The Pixies return for a fall tour – 'It seemed interesting again'
By Chris Nixon
September 16, 2004
San Diego Union-Tribune
The 1980s stretched across 10 long years, a time when disco and glam heavy metal dominated the charts. But in the late '80s, the Pixies rocketed out of Massachusetts, blowing apart the money-grubbing hairspray posers and the limp balladry dominating the American airwaves.
Despite their short recording career (1987-1991), leader Frank Black and his cohorts churned out five of alternative rock's best albums. The Boston band's gigantic sound set the stage for the grunge revolution, which blew formulaic pop music off the charts for a few years in the early '90s. Nirvana, for one, often apologized for ripping off the Pixies.
DATEBOOK
The Pixies with the Thrills
6:30 p.m. Tuesday; RIMAC Arena, UCSD campus, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla; $36; (619) 220-TIXS.
But in the beginning, there was surrealism. And it was good.
Charles Michael Kitridge Thompson IV's tutelage at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst only lasted a year or two, but the future rock star discovered his passion for the surrealist masters during his short collegiate tenure. Thompson – later known as Black Francis and later still as Frank Black – had his head set afire with maniacal dada musings and surrealist images from the likes of Luis Bu×uel and Salvador Dali. The beautiful thing about Black and the Pixies: they didn't take themselves too seriously, but you knew they meant every nonsensical word.
"It's not like you have to sing a song about what happened to you on the way to the store the other day," says Black from his home in Oregon. "It's OK to make stuff up and rhyme a bunch of words and be crazy and weird."
The Pixies
Hometown: Boston, Mass.
The lineup
Frank Black (vocals, guitar)
Kim Deal (bass, vocals)
Joey Santiago (guitar)
David Lovering (drums)
Discography
"Wave of Mutilation: The Best of the Pixies" 2004 (compilation)
"Pixies at the BBC" 1998 (live)
"Death to the Pixies" 1998 (compilation)
"Trompe Le Monde" 1991
"Bossanova" 1990
"Doolittle" 1990
"Surfer Rosa" 1988
"Come On Pilgrim" 1987
"This ain't the planet of soouwwund!!!!!" yowls Black on the Pixies great 1991 disc, "Trompe Le Monde." The quartet did create its own atmosphere, weather systems and gravitational forces.
Joey Santiago's buzz-tone surf guitar renderings, Kim Deal's ethereal call-and-response with Black's guttural vocal musings and drummer David Lovering's pounding pulse held the maelstrom together.
In 1992, the Pixies' planet of sound fell silent. Deal went on to form the Breeders with sister Kelly. Black had his solo career. Santiago produced and performed in projects like the Martinis. Lovering became a magician.
But a chapter seemed to be missing from the Pixies' story. With a fall tour and rumors of a possible new studio album, 2004 finds the Pixies back to finish the book.
When asked why the Pixies recently rekindled the spark that started alternative rock, Frank Black simply says: "the dough." You get points for honesty, Frank. But to his credit he adds, "And the fact I suppose that it had been a long time since we did it. It seemed interesting again. Before, after five or six years it had started to become boring. Now, we've had this extended sabbatical and it doesn't seem so boring anymore."
Surrealistic pillow talk
Whether telling tales of monkeys ascending to heaven or expounding on the benefits of elevators, Pixies lead singer and vocalist Frank Black explores the non-narrative world of dada and surrealism in his songwriting. Here are the artists and musicians who made Black unreal:
THE DARK DIRECTOR OF MIDNIGHT MOVIES:
David Lynch
Black: "My influences primarily would be from the world of film. The most contemporary guy that had an influence on me as I started to write what was to become my first Pixies songs would be David Lynch and his most famous midnight movie 'Eraserhead.' He is what I would consider a surrealist filmmaker and probably one of the few out there right now. There is not too many times when I walk down to the mall, walk into a film and say, 'Wow, that was a truly surreal film.' So I have to give him a lot of credit.
THE CLASSIC SURREALISTS:
Dali and Bunuel
Black: "I wasn't a real good student and I dropped out, but I was able to extract a few things from that experience. When I was in college, I was into all the classic surrealist film guys, whether it was Luis Bu×uel or Salvador Dali. This is all pretty stock stuff. You learn about surrealist filmmakers from the 1920s and the surrealist art movement."
THE ROCK DADAISTS:
Dylan and the Beatles
Black: "I will give credit to Bob Dylan and the Beatles for being so famous and having such a huge impact on popular music. In the big mainstream kind of way, it was those two artists who really presented the world with surrealist images or a non-narrative type of rock lyric. It became just a part of pop music. Even before I discovered David Lynch, I was a little kid listening to the Beatles or Bob Dylan singing 'Quinn the Mighty Eskimo.' You know, 'Come all without, come all within. You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn.' So it didn't seem unusual to me to incorporate that type of lyric. It didn't really seem wrong to me to pursue something that was non-narrative."
– CHRIS NIXON
With a highly publicized reunion at this year's gigantic Coachella Festival in Indio followed by a hugely successful tour, the Pixies seem to be firing on all cylinders.
Everyone's really enjoying it and everyone's playing really well," says Black. "Kim is singing really great. And I have had some voice lessons, so I don't blow my voice out as quickly as I used to. So I find it pleasurable to be able to keep singing the high notes. Everyone's a little bit better than they were before because of experience."
But will the Pixies return to churning out records a decade after turning the rock world on its head?
"I have no problem with it," says Black nonchalantly. "The gigs are still good and the couple of recording sessions we've had have gone really well. We want to be creative, we don't want to only make money."
Chris Nixon is a San Diego writer.
