| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Daisy Girl |
Posted - 12/12/2004 : 08:38:38
Haven't had a chance to read this yet... but here it is
http://www.usaweekend.com/04_issues/041212/041212pixies.html
Issue Date: December 12, 2004
The Pixies dust off
The reunited alt-rockers are playing to sellout crowds. Is it '80s nostalgia? Or are audiences just hungry for a little untelegenic authenticity?
By Steven Chean
When the Pixies decided to launch a reunion tour a dozen years after disbanding, no one could have predicted it would become one of the year's biggest tours, playing to sellout crowds in every city they hit.
Just look at 'em: Middle-aged, balding, thick in the middle. And how do they sound? Better. Than. Ever. In a culture obsessed with telegenic celebrities that has spawned the likes of Ashlee Simpson and countless other music-lite stars, the Pixies strike a deeper chord.
"I think what a lot of people probably realize is that [the Pixies] could be anybody," says the group's outspoken front man, Frank Black, 39. "We're sort of representative of Joe Blow."
It's a modest statement, a rarity in music today. Turning classic songcraft on its ear with an arsenal of stop-start dynamics, soft verses/ lacerating choruses, melodic pop sensibilities and snarling punk attitude, the Boston quartet (Black, bassist Kim Deal, guitarist Joey Santiago and drummer David Lovering) helped launch the alternative-rock revolution -- a fact made all the more apparent when Kurt Cobain told "Rolling Stone" that when he wrote the defining teen rebellion anthem of the '90s, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies."
Today, "Pixies-esque" influences continue to be heard in bands from art-rockers Stellastarr to the post-grunge group The Used.
With their signature high-energy shriek and push-and-pull lyrical mix, the Pixies' appeal comes from avoiding overcomplicated music-with-a-message, Black stresses. "We had a kind of golly-gee bravado," he says. "We've got this naive thing going on: It's not too perfect, not only technically, but even in terms of the songwriting and the aesthetic. It's not like, 'Oh, yeah, all the songs we did were really genius.' "
Black, who now lives in Portland, Ore., sees few innovators in today's music scene. "Hard-core [rock] and rap music are sort of the last hurrah in the development of popular music," he says. "Everything after that -- and I can't really put a date on it, but sometime in the 1980s -- is a kind of a rehash, kind of a potpourri of everything that came before it. I'm not saying all records after that are bad, but they lend themselves to not being as interesting."
The Pixies have lived on in musical syndication; although they produced only four albums together, a slew of compilations, including live CDs from their nine-month tour, has kept them in rotation.
Playing by the rules has never been a concern for Black, who also has some blunt advice for aspiring musicians: "Don't concern yourself with having a career, record deal, manager or any of that nonsense. You should really only concern yourself with enjoying yourself and playing your music. The rest tends to follow at the appropriate time. When people start to get it backwards, that's when they really mess up. That's why they can't make any decent music -- because they're not connected to it."
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