw that conclusion, the media are so different - I feel like reading and music engage completely different parts of my brain, if that makes any sense

I can dig that, I was mostly just curious. To me, pretty much every Pixies song up through Doolittle is a variation on a visceral punch to the face so I don't really understand how one could feel distant from them. (Latter material is just as emotive to me, I just don't like it as much.)

taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame

the day is like a warm night
salt rusts the cold line

Just as I think Albini gets a little too much credit for "Surfer Rosa," I think Gil Norton gets too little credit for shaping those later albums into an illusion of order amidst all the jagged chaos.

I don't see how you can listen to the delivery of Pixies lyrics and find them emotionally distant, personally

There is emotional intensity there, but it doesn't seem to be connected in any rational way to the content of the lyrics. When Francis shrieks and hollers, it's like watching some Appalachian, snake-handling Holy Roller - there's an emotional intensity, but it's hard to relate to.

To indulge in some armchair psychoanalysis, based on suggestive Wikipedia details, I think maybe the "Rosebud" key to Francis's lyrics is his need to internally reconcile the bar-owner father and the holy-roller stepfather. In many of these songs, Francis seems to be acting out some bizarro-world version of an apocalyptic prophet whose crazy rantings conceal secrets of impending doom.

It's barely a secret in some of those songs!

I can see that (surfers + pollution = yep that's socal all right!)

forgot to throw in Francis' semi-frequent interjections of Spanish, which also fit here. always struck me as an odd thing for someone from Boston to do

I believe the epiphany to form the Pixies came when he was spending a semester in Puerto Rico?

isla de encanta

I've never been able to connect with Pixies. I feel this as both a lack and a shortcoming.

Yeah, Frank Black's Spanish on the early records is always Boriqueño affected and slanged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crackity_Jones

Frank's sci-fi lyrics feel very emotional - perhaps you could put this yearning for space and extra-terrestrials down to a kind of self-loathing, a desire to get as far away from the Earth as possible, a need to connect with people who aren't vile humans. Regardless, Motorway to Roswell, The Happening, Velouria, are all very affecting for me.

only one of those songs I recognize is Velouria, the meaning of which I never bothered to decipher.

velouria is about being in love with some kind of interstellar traveling alien. with lemur skin, i think.

First Pixies I could lay my hands on was a cassingle from the library - Velouria, the Happening and something else IIRC.

Yeah Velouria is a pretty strange mix of alien/superbeing conspiracy theories, space/time travel, and fabrics. Motorway to Roswell is ultra-straightforward sympathy for the alien, also AMAZING.

does the velouris single have the neil young cover on it?
man, the pixies had some amazing b-sides.

Here's my challops for the thread:

Pixies were more connected to that angular/weird PacNW sound that predated grunge (Greg Sage/Wipers) than Nirvana was.

hmm, doesn't look familiar to me. Damn! I've no idea and Wikipedia didn't help me, pretty sure it was just 3 tracks.

cd single had these tracks
1."Velouria" – 3:40
2."Make Believe" – 1:54
3."I've Been Waiting for You" (Neil Young) –2:45
4."The Thing" – 1:58
dunno about the cassingle

yeah that's what I was just looking at - it was The Thing, not the Happening - I guess the lyrics are the same or at least the second half is, which threw me off.. I just remember that great groove and the 'driving doing nothing..' bit. I guess it did have the Neil Young cover! Who knew.

http://www.4ad.com/releases/1726

You don't know The Happening, Shakey? That's like one of the major candidates for the best post-Doolittle song!

apparently one of the many songs on Bossanova I've completely forgotten. I never liked the sound of that record. Apart from Velouria and Stormy Weather I didn't like it at all.

Frank's sci-fi lyrics feel very emotional - perhaps you could put this yearning for space and extra-terrestrials down to a kind of self-loathing, a desire to get as far away from the Earth as possible, a need to connect with people who aren't vile humans. Regardless, Motorway to Roswell, The Happening, Velouria, are all very affecting for me.

― antiautodefenestrationism (ledge), Tuesday, October 25, 2011 3:19 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

otm about motorway to roswell "last night he could not make it", the way it's repeated in different registers, such a plaintive note, and the outro

I don't think Velouria's about an alien - isn't she from Atlantis or something? Actually, probably Lemuria based on that lemur line.

Oops, never mind - just realized I was thinking of the Frank Black song Velvety (which the Pixies did as an instrumental B-side)

Actually, looking at the Velouria lyrics I think both songs are about that. Especially with the Mt Shasta reference at the end of the song and this from Wikipedia:

In 1894, Frederick Spencer Oliver published A Dweller on Two Planets, which claimed that survivors from a sunken continent called Lemuria were living in or on Mount Shasta in northern California. Oliver claimed the Lemurians lived in a complex of tunnels beneath the mountain and occasionally were seen walking the surface dressed in white robes.

1967:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A0Lpw09HD4

O_O

looks like I need to quit farting around and get the second Red Krayola album...

wanna grow up to be...
be a debaser!

could, in an alt universe, be a Kobain Lyric and a really good one at that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksJNALKISiw&feature=related

(only interesting variation is that they haven't got Joe's solo at the end figured out yet...)

That is from "The Purple Tape" which was a widely available bootleg in the late 80s/early 90s. Half of which ended up on Come On Pilgrim.

Like that pixies cover -- probably bcz I wd never have noticed it in a million years unless it was pointed out.

ended up as?

thats not from the Purple Tape dude

The Purple Tape 2, my bad.

I'm actually mad at the GIS results for pixies tattoo 13. The only actual 13-emblazoned tits are on dudes. Um, guys?

are those MS-13 tattoos?

two things:

1) has anyone done a super extendo 20+ min jam of "i bleed"?! if so, please direct me to it. if not, get on it imm folks.
2) i had this random memory of my friends and i going up to random people (at the mall? i don't remember) and saying "chicken butt" to see if they got it. iirc it did not go well.

omg xp MS-13 tattoos scary GIS dnw

xp: one might be, the other is definitely a scrawny white kid.

I'm actually mad at the GIS results for pixies tattoo 13. The only actual 13-emblazoned tits are on dudes. Um, guys?

― rustic italian flatbread, Thursday, October 27, 2011 10:25 AM (21 minutes ago)

try "XIII" instead

I scrolled down til I got to the furry pr0n thanks!

yiff yiff

new pixies album has 2 good songs on it

classic masher is a good song and a great title

Very doubtful.

And it’s lovely to hear a second Pixies album in a row that doesn’t contain the slur “whore”, a relief that they’ve carefully avoided the misogynistic tropes of their early work (although to wonder if they’ve grown out of this completely feels a bit optimistic, since they still play those early songs with no sense of responsibility for the lack of safety for women in a crowd of people singing along to “whore”-filled classics like ‘I’ve Been Tired’ and ‘Hey’)
http://diymag.com/2016/09/30/pixies-head-carrier-album-review

hmmmmmm

I like this record.

gonna stream this today. feels so weird to not care about a new Pixies album, 15 years ago it would have been all i wanted in the world

I think people dont even like music anymore, they just like think pieces about music.

JFC, that DIY Mag review.

5 songs in. i can't remember a single melody or song title.

I haven't heard this yet, but surely it can't be that bad. Indie Cindy wasn't a great record but it had its moments.

kornrulez6969 OTM in general, though.

That review reads like a parody of whatever is going on with the kids and their safe spaces.

whore-filled classics!

There are some very fundamental things about artistic expression that that reviewer does not understand

i like their whore songs. maybe whores are what is missing.

it's fine, there are a few songs here that are bad; but on the whole the worst thing it is is unmemorable. I like "head carrier' and 'um chagga lagga' or whatever it's called quite a bit. it does feel kind of unnecessary though. I don't know if I listened to indie cindy more than once.

Luke Haines' review of Head Carrier is OTM, despite seemingly having not realised Indie Cindy existed.
http://thetalkhouse.com/luke-haines-auteurs-blackbox-recorder-not-thrilled-heard-pixies-new-record/

I found Head Carrier a but blah after first listen, but after a couple of weeks a strange thing happened: I now can't stop playing it

I think Head Carrier is a really great name for a Pixies album! Still don't want to listen to it tho.

my 13 year old is upstairs in his room playing his guitar along with a Pixies CD right now. old Pixies. not new Pixies.

not one of the ones i liked, but i woke up this morning with "Talent" running through my head.

ugh that is one of the worst songs on the album. um chagga lagga is the one I keep getting stuck in my head and I only listened to it once

from the Luke Haines review: "her replacement — someone called Paz — does brilliantly. The excitingly named Paz seems to be a one-woman Kim Deal tribute act (this is a good thing). "

goddamnit luke do your homework. she might play like that here but she's an amazing bass player with a long history.

whore-filled classics!
There are some very fundamental things about artistic expression that that reviewer does not understand
I love PC music critics! Too bad they weren’t around hundreds of years ago to put a stop to all those nasty murder ballads still being sung today.

Looks like it may be a whore-filled classic after all
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCFPpnHFTts
Nina Keen will be upset

Paz should shave her head and grow a little beard and mustache combo.

she is a very attractive and talented woman. everyone should leave the pixies except for her

yeah she rules. saw her playing bass for RTX in a tiny club about 10 years ago and she was awesome. killer stage presence.

her performance on the new Pixies album is really pretty good. i like her duet w Frank on "Bel Esprit". and her helping write "All I Think About Now", a song about looking back on The Pixies, is cool.

but Albini's "bar band" comment has never been more appropriate. it's very generic.

also i'm pretty sure they aren't singing "Um Chagga Lagga" but "Boom Shacka Lacka", a reference to Ali G

wow i've never read about zwan's dissolution before. the corgan quotes on the wiki page are pretty crazy.
also didn't know that paz played on the first brighblack album.

haw, come on billy, this is just good clean fun: "Sex acts between band members in public. People carrying drugs across borders."

There are a few duds on here, and the idea of having Kim Deal's replacement sing a song addressed to Kim Deal is beyond misguided, but by and large this album is better than I could have hoped. Plays like a slightly above average Frank Black solo LP; it's the best thing he's done since Svn Fngrs.

I like how cranky and peevish Frank Black sounds. He's at his best when he's not trying to be funny or weird, but when those qualities seem almost unintentional.

Bluefinger would have made an excellent Pixies record

also i'm pretty sure they aren't singing "Um Chagga Lagga" but "Boom Shacka Lacka", a reference to Ali G

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Friday, October 7, 2016 4:26 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

or Apache Indian.

Bluefinger would have made an excellent Pixies record

― PaulTMA, Sunday, October 9, 2016 12:49 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree!

Aside from "Captain Pasty" and "Threshold Apprehension" I think Bluefinger sounded like a regular more recent Black Francis album.

i agree bluefinger is really good but even better was the svn fngrs ep.

I mean the Pixies should have recorded it (and Svn Fngrs)

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/14572158_10157677727350571_2824272774505465435_n.jpg?oh=b13860a33b77bb073d70a721ea9ffaaf&oe=58AB9AD3

https://twitter.com/lucyandamysdad/status/785199542853570560

Pretty sure that McLusky and et al. took over for the Pixies in the smartest way. The Beatles also had followers who improved on them...

Mclusky, give me a break

http://concert.arte.tv/fr/berlin-live-pixies

is Head Carrier any good?

i don't know why i feel more open to giving it a chance than the first post-reunion album.

it was pretty good, it was better than the previous one anyway. I gave it a listen again recently after kind of forgetting it existed and I liked it. That boom shaka laka song is great if stupid.

i kind of grew to like it. it really feels like a Pixies album at times. there are some really nice melodies throughout and it kind of has a Trompe Le Monde feel to it at parts. like the whole build-up intro to "Bel Esprit" feels very TLM. obviously its not anywhere close to the heights of the first run albums but it's good, certainly better than Indie Cindy.

Paz is pretty cool too. i know this is a difficult thing for people to get over, cos Kim Deal was such an important part of the original band, but Paz is really great. that song she sings and had a hand in writing, "All I Think About Now", is kind of an interesting way to deconstruct "Where Is My Mind". she also directed a cool music video for "Classic Masher".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzDJayVhhdA

Really enjoyed that. Surprised how good the sound quality is.

impressive mullet on Charles

Thanks for posting that, LG. I was there! First festival I attended, it was a very wet day..
Pixies were the highlight (but then they were my favorite band back then), other performances I can recall that were great: Elvis Costello (solo) and Nick Cave (in awesome striped pants) & the Bad Seeds.

They are like children in this video!

so young.

glad you enjoyed it as I did

I'm a big fan of Kim Shattuck and the Muffs, and some things I've read about her (short-lived) experience in tha band did not seem too positive. Nu-Pixies seems a little depressing on the whole but I hope I'm wrong

I interviewed Joey once, and it was either in that interview or some other one I read, back when the band reunited, where he conceded the money he was going to get from the reunion was the difference between a good school district and a bad school district for his kid. I totally understand, but that's still pretty mercenary.

The Pixies were once my favorite band, but thanks to 18+/21+ laws in Philly I never had a chance to see them live during their heyday (save their opening slot for U2 at the Spectrum, but I couldn't go to that one). I still regret seeing them on the first reunion tour, because it was just so ... bleh. They totally didn't care. Saw them a couple of more times since that, incidentally, maybe once with a dude on bass (can't remember) and once with Shattuck. They still couldn't have cared less, and neither could I.

What's weird is that I saw Frank Black a few times, and a couple of those shows were great. I guess the chemistry of the Pixies was sort of off from the start and only got worse over time.

I saw them live once in their heyday, in late 1990. They didn't seem to enjoy playing live at all...or just playing music, period, or being in a band. Apart from a single Joey feedback solo, they all seemed like they'd rather be anywhere else.

I interviewed Joey once, and it was either in that interview or some other one I read, back when the band reunited, where he conceded the money he was going to get from the reunion was the difference between a good school district and a bad school district for his kid. I totally understand, but that's still pretty mercenary.

It was, I think, in a Spin profile early in the reunion where Kim said that the reason she agreed to reform - after several refusals to Charles - was that Joey called and told her the school district thing.

Yeah, maybe that was it?

I did interview Charles around the time of the reunion. It was a great conversation, and at some point he started complaining about reunions, and how they're all so lazy, especially the ones that aren't playing any new songs or anything. Then he pauses and adds "OK, so I'm a big hypocrite."

hey this new pixies album is pretty good.

It's like a solid Frank Black album, unfortunately I'm not really interested in solid Frank Black albums.

Still need to get Oddballs and Black Sessions someday.

I'm trying to decide which is the more lighting-in-a-bottle band, the Pixies or the Smiths. Right now I'm thinking .. Pixies.

Given that the pixies wrote most of their best song within the span of about a year, I'd say Pixies too.
(also, these days I just feel too conflicted listening to anything that Morrissey had a hand in, so)

🏈 Joey & Dave help predict the 2021 @NFL Season - for the @nyjets and the @Patriots respectively.

Check them out with @SPIN here:https://t.co/s9XbvdvbS0 pic.twitter.com/z6arEPwdFM

— PIXIES (@PIXIES) September 10, 2021

Joey is a Jets fan? Wow, guess I don't like Pixies anymore.

lol I just chuckled because I scrolled past this and assumed it was like an NFL promoted tweet or something, took me far too long to put all the pieces together

And this I know
The Jets 16 and 0

if man is five
(if man is five)
then the devil is six
(then the devil is six)
the the JETS ARE ZERO
THE JETS ARE ZERO

Dave looking totes ready for a woodworking & magic tricks show on PBS.

Ngl, I kind of want that sweater

I got no lips, I got no tongue
I got a broken Gase...

Joey’s Jets commentary in that article is pretty funny

Woke up in the middle of the night with the belated epiphany, with well over 30 years of listening to this band under my belt, that for all the attention the Pixies gets for its loud-quiet dynamics and screaming and guitar squall, its lyrical world-building - the Spanglish, the gruesome imagery, the surfing stuff, the space stuff - remains utterly novel and just as key to its success.

Do the reunion records betray that world that they built, or add to it, or just ignore it?

I don't know if the reunion records ignore that world but I'm definitely ignoring the reunion records

disclaimer: i'm a jerkass.

the reunion records effectively ruined pixies for me. it's self-parody done so well that the it completely and totally eviscerates its source material. i can't even appreciate their initial run anymore. it all sounds like an unfunny joke at this point.

maybe i never liked them to begin with??? idk.

they suck though, those reunion albums. a lot of folks said they were passable but kind of boring "pixies by numbers" but if you really sit with those albums like i could with the older stuff (at one point in time anyway), they will drive you mad. stupid lyrics, plodding musicianship, and just an general overall vibe of bad taste in the air.

anyway. yeah. breeders were a cool band.

sorry for typos. pixie make mad.

Breeders are a cool band, All Nerve was great.

I've never heard the reunion albums but I saw the Pixies with Kim in 2004 and 2010 or 2011 and both were good. Zero interest in seeing them post-KD.

I've successfully ignored the reunion albums, but I wish I ignored the reunion, period. Finally seeing them live, even a couple of times with Deal, left a bad taste in my mouth. I interviewed Charles/Frank/Black once, around the time of the reunion, and after complaining about contemporary country and alt-rock stations pandering to their audiences, giving them what they want and nothing more, I asked:

Me: But don’t you think these reunion shows are in danger of pandering?

FB: Good point. Yes, there is a certain amount of pandering there. We are just playing the A-list. We’re not trying to challenge everybody. We’re trying to satisfy a lot of customers who have never seen us before, who know the records or at least have the best-of collection. They’re curious about the band, and we’re scratching their itch. We sound just like the records. Here we are – ta-dah! We feel like that’s really what people are paying for. We’re not doing the “how’s it going out there!?” and then kicking out a beach ball. We don’t do any of that. We do “La La Love You” and “Tame” back to back. We’re still raw. We’re not trying to be poignant or meaningful. We’re doing our thing, take it or leave it. People are more or less taking it. ... So, yeah, I guess I stand a hypocrite.

I guess good for them for making new music, but also, bad for us.

Personally, still love the records.

Not a fan of most of the reunion albums, but Beneath the Eryie (the most recent) was fine, though still not a patch on the original run. The reunion show I saw in 2004 was great, but to be fair, I never saw them during the original run. The second show I saw five or six years later was pretty meh.

I thought Head Carrier was rather good indeed but I suspect Indie Cindy killed off the idea that them releasing new music was in any way a good idea

wonder if the pixies ever heard this giant sand song from 1986 because there is so much in it that sounds just like them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE6SCr-dKWU

*except better

Honestly the Pixies could go on an Ivermectin Not Immigration world tour with Eric Clapton and Kid Rock and it wouldn't besmirch the greatness of the original records for me

nickb otm. giant sand rules.

lol eephus

bluefinger by frank black sounded like the fifth pixies record that never was

yeah i’ve thought that too, i assume that’s why he went back to the Black Francis name for it

That Giant Sand song is uncanny. Things like this always make me think of Brian Eno's concept of "scenius"... even if we remember these things as isolated bolts of inspiration, there's always similar sounding stuff from the same era which everyone just forgot about.

When I saw them live a couple of years ago it felt obvious that for all of them being in the Pixies is now just a regular gig that pays the bills, nothing more. It made the whole experience feel oddly perfunctory and disappointing. There's no emotional connection with the audience, no sense that they enjoy still playing these songs or being in a band at all. It sounded like Kim Shattuck in her brief stint in the band tried to bring a bit of a rock n' roll energy back to the line-up, and was told "The Pixies don't do that." Pfft.

I often go back and forth about whether I still *need* to keep listening to the Pixies, or if it's something I just cling onto as a comforting reminder of my youth. When I first heard the BBC Sessions album (the first Pixies record I got hold of) it was so visceral, strange and intense it was almost too much to handle, took a lot of listens to actually get my head around it. I still love that album and the rest of the Come On Pilgrim -> Trompe Le Monde era, but it really does feel to me like they diluted the impact of their original brief span by returning as an endlessly touring greatest hits act. It's weird to think that they are now basically as mainstream as any other band from the eighties/nineties locked into endless nostalgia tours.

The new stuff I've heard is *okay* for the most part, but I'm just not interested in it. It's just lacking whatever chemistry they originally had (and lacking Kim, possibly the two are related). They really should have put new stuff out in 2004, but all we got was "Bam Thwok" as a glimpse of what could've been.

all we got was "Bam Thwok" as a glimpse of what could've been.

Mentioned before on ILX some time over the years, but verbatim exchange I heard in a club at iirc a Spoon show.

Person One: Have you heard the new Pixies song?
Person Two: No, is it any good?
Person One: No. I mean, I haven't heard it yet, either, but I heard it's not good.

I liked it.

I think it was really only two tracks on Bluefinger that sounded like Pixies.

It was a Kim Deal song, and she never got many writing credits in the band, so maybe it's her voice that makes it sound like pixies.

I personally remember being really disappointed when I first heard Bam Thwok, so I've just avoided all the reunion material since then, but I've still cooled on the band based on the mere existence of so much reunion material and the blatant cynicism of the whole endeavor.

When I saw them live a couple of years ago it felt obvious that for all of them being in the Pixies is now just a regular gig that pays the bills, nothing more.

They had already begun going through the motions thirty years ago. When I first saw them perform, in 1989, they were *incredible*, the place was crackling with energy. By the time I saw them next, a couple of years later, the spark was gone. It was really dismaying. I still adore the first few records, though.

Same experience for me except the spark disappeared between 1988-->1989.

The reunions are cash grabs, but I wouldn't call them cynical so much as oddly unimaginative from a once imaginative bandleader and songwriter. If anything, it was the highly un-cynical to retire the pixies name in 1992 as the spark had gone and Frank wanted to focus more on rinky-dink sounds and start a fresh songbook. If the songs on the first few Frank Black records had been released as Pixies albums without Kim (and maybe with a better drummer, and a regular keyboard player) that would have really affected the band's legacy far more, even though the songs, and especially the arrangements, on those first solo lps are sometimes quite good and certainly far more memorable than the reunion tracks.

That Giant Sand song is uncanny. Things like this always make me think of Brian Eno's concept of "scenius"

It really is uncanny! That said, even beyond the proto-Americana on college radio, the default sound of a lot of Boston bands in the mid-80s involved spaghetti western guitar solos and thrashy bits here and there - The Blackjacks, Neighborhoods, Dogmatics were all getting local commercial airplay and videos on our UHF MTV competitor with "cowpunk" songs. Throw in the surrealism of Mission of Burma/Volcano Suns and Throwing Muses, and the Pixies were distilling a lot of things that were very present around them.

They certainly weren't as consistent but I think the highs are just as high on Bossanova, Trompe Le monde, Frank Black, Teenager Of The Year and Cult Of Ray. I really adore them all and even love some of them more than the earliest stuff, might be because they don't get as much love and play from most fans? I know I'm not alone on Bossanova (Santiago's favorite).

Bossanova has always been the one I listen to the most, but they're all still good to me. Now, Frank Black solo, I admit it's been a while since I listened to any of his 30 or whatever records, but I have a hunch the first couple do indeed remain solid and/or underrated/overlooked.

They're gold, I'm not sure there's anything I don't like on the first solo album. Quite fond of Dog In The Sand but everything else after the first 3 are a very mixed bag. Recently read that Cult Of Ray was badly received but I had a ton of fun with it.

Didn't know there was a limited edition bonus disc

Oh, they're all on Oddballs, which I still need

"The Golem" (the 1 disc version) is pretty good later period Black Francis. Produced and with keyboards by Eric Drew Feldman.

Bossanova was such a letdown to me after Doolittle. I think I only listened to it twice and haven’t heard it in 30 years. I didn’t even buy Trompe Le Monde. That cover of “Head On” was such a bizarre thing to do.

I like Bossanova and still listen to it, but otherwise relate to your experience. It was a big enough drop in quality that I just never even bothered after that.

i still totally adore bossanova

particularly the really short songs

Weird, I don't hear a drop in quality at all. I think if anything it's even more aggressive in its non-conformity. Begins with an instrumental (fake) classic surf song, followed by an impenetrable aggro burst, followed by a mix of pop-nuggets, space-weirdness, more aggro experiments and compact epics like "The Happening."

Trompe Le Monde is magical and really the only one I still listen to. It's one of my favourite albums of all time.

Pixies' original run is unimpeachable imo — throw in the first few Breeders / Amps records and those first two Frank Black albums and that's enough incredible music for me to forgive them for anything.

I think a lot of my problem with "Bossanova" is the mix, which eviscerates the rhythm section. It all sounds a bit wimpy. When "Trompe Le Monde" arrived with its more muscular sound, it was like a rebirth.

I'm also a huge Trompe le Monde fan. I haven't listened to Bossanova since the 1990s, when I felt it didn't hold up to the others. Maybe time to try it out again.

I can imagine a "Bossanova" with a more visceral recording and perhaps a reordered track list being one of my favorites. There's plenty of good material to work with.

'velouria' alone is enough to justify bossanova... timeless lyrics. trompe le monde has better guitar parts than any of the other albums!

They really should have put new stuff out in 2004, but all we got was "Bam Thwok" as a glimpse of what could've been.

also "Ain't That Pretty At All," which rules. I think it's cool that they did one "new" song (sort of a Breeders cover) written by Kim and one cover featuring Kim's voice, and then stopped before they could fuck up.

I don't mind the mix of "Bossanova." Reminds me of similarly thin/trebly mixes on a lot of other contemporaneous records, especially showgaze/UK stuff, like the first Suede album. "Trompe" does have awesome guitar parts.

I really love the sound of Bossanova, "All Over The World" is mesmerizing. Even the lesser songs sound amazing and huge

I liked some songs on The Golem, cant recall how many times I listened but I could go back. Kind of an oddity.

Teenager Of The Year has some of the best early tracks sequencing, just incredibly fun

Anybody want to translate this 2002 Christgau review for me (in the middle of a positive review):

Put off by Black Francis's feyness, I sensed what is now clear, that he's a pomo sociophobe of a familiar and tedious sort. Where in retrospect his philosophical limitations seem harmless annoyances, they portended many regrettable developments in irony, junk culture, sexual eccentricity, and other folkways that deserved better.

Hard to imagine him keeping up that level of greatness over the years. Really wasn't much interested in stuff like Devil's Workshop, Show Me Your Tears, Honeycomb, Fast Man Raider Man but then I'm not sure I'd dig the sort of music he was going for back then

I don't mind the mix of "Bossanova." Reminds me of similarly thin/trebly mixes on a lot of other contemporaneous records, especially showgaze/UK stuff, like the first Suede album

I read somewhere that Norton and Haigler were going for more of a UK sound. It was 1990 and the '80s big gated drum sound was past its sell-by date. The tinny UK sound seemed as good an alternative as any. The Butch Vig thick compressed sound that would define 90s rock was still a year away.

They still seem like a band very much removed from that Sonic Youth/Dinosaur/Husker sphere

Which is ironic, since Husker Du was one of the biggest influences. What was the Black Francis quote? Something like "I only owned five records, and Husker Du were three of them"?

Found it!

http://aleceiffel.free.fr/bf_bm.html

FRANCIS: I grew up in L.A. when bands like Black Flag were around, but I never listened to them. I was buying used records for 50 cents, and didn't socialize, really; I was lost in headphone-land. I did get to see a Hüsker Dü show when Joey and I dropped out of school and said, « Let's start one of these groups. » And I saw an excellent show by the Hüskers at the Paradise in Boston, where you did « Ticket To Ride » for an encore. Fantastic show, so I knew that Hüsker Dü was a tape I needed to get. I had those albums, a couple of Iggy albums, one Captain Beefheart and a tiny studio apartment. That handful of stuff got me through that particular season. I used to play « Green Eyes » (from Hüsker Dü's Flip Your Wig) over and over. A classic chord progression. Same thing with Iggy's « The Passenger » - one of those repeat songs. At the start of the Pixies I only had four or five albums and the Hüskers were two or three of them.

Funny that those formative listens should, well, form the basis of the Pixies sound. ("Wave of Mutilation" is sort of a sideways rewrite of "Green Eyes"). It's kind of like Alan from Low saying he heard Joy Division and the VU for the first time the same night at college. You hear that, and you hear Low, and you think, well, yeah.

And the help wanted ad description of them as Husker Du/Peter Paul and Mary

Was it 4AD that hooked them up with Albini? Because that was a pretty inspiring pairing, especially at that point. Albini had barely worked on anything but Big Black by then, right?

Tweez was recorded before Surfer. And the first Urge Overkill EP.

(What else? No idea beyond Big Black)

(What else? No idea beyond Big Black)

Yeah, so not much. And it's hard to believe any/many people hearing Tweez and the first UO thought, man, we need to get that guy in the studio with this other band ASAP! It might have been more an inkling that Albini's innate love for the ugly (sound, themes) was a match for the Pixies.

The album was recorded by Steve Albini (who was hired by Watts-Russell on the advice of a 4AD colleague),[18]

Yeah, but why him? I mean, good call!

Found this:

IVO WATTS-RUSSELL, cofounder, 4AD Records: The suggestion of Albini to work with the Pixies was from someone who worked for me at 4AD. Just a guy at the warehouse, Colin Wallace, who now doesn't work in the warehouse - he now manager Liz Fraser of Cocteau Twins and works for Rough Trade. So that came from him at 4AD and Gil (Norton) came from me. Colin said, "You should get Steve Albini to do it. The Big Black records sound great." And that was that, really.

From The Making of Surfer Rosa

The MFSL issue of Bossanova strips all the sheen away. Not to my liking at all

i listened to doolittle today. really good album imo

been listening to the pixies albums (Doolittle, trompe le monde, surfer Rosa) at work and loving it recently, sounds as good as I remember from my late teens, which was when I really listened to them. Creative, unique albums

the first time I heard his voice (something from Come On Pilgrim) I was convinced he was Gordon Gano

i'd like to think i'm not in the minority here, but realizing kim deal's track record over frank has probably been a big blight on the overall pixies image. i will pull any breeders record out any day of the week and not be disappointed where i can't say the same for the pixies at this point.

100%, Deal takes Francis out ANY day.
although Title TK is my favourite so I may not be “of the majority” either

Huh. I love Kim Deal, but I don't like anything by her as much as I like the Pixies with her. I like every single Pixies track, b-sides and all, but I've really never gotten that excited about the Breeders, first album perhaps aside. Post-Pixies, sure, I'd probably gravitate toward Deal because her six albums with the Breeders/Amps are as a whole better than Frank's (counts) 18 post-Pixies albums. Though of the ones I've heard or remember, I don't recall anything bad, and the times I saw him solo were pretty strong whereas the five or so times I've seen Deal live were pretty erratic.

i prefer the breeders as well. doesn’t stop doolittle from being the best rock album ever

Incidentally, Pixies is another band I love that I've just never sought out live clips of. But this set is great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzA3eCHI2ns

I think the first two Frank Black solo albums are really great, basically carrying forward Trompe Le Monde

yeah i think they still sound very cool — his early solo releases are kind of like a West Coast speculative fiction novel mixed with memoir, looking back at a weird southern California past and forward to an apocalyptic future. they're interesting!

Cult of Ray wasn’t bad. It suffered from heinous cover art.

For a while, I'd rank their greater output as Pod, Surfer Rosa > the other three Pixie Albums > Last Splash, Teenager of the Year > various solid tracks mixed among the rest, like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQgV9q6fl1I

First 3 Frank Blacks over any Breeders for me, but Breeders win for overall consistency.

First Catholics album has some fun stuff but really tanks later on. Gotta buy Oddballs now, I've waited too long.

hoo boy bendy, if that's a highlight . . . yikes.

Hmm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbXP8PdwnWM

well that could suck a golf ball through a garden hose

That one's ok when judged against other nu-Pixies work, which is how you have to approach these things now.

I thought this one was better, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ofPSefhyQ

I was thinking the other day of making a thread on artists who had an amazing burst of creativity but pieced it out slowly over several albums. (Lou Reed's VU-era songs, Liz Phair's first songs, etc.) Forgot that the Pixies had the "purple" tape demos, which had songs that ended up on all four of their original albums.

I suspect that’s “all artists”, it’s just that we only know about those ones

It's related to that "you have your entire life to make a first album, and six weeks to make the second" principle. Anyway, Cheap Trick is one of those bands. Van Halen, too; they were mining old demos as recently as the final album, the DLR reunion record.

Doggerel is surprisingly solid imho - in a "this sounds like a band that listened to the first four Pixies albums" kind of way though. Nothing groundbreaking

I need to hear this

Curious to check this out. While still standing multiple levels below their original run, each new album since the reunion has been marginally better than the previous.

I don't know if Arte videos are region limited but this is going to be online for 6 Months: live at L'Olympia, Paris, March 16 2023

https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/113636-000-A/pixies-a-l-olympia/

setlist: (37 songs) https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/pixies/2023/lolympia-bruno-coquatrix-paris-france-53bbbbfd.html

He's achieved more success than I ever will, but... is its ever weird that he has an entire career based on 3 or 4 years in his early 20s? I guess it's a common rock thing.

Kinda like the Violent Femmes. They recorded other great stuff, but most of the accolades are based on an initial burst of songwriting that trailed off.

He's achieved more success than I ever will, but... is its ever weird that he has an entire career based on 3 or 4 years in his early 20s? I guess it's a common rock thing.

― paulhw,

Nah.

the first two Frank Black records are great

First three are fantastic, I love them as much as Pixies stuff although there are patchy areas but I feel that way about some Pixies albums too

I've probably posted this before, but my favorite post-Pixies thing he's done is the Golem rock album from 2011.

I should also say that although you'd probably not get him working on an album for several years, he has done pretty much what he wanted, I can't see a lot of pandering at all. Most of his solo stuff had a blues-country rock thing and it actually intensified around the time of the reunion and Grand Duchy seemed pretty different from what little I've heard of that. A good chunk of this stuff might sound unrecognizable to fans of early Pixies.

I never noticed this before- that sublime “and evolving from the sea” section of The Sad Punk is almost surely a callback to the “and when you’re high” section of Welcome to the Jungle. Very similar(almost transcendent) feel to me.

Apparently Paz got fired. Speculation is that it was for publicly supporting Ariel Pink. Wonder if Black still fires people by fax.

While still far short of the original run, I actually thought the two albums with Paz were the most interesting things they'd done since the reunion.

I wondered about the Pink thing but her posts about that were some time ago at this point. Either way too bad, as I am a big fan of hers in general and only last week was thinking I might bother to see the pIxies again the next time they come through mainly because she's playing with them.

Maybe she really did want to move on and work on her own stuff?

I mean, she herself described it as firing..

https://preview.redd.it/interesting-exchange-v0-5vdzmtmsupmc1.jpeg?auto=webp&s=891238057aa3f22f5cb0f94f76cfb4c0f8aa254d

(fwiw she appears to have since deleted that one and her public statements have been more balanced)

ahhhhh, nm

lots of rumors circulating that she's a right wing loon, but these seem to be based off her Pink defense plus she posted something when javier milei won in Argentina that some took as support. But there doesn't seem to be any other evidence.

lol at losing Paz damaging the Pixies permanently. You can't kill what is already dead!

lots of rumors circulating that she's a right wing loon, but these seem to be based off her Pink defense plus she posted something when javier milei won in Argentina that some took as support. But there doesn't seem to be any other evidence.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Friday, March 8, 2024 8:24 AM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah but there's always more, i can't think of one time when an artist had some little flirtations with right wing/terf whatever stuff and it didn't end up being worse

Barbara Motchan
@barbara_motchan
·
Mar 5
Replying to
@PIXIES
Paz made the Pixies who they are today!! The Pixies will be nothing now without Paz. Just tell the truth.....

BLACK FRANCIS, YOU FIRED PAZ!!

lmao

I mean, I will say the two studio albums she played on were miles better than any of the other reunion era studio stuff, but I'm not sure how much credit she takes for that.

she wrote a bunch of stuff on beyond the eirie or whatever it's called, but it's still not like, great. It's ok.

yeah but there's always more, i can't think of one time when an artist had some little flirtations with right wing/terf whatever stuff and it didn't end up being worse

Neil Young, but that was the '80s - most of America was crazy for Reagan.

But yeah, I can't say it's a big loss. I can't see anyone getting nostalgic for the Paz-era of the Pixies 20 years from now.

maybe they'll hire a third Kim

Jong Un

nah the band already has a dictator

They shouldn't hire but they should back Kim Carnes for an album, how random and awesome would that be?

nah the band already has a dictator

ha ha ha

Kim Gordon joins and they reinvent themselves as mumbletrap.

As long as it isn't Kim Mitchell.

Thought the thread revive was for the BBC Sessions album which came out today and rocks super hard. Version of “In Heaven” is brutal and beautiful.

It's just the vinyl reissue of the same one from 1998, right?

As long as it isn't Kim Mitchell.

― MarkoP, Friday, March 8, 2024 3:40 PM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

might as well go for a broken face

Oh, wow, never mind. I see that it is, but with more material. Going to have to check it out then, I was under the impression it was just a straight vinyl reissue.

sounds like it's time for a zwan reunion. paz & billy can patch over their personal issues with whatever weird conspiracy stuff they may be into

I was thinking that, lol

wait can someone gimme the cliffs on the timeline of the kims, and departures of each?

Zwan gets back together, then Frank Black hires D'arcy and Billy's head explodes

xposts: no, it's all tracks they recorded for 6 complete sessions at the BBC 1988-1991.. 3LP/2CD/digital. The previous release was just a selection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rdLiTQRP0o

I think about this interview a lot, about him painting to clear his mind after a concert, the bit where the interviewer brings up Lynda Barry (which led me down a rabbit hole) and also about him saying he doesn't care if he seems a shadow of his former self, that keeping away from a day job is his top priority. I guess like a lot of older rock musicians he doesn't have the luxury of spending several years writing and recording.

Always considered the idea that he shouldn't keep Pixies going without Kim Deal laughable

Trompe Le Monde is the best album album Charles / Black etc ever made, Kim wasn't really involved. She did other great stuff.

I read that oral history about the Pixies, which was illuminating. Yeah, Charles was pretty high strung, but Kim seemed like a tremendous pain in the ass. Iirc she was barely involved in either of the last two records. There's something to be said for bands that burn bright but fast. CCR, Smiths, Pixies, VU, even the Beatles, just this compressed productivity with a huge impact.

I kinda always thought the reason she did not have any tunes on the later records was more they were not really welcome.

Never really got it myself as I thought the real pixie dust was when both of them sang on a tune. Oh well…

I was quite shocked when I found out how she doesn't actually have have any of her own songs on Doolittle, not even as much singing as I recalled, but what is there is memorable

i would like to register my discontent with this line of Kim dismissal itt

i have nothing to add except that it’s gross and i hate it that is all

Kim of course has nothing to prove to anyone, but even "Gigantic," that was a co-write based on I think Charles's repetitive bass riff and maybe he had the chorus too, at least the repeating title. She really didn't have much creative input in the Pixies, which no doubt led to some friction, but if the book is much indication I think it was more her unpredictable behavior and unreliability that ticked him off. Like, skipping sound checks, being late to places, vanishing on tour, that sort of thing.

That said, I can't imagine the band without her, she rules and is of course a key component of what makes that band so great.

Who is dismissing her? Most people thinks she has the most vital longevity of all the band members but she was kind of sidelined from Doolittle onwards.

I finally listened to Frank Black's Oddballs, it's fun and worthwhile but not really up there with the best of his early albums.

I was quite shocked when I found out how she doesn't actually have have any of her own songs on Doolittle, not even as much singing as I recalled, but what is there is memorable

Some listings say that's a co-written song. Is there any handy listing of all the Pixies songwriting credits? Did Joey write "Levitate Me"?

"silver" and "gigantic" are credited to deal/black (though deal is responsible for most of "silver" at the very least), "levitate me" is black/lovering/jean walsh (black's then-girlfriend i think), lenchantin co-wrote a few tracks on head carrier and beneath the eyrie and santiago co-wrote a few on doggerel

"Into The White" is all hers?

black is the sole writer on that despite deal singing lead

"bam thwok" is the only pixies track that's credited only to deal afaik

I love "Bam Thwok", strange that she'd get a sole credit so late on. Seems like only months later that she left

Worth mentioning the recent unearthing of "Go Man Go" that was stapled onto the Last Splash reissue which gives a co-credit to Black Francis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcYCyzvNY1M

(sounds like a stepsibling of "Where Is My Mind?"/"Caribou"/"Velouria")

and here is the "Silver" demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH_g46UfHVQ

"bam thwok" was the first and only reunion song the original lineup made back in 2004, and i guess deal/black relations were pretty decent at the time since he let her write it

they also did Ain’t That Pretty At All for a Zevon trib


Kim had Bam Thwok sitting around intended as a Breeders song and Charles suggested recording one of hers as an olive branch for excluding her writing the previous time around

Thwok shows that a whole album of Deal songs backed by the Pixies blokes could have been great, but Bam / Ain’t is a great imaginary A-side / B-side commemoration of their whole reunion. She was right to quit rather than risk blowing their legacy; whatever the name has done since, it’s fine to think of as a different band.

FWIW, I saw them on Wednesday night. (It was already announced that Tuesday would have Bossanova and Trompe le Monde played in their entirety, so Wednesday was a "greatest hits" night, but not surprisingly, there was only one cut apiece from Bossanova and Trompe le Monde.) I love those albums, but the first EP and first two albums are still their greatest records for me, and leaning heavily on those made this a pretty amazing show. Pains me to say this, but the newer "reunion" songs really put the brakes on the show - they strung four of them in a row and it was striking how sluggish they sounded compared to everything else. (They played two more later on, but those came off much better.)

I've only seen them one other time, as an opener in an arena but even more sadly without Kim. I'm guessing that ship has pretty much sailed, barring a special occasion or a very-late-in-life reunion. Glad I caught them while they were still firing on all cylinders, and they all looked genuinely happy at the end - I think Charles said a few words to introduce each album on Wednesday, but otherwise the protocol is still clearly "just play, no chatter."

*introduce each album on Tuesday

Kim's recent Breeders and solo shows have been her career highs imho.

Charles was fairly chatty at the recent Teenager of the Year shows.

Yeah I was going to say, he was the most talkative I've ever seen him when I saw the Teenager of the Year show

He's supposedly a really nice guy in person. I know one guy who went up to him after a solo show a little over a decade ago - it was a small venue somewhere in the Midwest and everyone else who was there for the show had already left, but he saw Charles come out to do something with the equipment he left onstage. So he walked up to him and asked if he could talk to him and Charles apparently was like "sure." Totally friendly.

Forgot to mention, it was also lovely how the intro music was "Pet Sounds" (the instrumental title track to the Beach Boys album) and the first song they played was a cover of David Lynch's "Heaven" from Eraserhead. Not too surprising - I knew the Pixies loved Pet Sounds (I think at least Charles was interviewed about it for some UK publications about the album) and "Heaven" is something they covered going back to the start of their career - but still wonderful to hear. Just damn sad that we lost David Lynch AND Brian Wilson all within five months of each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atdPYVt6HhQ

I knew the Pixies loved Pet Sounds

ya, this ^^^ cover from their final peel session.

^^Which was re-recorded on the first Frank Black album.

Doing a deep dive into the Pixies, I knew Lovering was doing a magic act before the reunion, but I didn't realize he occasionally opened for Charles's solo shows (pre-reunion) doing that act. To my surprise, he was still doing it after the reunion and found some video of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lcHbH_xHcM

saw them last night in berkeley; was really on the fence about going but glad I did in the end. I only saw the pixies twice before, both with Kim Deal, but also both times post-reunion. The first show was not great, second one I don't remember anything about other than that it was too packed and we had a bad time; this was way more enjoyable though I concur, the new songs are sluggish and didn't help at times, but I guess I give them some credit for packing the setlist with 8 tracks from the most recent album that not a single person has listened to. Otherwise they played almost everything you'd want to hear at a Pixies show (except for Alec Eiffel). They also seem to get along great, which I'd been long under the impression was not the case.

they played well at red rocks last night, a very long complete set. their four piece attack is amazing, so powerful. as usual with them for me, the whole is less than the sum of its parts? i enjoy all the ingredients being put in there, great tone, great parts generally, good at doing pixies things. but the songs are a bit burdened. the bass is not elastic or melodic and it goes beyond heavy to lead. still recommended they seemed spirited and unified to me.

Honestly, this is a treat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v63FopvRtWQ

(CBeebies Bedtime Stories with Black Francis)

How did that ever come about???

Cbeebies do this a lot. Josh Homme read a story a few years ago.

I saw them on Monday in Chicago -- highlights for me were "Debaser," both versions of "Wave of Mutilation," and "The Happening." About half of the new songs were fine/good, but the other half were momentum killers, and a three or four song run in the 3rd quarter of the set seemed to take the air out of the crowd. Nonetheless, I had a great time and was thrilled to see them. They don't mess about, do they? Started at 8:30 on the dot, didn't say a word -- not even a "hello" or "Thank you" -- barely stopped between songs, and finished at 10 on the dot, no encore of course.

The other highlight of the evening was Spoon who sounded fantastic and treated us to a pretty spot on Greatest Hits collection. Has Britt Daniel's voice changed at all in 25 years? What an incredible band.

I saw them in 90 and 91, then they split up, then I saw them twice more when they reformed (still with Kim) in 04 and 05. That thirteen year gap felt like ages, it is so weird to think it's now 20 years since I last saw them. I can't recall listening to anything they've done since then.

dud

1987-1991 classic (even though I thought they were Violent Femmes the first time I heard them because it sounded like Gordon Gano's voice to me)

Ha that CBeebies thing is great

xpost They owe a lot to so many, yet their own take is so distinctive you sometimes have to squint a little. Like, Violent Femmes *for sure*, but the noise and amplification throws you off a little. Husker Du, absolutely. But, for example, the Replacements. I never would have made the connection, but these podcasters did and now I hear it. Stuff like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94iUMXh26H8

I think this was the song the podcast mentioned? Either way, eerily presages Nirvana, too.

first thing i wanted to do after waking up was hear Kim's backing vocals on "Monkey Gone to Heaven". also, is she humming in the background of "Gouge Away"?