PIXIES Poll: The best track on Doolittle

It is "Hey."

HCYM because it's longer than any of the others i love

Hey, Tame, Debaser: Argh can't decide!!!

surfer rosa poll i would know my answer in a second

And that would be?

River Euphrates.

I prefer the single version of that :P

I'd have to go with No. 13 Baby or Gouge Away, I suppose.

I picked "Hey", though "Gouge Away" could belong on that Great Album Closers thread.

I agree with "Silver" being an awful Kim Deal song. And I used to have a framed picture of her hanging in my office.

My smartass answer to this poll would be "A Good Idea" by Sugar.

Tame is pretty fucking great, too.

"Silver" – 2:25

No way, it feels about 6 min long. Zzzzzzzzz....

You are all fucking nuts.

I like the one that gets quiet ... but then it gets really loud.

No wait, the one that sounds like Nirvana ... that's the one, man!

Silver's ok by itself. I just find it about a metric ton less exciting than any of the Black Francis songs. Or Gigantic. Or anything on Pod. Or Safari. Or Last Splash. Or Pacer. I haven't heard Title t/k.

u should

it's funny, I have never run across it in a store since right after it first came out. suppose I should send for it.

Doolittle's first side is SO much better than the second. Once La La has played, I shut it off.

Have you ever heard "Hey" and "Gouge Away"?

Yeah, I should give Gouge another chance. But Hey, yawn.

I think Silver is great, Dan.

aren't you really into radiohead or something

And?

and Dan hates Metal Box

...OK?

and you both like Silver

uh huh

intersting.

indeed

"Mr. Grieves" because it's like an epic in two minutes.

gouge away or hey

in truth, i find a little over half of these tracks a little underwhelming these days.

Do have anoth-a-pinion?

http://www.imagingallthepeople.co.uk/prints/monkey_gone_to_heaven.jpg

Wow, this is truly one of the hardest decisions I've ever faced, it's like a 10 way tie for me. . .

I'll vote for There Goes My Gun, because of my not being able to get that melody out of my head on that fateful grade 8 field trip to Montreal when I bought Doolittle.

Wow. Looks like you guys are forcing me to vote for I Bleed.

i thought I'd be the only one to vote for Gouge Away, glad to see all the love.

I like Hey too. which sounds like the Stones to me

I Bleed

"Here Comes Your Man" = great pop song
"Hey" = AWESOME
"Debaser" = my pick

For sentimental romantic reasons I'm going to vote for "Hey!", although I've a demo/Peel version of it that is a lot better than the one on the album. Has a little more emotion in it somehow.

It was pretty much a 4 or 5 way tie, so I just voted for "Hey". I'm sure I'll change my mind in an hour. It's not perfect, but I still love this record.

Hey. and then Gauge Away.

monkey, because it's the only one of these songs that resonates with me at all anymore

Yeah its weird, I loved the Pixies completely, but I just don't listen to them anymore, they're of a time that's faded I think.

way-hey-hey-hey-heyve . . .

i never really think about this band, but looking at this poll, i realise ive a lot of time for wave of mutilation, gouge away, here comes your man, not sure which i'd pick

Suprisingly I think "Hey!" is going to win this based on responses thus far. Interesting.

I just remembered a sweet thing. I had just been to JB HiFi (Aus chain CD store) and was outside it waiting for a tram. These 2 teenaged indie boys came out, with a bag of cds. One of them pulled out "Surfer Rosa" and showed it to his mate and said "this is an awesome album I've heard". This made me happy. His friend took the CD, looked at it and went "hmm.. hey awesome, she has her tits out on the cover".

I felt so old. but in a good way.

"I Bleed"

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

In another era, Debaser and especially Monkey Gone To Heaven would both have been top ten UK hits

That reminds me - there's a cover of Where Is My Mind? by Yoav that reminded me what a fantastic song THAT is (definitely the best on Surfer Rosa):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDM5uHT_34M

from RapGenius.net:

Black Francis told Esquire that “Silver” is,

the only composition that I did with Kim on this session. I think we worked on it a couple of times the previous year or something. I don’t know what it means to her and I don’t know what it means to me. The lyrics are all very vague and vaguely folk-sounding. You can almost hear it’s like a faux-folk song. It’s definitely an abstraction. At least that’s my interpretation of it. It was all about creating a mood I think.

This is a song me and Kim wrote really fast one night sitting around bored in the studio waiting for whatever to happen with the engineers. There were other lyrics that were supposed to have been written for the actual song but all we’d got left were the original phrases that we came up with so that was that.

(Black Francis in the NME, April 1989)

So it's a full music and lyrics collaboration?

That's surprising because "Silver" was also on the Pod Demos. I had always assumed (for some odd reason) that Charles's input regarded elements that were specific to the Doolittle version

Kim wrote the lyrics to Gigantic and it was based on the play/movie, Crimes of the Heart. My memory is fuzzy on this, but a married white woman in the south has an affair with a young black man and in the song the narrator sees them meet up.

Fuck it, let me look it up:

Kim Deal’s ex-husband John Murphy sheds some light on this song’s origin in the 2004 oral history Fool the World:

"Charles came up with the riff, but he wasn’t really sure what the lyrics were going to be, so he goes, “Eh, well, Kim, why don’t you take a shot at it? The only thing I know is that I want to call it ‘Gigantic’,” and she says, “Fine.” So she comes home with it and she’s playing it on the guitar and I said, “Gigantic, okay, maybe it’s about a big mall.” She goes, “Okay, let’s try that for a while,” and I’m like, “The mall, the mall, let’s have a ball.” So I wrote that. It changed to “Hey, Paul”, because it had to rhyme. And then, a couple of days later she had fixated on this Sissy Spacek movie Crimes of the Heart about this farmworker, I think he’s a black guy, and Sissy Spacek and this farmworker get together – so that’s what it’s about. An illicit love affair."

So there are some things to unpack here. His "teeth are white as snow." I assume in contrast to his skin color. And the word "gigantic" in the context of the song?

I tried reading the "Doolittle" 33 1/3 and ... couldn't. Boring subjects, writer not quite up to making something interesting out of them. Which is part of the band's appeal, in a weird way.

So there are some things to unpack here. His "teeth are white as snow." I assume in contrast to his skin color. And the word "gigantic" in the context of the song?

Yeah, after I learned the setting for the song, I no longer loved it in the way I once did (which I really did, because there are almost no songs that include the name Paul).

Palace Brothers - O Paul

Gigantic is cancelled

xxp Big Thief - Paul

a big big pud

uriah hit the crapper
the crapper