| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Carl |
Posted - 07/05/2006 : 08:59:03
http://www.xpressmag.com.au/archives/2006/07/frank_black_the.php
FRANK BLACK - The Nature Of Me
He's enigmatic, charming, mysterious and
off-kilter. Just like his songs.
"Hold on," he says down the line from
Oregon. "I can hear a car tooting, which
means my little boy has found a set of keys
and he's setting off the alarm out on the
street. Hey… Jack!"
Frank Black may have finally reunited the band that started
thousands more bands, The Pixies, in 2004. That reunion continues
on and off to this day - they're doing a European festival run at this
very time - but the man himself is insatiable as a songwriter.
He's just released a new LP, Fast Man Raider Man, a double album
thatincludes more work from sessions recorded in Nashvillewith
producer Jon Tiven. It is, in many ways a direct follow up to his 2005
Nashville produced and recorded LP, Honeycomb.
For Frank Black it's always about the next song, the next album.
People praise his work (particularly that of The Pixies) to the
heavens, but one gets the feeling he finds that praise to be rather
faint. Even as he talked about his new album, one got the feeling that
Frank Black was thinking about newer chapters. May there be many more.
By BOB GORDON
Was Fast Man Raider Man going to be a double-album from
the get-go?
Pretty much every time you make a record it's a possibility. It starts
getting talked about well before you even have that much material. Then
maybe, for whatever reason you do end up recording that much material,
it still posits the question `should I or shouldn't I?'
I don't know how valid it all is… it's a double, it's two-CDs but if I
had one song less it would have been on one CD, but it still would
have been a long record. It still would have been called big, or
long. I guess my point is that the format is breaking down, from
LP to double LP. I'm not sure how much it all means.
But it's definitely… long. There's lots of songs on it (laughs).
So it's about the entity, not the format?
Well I would have been happy to release two different records, but the
record company, they want to sit on that stuff for too long. They're like
`we don't want your records to be competing with each other, we'll
release one now and another one in a year'. I don't want to do that, I'll
want to release another record in a year and that one might be double
album, you know? I'm always just like `well how do I get this stuff out?'.
I've done lean and mean before, the last record and the one before that.
So I was kind of due for a large portion.
This seems to be viewed as your Nashville era by many writers
and fans. Is this album the spiritual successor to your last LP,
Honeycomb or is it about the bigger picture?
I guess I see it that way, if I allow myself to conceptualise that much. It
reflects work with mostly older session musicians, the bulk of whom
work
in the Nashville area. Now a lot of them aren't originally from Nashville
and have reputations that take them back to Detroit, Memphis or places
like Mussel Shoals, Alabama. But hey, it's the big music city in the United
States, there's New York, there's LA and there's Nashville.
Of course for a lot of people Nashville means country music. And it's true,
it is kind of the capital of country music, but there's a lot of different music
that takes place in that part of America. It's really a crossroads kind of
area that has a lot of blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, soul, bluegrass,
folk… music that's really black and music that's really white kind of all
mixed up together. It's all alive and around there. A lot of people play
around there, the standard of playing is very high in Nashville. There's a
lot of songwriters floating around, a lot of people trying to sell their song.
A Perth songwriter who records under the name Bob Evans did
his album last year in Nashville. He's said it wasn't so much a
country influence he felt there, more the influence of a huge
musicality in the area.
Yeah, it's totally addictive. You work with these guys, you go all day and
they tell you good night at the end. But they're not going off to some
party, they're not going off home to go to bed, they're like going off to
another recording session (laughs). Or to go play a gig at some club.
They're constantly playing. That's what they do there - they play, they
play, they play.
And it shows because they all can play the shit out of anything (laughs).
But that can go both ways, it can be a really beautiful, wonderful thing; but
everyone knows it can also be a stale, soulless thing. It all depends on
what you do with it.
It's a wide and great line up of people - Levon Helm, Cheap
Trick's Tom Petersson, Al Kooper, Steve Cropper, Spooner
Oldham. Were you able to establish a communal feel with them?
Was that important?
No, it was just a recording session with a shitload of people (laughs). The
feeling of a session just sort of happens. It is what it is. I don't think that I,
or even the producer, set out to create any type ofatmosphere.
Atmosphere is nice, but it's sort of happens on its own or it
doesn't.
The reason that people have gathered there is to, on a base level, collect
a paycheque. On a spiritual level, they're there to make whosever the
session is - in this case mine - as great as they can. Everyone knows that
we may just make a record that sucks and sinks into obscurity, or maybe
there'll be born a classic record that will set everything on fire.
No one really knows, but hopefully everyone is there trying as hard as
they can. Obviously if everyone's digging the music then it's possible to
record some of that enthusiasm.
This album has songs that didn't `fit' on Honeycomb. Was it a
case of those songs fitting into their new home or that the songs
built the house?
They fit onto this record because there's plenty of room for everybody on
this one (laughs). We're letting everybody in, you know what I mean? So,
if you've got some problem tracks left over from your previous record -
you didn't love 'em enough or they didn't shine strongly enough to make it
on there - you still have a soft spot for them. There's still something about
those tracks that you like. If they were really weak, or there was really
something wrong with them you go `okay, we're re-doing that'. But
sometimes a track is right there on the fence. Like if it sounded any
worse, or the performance was any worse, or it somehow didn't shine
enough it would fall on the side of the fence that it would get re-recorded.
There's a few songs like that, I had a soft spot for them. So hey, double
CD - there's plenty of room for everybody. C'mon!
Does what's going on around you affect the material you write?
You'd come out of the initial Pixies reunion and also recently
made up a double album of solo b-sides on iTunes. Does
embracing your past have an effect on when you're doing
something that invests in the future?
(Long pause) Umm… I don't think so. I don't know which comes first, the
band or the record, but they both kind of serve each other.
You start a band, you write some songs, you make a record and it does
what it does, then you move onto the next. Sometimes, as in the case of
The Pixies thing, the band was reunited to go and play concerts.
I don't know if that affects what I do on another record, you know what I
mean? It's all part of the same thing and what that thing is, is… what is it?
Being in the music business, I guess. Being a musician.
You seem quite pragmatic about it all. I'd say a lot of other
people are more precious about your music than you are. Is
there some truth in that?
Yeah… but that's my privilege, I suppose. If I want to be aloof, or self-
mocking or whatever that's my privilege as the artiste.
But I always think of the people who listen to me as the King. They're the
King and they hire me to play my little oboe while they seduce their
mistress, or take a bath or eat their grapes. (Assumes posh accent)
`Okay, I'm the King and you, Mr Frank Black, I want you to play your
pretty violin. I want a special song for my birthday!' That's how I sort of
think about them. I write the music and the King says `oh, that thing you
wrote for my birthday, I can't believe it, it brought me to tears. You're
such a genius. I'm going to give you even more money and put you in
better clothes. You're wonderful'.
So then you come along and go `so Frank, tell me about that thing you
wrote for his birthday' and I'm like `I don't know, it's just some old shit I
threw together, but he loves it'. It's not that my music isn't beautiful, the
King says it is. But it's kind of too hard for me to get on the same
wavelength as the King about every song. About every record.
I can occasionally get on the same record and be in awe of my own music,
when I'm making a record, maybe. But at some point after the fact, you
kind of start to get a bit more disrespectful of your own music. It's a little
psychological reaction, I think.
Are you harder on yourself as you go on with songwriting?
It's hard, you try to edit yourself. You try to say `is this good? Is this
ringing a bell?' Then you go ask 10 different people and get at least eight
or nine different opinions (laughs). So it's really hard, sometimes, to make
a decision as to whether or not to go ahead with particular track. If
everyone hates it, you go `okay, alright, everyone hates it, I'll leave it
off'.
But I never really get that kind of reaction to my music. Some people love
it, some people hate it, some people like this song but not that song. The
nature of my records, historically too, if you look at them track-by-track,
there's not one particular genre, or mood, or voice. It's kind of
schizophrenic; it's kind of all over the place.
That's another reason why I allow myself to have a particular expression,
even if it's a little bit nerdy, or dorky, a little bit silly or whatever. Because
the song I'm gonna do next is gonna be really aggressive, then the song
after that is gonna be really mellow. And then, on the one after that, I'm
gonna be really silly again.
People talk like, `Oh, The Pixies! Doolittle! Surfer Rosa!' But if you listen
to those records, there's not one particular flavour that shines through.
Sure, you've got a song like Gouge Away, which is dark and kinda heavy,
but then you get a song like La La Love You. And that's the nature of me.
It's kind of who I am. I'm kind of all over the place.
Will you return to Australia either with a Frank Black band or as
part of The Pixies anytime soon?
I have heard some rumblings about a possible Australian appearance, but
I can't say what it is, or when, or anything. It's just an inkling I heard on
an email today.
Will there be another album by The Pixies?
Well, you really gotta ask Kim Deal about that (laughs). It's actually up to
her. The rest of us are going `c'mon, let's do it. What the hell?' She's kind
of on the fence about it.
She's the King in this case?
She is the King in this case! King Deal (laughs).
Posted on July 5, 2006 08:39 PM
 |
| 14 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Spartacus |
Posted - 07/09/2006 : 23:03:19
Wish these rumblings would hurry up and turn into an Australian tour!!!! |
| fbc |
Posted - 07/06/2006 : 02:13:33
quote:
Originally posted by Carl
quote:
Originally posted by edbanky
Could this the guy who asked for our suggestions on his interview over here?
http://forum.frankblack.net/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16392
Good spot, but I dunno...hodjpokol? This you?
Didn't he say Frank spoke some time signature rubbish? Makes me think this isn't him. |
| Daisy Girl |
Posted - 07/05/2006 : 21:01:10
I think this article is great, thanks Carl.
Good luck with your title :) |
| kathryn |
Posted - 07/05/2006 : 20:23:03
Interesting how this is the second time so far (first being in podcast #10) where he says future Pixiedom is up to Kim.
I’m the only one who can say that this light is mine
|
| Carl |
Posted - 07/05/2006 : 13:43:55
quote:
Originally posted by edbanky
Could this the guy who asked for our suggestions on his interview over here?
http://forum.frankblack.net/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16392
Good spot, but I dunno...hodjpokol? This you?
Join the Cult Of Pob! And don't forget to listen to the Pobcast! |
| edbanky |
Posted - 07/05/2006 : 13:40:18
Could this the guy who asked for our suggestions on his interview over here?
http://forum.frankblack.net/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16392
Anyway, what an excellent interview. The guy knew how to approach el Jefe. Some real quoteworthy stuff. Do we need to rename our "The King Holds Court" thread?
"They, on average, die the same age."
ModulousMember / Posts: 1541 /From: Manchester, UK / Registered: 05-01-2005 |
| pixiestu |
Posted - 07/05/2006 : 13:38:32
Carl is the King!
"The arc of triumph" |
| Ziggy |
Posted - 07/05/2006 : 13:22:07
Thanks Carl, all the same. I love these interviews you find, great job. |
| Carl |
Posted - 07/05/2006 : 12:34:50
quote:
Originally posted by Suicide_Samurai
I say Carl deserves a custom title under his name for his devotion in bringing us the latest articles and interviews whether we want them or not.
Yeah, I'm just shoving them down your throat!!
Join the Cult Of Pob! And don't forget to listen to the Pobcast! |
| Frog in the Sand |
Posted - 07/05/2006 : 11:39:38
The nature of Carl is good :)
-----
 blackolero le only Frank Black / Pixies site 100% in français |
| Cult_Of_Frank |
Posted - 07/05/2006 : 10:04:17
He does indeed. Perhaps he would become less punny as an added benefit? :P
Carl, if you've got a title in mind, let me know.
 "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." |
| Suicide_Samurai |
Posted - 07/05/2006 : 09:25:51
I say Carl deserves a custom title under his name for his devotion in bringing us the latest articles and interviews whether we want them or not. |
| Erebus |
Posted - 07/05/2006 : 09:20:28
Yes, this is a good 'un. More revelations from behind the curtain. Thanks Carl.
|
| fbc |
Posted - 07/05/2006 : 09:06:43
Nice post, Carl. I missed this one during my random searching. |
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