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Originally posted by Carl

She Likes To Watch - Back to Black: A conversation with Black Francis.

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http://www.loudandquiet.com/2010/05/black-francis/

He may be the genius who wrote such captivatingly twisted songs as ‘Debaser’, ‘Gouge Away’ and ‘Bone Machine’, but, as Tom Pinnock discovers, Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV is more interested in talking about iPhone tariff charges and people’s ‘agendas’ than his past glories…

A man who wrote songs about incest and outer space, peppering them with askew rhythms, pidgin Spanish proclamations and that blood-curdling howl, Black Francis is a legend who, with the four albums he wrote for Pixies in the late ’80s and early ’90s, redefined alternative rock, thrilled David Bowie and effectively invented Radiohead and Nirvana in the process.

Seeing a guy any Pixies fan knows only as the singular, crazed freak screaming on ‘Surfer Rosa’ sit down to a genteel drink on the swish rooftop bar of a central London hotel was always going to be weird. However, what was really strange was that the man formerly known as Frank Black seemed keen to avoid the questions any fan would want him to answer and preferred to talk about business models, mobile phones and bakeries…

New album ‘NonStopErotik’ – his 14th solo album proper by our reckoning – is a messy, rugged selection of craggily performed paeans to, unsurprisingly, sex. While it’s nowhere near the sublime treasures of his older work – the less said about the stomach-churning ‘When I Go Down On You’ the better – it boasts some strong, fiery songs and strangely is perhaps one of his most Pixies-sounding solo albums. We decided to start with the obvious enquiries…

—–

L&Q: So your new album ‘NonStopErotik’ has obviously got a very sexual theme to it?

Black Francis: “Yeah, all the songs on it relate to that general theme, but there’s a complexity if you get into it on an arty level or whatever. I wanted to approach it from the point of view of psychiatry or sociology. [Sex] is ‘it’, it’s the thing; it’s the baton of life. [Waiter brings over hot chocolate] I stopped drinking coffee a couple of weeks ago.”

I’ve never seen hot chocolate in a teapot like that.

“This place has class up the ass.”

And I’ve heard the album was all written on a kind of magical guitar?

“You know, I could tell you the tale or whatever, but the short of it is there was a guitar I was given, it was unwanted by myself, and somehow ended up back in my possession a couple of years later, and it went from being unwanted to suddenly being [long pause] given a certain kind of special status, as in, ‘You’re magic, you’ll be the catalyst to make something happen, something great’, and that’s when it all happened, a few days in LA then maybe two weeks in London.”

Is that the quickest you’ve ever written and recorded?

“No. For a record, the fastest I ever did it was two days. It feels good if you can pull it off, something quickly, it suggests prowess or something, or suggests magic, it suggests being in the right place at the right time, all those sort of feelings or thoughts. You always have a few months to have perspective, because there’s no business model that people are doing on a regular basis where you’re going from the creation of stuff you’re working on to its formal release.”

And there’s a film by Judy Jacobs to go with the album too?

“Yeah. I might do a screening of the film and a Q&A and a band performance and then it gets simulcast to other arts cinemas around the country, or in different countries. But the source screening would be here in London. I’m kind of excited about that, about being able to be in more than one place at once. At the end of the day, with people becoming less connected as they get electronic devices, I think the truth of it is that people like to go out and mingle with other people. The live concert scene’s actually pretty healthy, as people just want to get out of their day. And they’ll still have their iPhone with them at the gig, ha! I can see the lights from all the phones when I’m playing a gig.”

You approve of iPhones then?

“Sure, but I’m very disappointed in it internationally. All the stuff is great but they have extremely high premiums to use any of the data on it abroad, not just expensive, but crazy – like they warn you don’t check your email ’cause you might get charged $4000 to get a few emails. Literally, people are getting a $60,000 bill downloading a movie while on holiday in Portugal. The phone works fine and I still do some texting, but all the cool shit that you normally do with it you can’t do. Unless I was like Elton John…”

—–

Talking of money – while most reunions are money-oriented, it’s hard to shake the idea that Pixies’ is more than most – perhaps they’re entitled to milk all the profits they missed out on in the bad old days? Speaking to Black Francis, though, it makes us suspect even more that the band are perhaps just a convenient gravy train to keep their various solo projects solvent. After all, as drummer-turned-magician David Lovering knows, those white rabbits don’t come cheap…

L&Q: You’ve been reformed for about six years now with no new material – are you planning to continue playing?

Black Francis: “Yeah, the phone keeps ringing, so… We’re not soliciting but, like I said, the offers keep coming so we keep saying yes.”

Any talk about new material?

“There’s always talk about that.”

What are you saying about it, though?

“My theory is that the more I talk about it in the press, the less likely it is to happen. It gives the impression that I have a very strong personal agenda that others are not informed of so it creates strain on the band relationship; see what I’m saying? If I’m spouting about, ’see, we’re gonna do this and we’re gonna do that’ the others are like ‘what the…? I didn’t hear about this’. More than ever, there’s nothing to say, and even if there was, if I say it, it’s misunderstood by other people and it just inhibits rather than promotes.”

Well, obviously, I don’t want to cause band friction…

“I know you’re not trying to, but I’m just explaining what’s going on. Some people just think I’m being reticent or something, or whatever, but that’s the honest answer.”

People often talk about Pixies as legends, kind of behemoths of alt-rock – do you ever think you shouldn’t have reformed, to keep some of the mystery there?

“You’re only legends in other people’s minds. From my perspective, you know, you’re just in the band and you didn’t play for a while and now you’re playing again. I don’t personally have a lot of poignant thoughts about, ‘what if this?’ or ‘do I regret this?’, or hypothesising or reflecting. It’s not that there’s no magic in it or anything, but the magic is the playing, the being on stage or in a studio.”

So you don’t think about your ‘legacy’ either?

“You don’t think about it, it stands, either you’re gonna be good or you’re gonna be shitty, that’s the thing about legacy. The only thing I think about in terms of legacy is since I have children I think that they might at some point in their life gain something out of who their father is. Just like if you owned a bakery you’d work really hard in your bakery and you’d say, ‘one day, this is all going to be theirs’…”

Do you see yourself as two separate parts – one as a family man, you know, looking after kids, and the other half writing these weird songs?

“Yeah, it is separate. I create art or rock-art or whatever you want to call it, so it doesn’t have anything to do with my children. Back to the baker analogy, ‘Now that you’ve had children Mr Baker, how are your breads changing? Are you having more confectionary items because of the children?’ Really? You really think I’m going to switch from my black leather rock’n'roll avant-garde, arty-farty kind of scene, that I’m going to somehow let that be affected? I’m too proud.”


Ok, could you signal out a couple of albums that you see as high points in your work?

“The ones that sold the most.”

So ‘Doolittle’ then?

“That’s the best-selling. [So] that’s the best one.”

Really? There must be one that sold nothing that you really like too?

“Yeah, and I like that one too, the one that sold the least.”

But if you really thought like that you wouldn’t make the kind of music you do, you’d try and tailor your stuff to the masses?

“Like I said, it’s all one big album.”

Do you have a handful of favourite songs you’ve written?

“Sure, I have an A list and a B list.”

What’s at the top of the A list?

“It depends on what side of the bed I got up on.”

What about today?

“Today? I haven’t thought about it today until just now. I don’t know. Throw a dart at one, that’s the one.”

‘Alec Eiffel’ just came into my head…

“[Sarcastically] Love it. That’s my favourite one… I’m not very good at hypothetical questions, my personality rejects that. It isn’t that I’m a grump… Some people’s personalities are lighter, they can flow – it’s just some hypothetical scenario that I have to discuss in order to get interesting insights from me. I’m too animal-like, I’m like a snake.”

Let me ask you a more snake-ish question, then. It’s been 50 years since the creation of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), do you think there’s still life out there?

“I think what people, myself included, forget that is equally fascinating, equally haunting, equally interesting, is what if there isn’t? If this is the only thing going on, it really puts it into perspective, that this is the centre; this is an important place, at least for us. I’m not saying that’s the way it is, I’m just saying in theory. There’s distance and there’s space, but it doesn’t mean it’s insignificant; it might be very significant, what’s going on here. And maybe one day the whole place will be flooded with life forms.”

Would you like to see the place flooded with different life forms?

“Of course I would, everyone does. That’s why we go to the movies.”

What if they’re evil, though?

[Silence]

You think they’ll be nice then, the aliens? Because I’d be worried they might enslave the human race or something.

“There’s a fine line between our discussion right now and, ‘oh, let’s write a science fiction script’, do you see what I’m saying? You can only carry that kind of chit-chat so far, then you’re like, ‘What’s the purpose of this?’”

Well, I’m only asking because I think people are interested in what you think.

“That’s what I’m saying – I don’t think [about aliens]. Maybe occasionally, but it’s not like it’s a primary motivator. ‘Tell us more about these aliens that you don’t seem to think about much’, it’s like, ‘Wait a minute…’”

But a lot of your lyrics in the early ’90s suggest you did think about that a lot.

“Like what?”

Well, on ‘Bossanova’, there’s…

“Which ones?”

‘The Happening’?

“Yeah, but you can simplify that and say, ‘He’s singing about aliens’, but it’s also singing about human culture, Las Vegas, it’s moviemaking, I’m just mirroring back popular culture at that time. The fact that I did a few songs doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m obsessed with the topic – it doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts about it either.”

They’re just some songs you wrote then?

“They’re just some songs I wrote. I can’t say, ‘yes, this is the world of thought and forethought and vision and everything that’s behind this song’. No, it doesn’t work like that. Maybe it represents all this stuff, maybe it doesn’t, I just do it. Everyone has an agenda, everyone in this room. That’s not something aggressive, you know? Sometimes when you’re writing a song that’s your agenda, but it doesn’t mean that’s your agenda 18 years later – it’s hard when so much time has passed, you can’t even remember. I can’t remember. ‘Was there even an agenda?’”

—–

When someone is denying they were really interested in UFOs when they’ve written at least this many songs on the topic (‘Allison’, ‘Lovely Day’, ‘The Happening’, ‘Old Black Dawning’, ‘Planet Of Sound’, ‘Motorway To Roswell’, ‘Bird Dream Of The Olympus Mons’, ‘Space (I Believe In)’, ‘Distance Equals Rate Times Time’, etc. etc.) it’s clear something’s wrong. Perhaps Black Francis had a problem with talking about Pixies rather than his solo work, perhaps he’d had enough of hypothetical questions after over twenty years of interviews, or maybe he really is as animalistic in his personality as he says he is? Whatever. What is clear is that Black Francis is as difficult and infuriating as geniuses are supposed to be.

By Tom Pinnock

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Originally posted by joe FITZ of molly BANG

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Originally posted by CheekyDan

Not sure if this has already been posted...

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/11129244/frank_black_on_the_road_again

And now Im gonna sing the Perry Mason theme....

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i've read three different articles quoting him as saying the FIRST song he played pubicly was by this particular person.

steve cropper
woody guthrie
elvis (Song of the shrimp)

which is it?

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my band: www.myspace.com/mollybang

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Originally posted by joe FITZ of molly BANG

really? the first violent femmes album is in my top 25 fave albums of all time. so good and ahead of it's time. 1982!

________________________________
my band: www.myspace.com/mollybang

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AD: On your excellent “Hitting The Ground” album, you have worked with a glut of outstanding performers that would make other artists green with envy. If you had to pick one standout track, which would it be and why? Also, did you give each artist a guideline for how you wanted the tracks to come out, or is it totally their own interpretation?

GG: Thank you for enjoying ‘Hitting The Ground’. There isn’t one track that’s most special to me. I could make an argument for each one. For example ‘Run’. When I heard Frank Black sing this I thought, and still do, that this is one of my favourite lead vocals of all time. With some artists we discussed how to approach the song and with others nothing was discussed except here’s the song and do you want to do it. Anyone that likes any of these artists I believe will really like what they do on this record. In sports lingo: they are all “on top of their game” or “in the zone”.

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Originally posted by fbc

Not Frank, but Frank. You'll see what I mean.

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ALONE TOGETHER
Violent Femmes Frontman Gordon Gano Goes Solo -- With Some Friends in Tow

Never one to do the expected, Gordon Gano took an unusual approach to his first solo album away from the Violent Femmes. Hitting the Ground is a collection of songs Gano wrote for David Moore's film of the same name, almost all of which are sung by others, in this case all-stars including PJ Harvey, Lou Reed, John Cale, They Might Be Giants, Mary Lou Lord, and Frank Black. The songs were inspired by the film, but the collaborative pieces are held together by Gano's smart and funny songwriting and propulsive straight-ahead rock 'n' roll sensibility. Barnes & Noble.com's Steve Klinge caught up with Gano to find out how Hitting the Ground got off the ground -- and to get the skinny on Rhino's recent deluxe reissue of Violent Femmes' classic debut album.

Barnes & Noble.com: What's the relationship between the album Hitting the Ground and the film?
Gordon Gano: The music was originally written for the movie, and most of it is in the movie but some of it isn't. The movie was done a little while back, and it never got a theatrical release. In my view [the album] is not a soundtrack. This may be completely wrong thinking, I guess, but I always think a soundtrack would involve some of the scoring for the movie, and this is just the songs from the movie.... When I wrote it, I wrote it with the possibility and the hope that these songs would stand apart from the film.

B&N.com: Many of the songs are loud and rocking. A song like "Run" would overwhelm anything else that was going on in the film.
GG: [laughs] Yeah, I'm trying to think right now of the scene in the movie when that happens. Obviously, there's a lot of energy going on right then. You know what, I'm willing to bet somebody's running. Brilliant guy that I am, I'll write a song called "Run" because somebody's running. Actually, I'm sure. That had to have been it!

B&N.com: And you ran with the idea.
GG: Right, right, that's it. And got the perfect person to do the vocals. That's one of my all-time favorite lead vocals that I've ever heard, is Frank Black on that song. He took that song to a place that I don't think anyone could have done it better.

B&N.com: He sounds like he's hyperventilating.
GG: Every song and every artist, there's always some story about it. In this case, I was on tour in Australia with Violent Femmes when Frank Black became available. So Warren Bruleigh, who co-produced the record, went from New York to L.A. and got in the studio and did it. I wasn't there, but I heard a lot of stories. The engineer in the studio wanted to stop: From what I'm told, Frank Black would actually go running at the microphone, and it turned into some very physical event when he was doing it, and the house engineer was like, "Somebody stop him!" And Warren Bruleigh was like, "Nobody moves, keep the track rolling. It's okay that it's distorting, it's okay that he's hitting the microphone with his head or whatever." [laughs]

http://music.barnesandnoble.com/features/interview.asp?z=y&NID=581082

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Originally posted by CheekyDan

Not sure if this has already been posted...

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/11129244/frank_black_on_the_road_again

And now Im gonna sing the Perry Mason theme....

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« Je ne suis pas Madonna mais j’essaie »

Une compilation en juin, un nouvel album, Bluefinger, en septembre : le programme de Frank Black est chargé cette année. Malin et bien déterminé à faire parler de lui en dehors de la reformation des Pixies, il a décidé de reprendre le nom d’artiste qui l’a fait connaître : celui de Black Francis. Rencontre avec un boulimique de musique qui n’aime pas trop réfléchir et change régulièrement de musiciens (« je ne choisis pas les meilleurs mais ceux avec qui je vais pouvoir m’entendre et réussir notre mission commune : faire un bon disque »).


Tu n’arrêtes jamais de donner des concerts, de sortir des disques. Tu es infatigable ?
Pourquoi j’arrêterais ? Je ne sais rien faire d’autre que de la musique. Je ne vais pas aller en mer avec mon yacht. Je suis un troubadour. Et puis, combien de disques ont sorti Lou Reed, Neil Young ou Elvis Costello ? Si c’est bien pour eux, alors c’est bon pour moi, non ? Quand tu as beaucoup d’énergie, il faut t’en servir.

Tu as quatre enfants, c’est facile de rester actif tout en ayant une vie de famille ?
Pas vraiment mais, en même temps, j’utilise mieux le peu de temps dont je dispose. Il m’arrive de courir au studio et je n’ai rien à enregistrer. Je demande à l’ingénieur du son : « prépare moi le micro, j’aurai une chanson dans une minute ! ». Avoir une famille, ça te force à être bon, à travailler très vite. J’aime avoir ce genre de contraintes. J’ai un autre projet avec ma femme, on s’y met quand notre fille au pair s’occupe de nos enfants. On court au studio et on tape rapidement sur nos instruments. On fait de la musique sans y penser – enfin, surtout moi. Ça sonne très pop et aussi très brut parce qu’on joue tout nous-mêmes.

Ton nouvel album, Bluefinger, a été enregistré en cinq jours…
Je sais comment ont été conçus certains disques des sixties que j’adore. Les jazzmen, par exemple, enregistraient très rapidement. Frank Sinatra en un jour : « allez, les gars, on y va. Il est cinq heures, j’ai une fête ce soir ». Quand tu travailles rapidement, parfois ça marche, parfois non.

Ça t’est déjà arrivé de mettre à la poubelle des chansons ?
Non, j’en fais un disque, ha ha ! Malheureusement, je n’ai aucun recul sur mon travail. Mais je ne crois pas non plus avoir des regrets.

Tu reviens avec quelque chose de plus rock après être allé à Nashville pour tes précédents disques, plus country, folk ou soul…
En allant à Nashville, je voulais simplement marcher sur les pas du Dylan de Blonde On Blonde. Personnellement, je n’avais pas besoin de revenir au rock. Mais mon public si, il en avait marre de Nashville.

Bluefinger est consacré au musicien hollandais toxicomane (un temps fiancé à Nina Hagen) Herman Brood. Pourquoi ?
Je regardais sur youtube de ses concerts tout à réfléchissant à de nouvelles chansons – mon nouveau manager me demandait un inédit pour mon best of. Rien n’a été planifié, il faut accepter ce genre de choses. Avec les Pixies, on lutte pour enregistrer un nouvel album, on dépense beaucoup d’efforts à discuter entre avocats interposés. Comme dit ma femme : au lieu d’aller vers l’énergie négative, va vers la positive !

Tu savais en reprenant le nom de Black Francis que tu allais faire parler de toi…
Bien sûr. Comme tout le monde, je sais comment manipuler les médias. Je ne suis pas Madonna mais j’essaie. Je ne pense pas que tout le monde accepte cette manipulation mais pour beaucoup ça va être : « Black is back ». Il faut savoir se venger des journalistes : ils trahissent mes mots, mentent.
Alors, je joue un petit jeu !

C’est vraiment ton père qui a trouvé, au début des Pixies, le pseudonyme de Black Francis?
Oui, je cherchais un nom de scène et c’est ce qu’il m’a proposé. J’ai dit : « ok, ça sonne bien ». Et je ne me suis pas livré à une analyse. Est-ce que je t’ai dit que j’étais un serpent ?

Heu non. Comment ça, un serpent ?
Je suis né en 1965, l’année du serpent. Le serpent ne regarde pas la route en se disant : « voici ma vision artistique ». Il n’a aucune perspective de son environnement, il sent juste ce qu’il y a sous son ventre et réagit à ce qui se passe. Depuis que j’ai compris être un serpent, ça me permet de me défiler pendant les interviews. Si on me demande à quoi je pensais en reformant les Pixies, je réponds : « je ne sais pas, je suis un serpent ».

Tu n’a donc aucune vision à long terme ?
Non, je n’aime pas regarder vers l’avant. Les managers et promoteurs essayent toujours de me projeter dans l’avenir. Moi, je veux juste penser à aujourd’hui, demain, et peut-être la semaine prochaine. Pour moi, plus loin ça devient abstrait.

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