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DruggedBunny
= Cult of Ray =
United Kingdom
395 Posts |
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billgoodman
>> Denizen of the Citizens Band <<
Netherlands
6213 Posts |
 Posted - 09/02/2003 : 09:21:56
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so there will be behind the scene footage on the Pixies DVD!
''it's not a box, it's a submarine'' |
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Dave Noisy
Minister of Chaos
Canada
4496 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2003 : 09:58:51
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Sorry for the Mod note:
DruggedBunny - stop subscribing to topics until you've got a working email address. If i get ONE MORE bounced subscription message from your account, i will lock it. Got it? |
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Brackish Girl
~ Soul Eater ~
Ireland
1750 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2003 : 14:43:29
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hey, i don't get any subscriptions!
-Jessie
"deep in ocean blues of absinthe..." |
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NimrodsSon
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1938 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2003 : 15:40:24
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I've always wanted to do this...
Black on track
(Filed: 28/08/2003)
One of the most influential bands of the '80s, Pixies split in acrimony. Now Frank Black, the group's leading light, has re-emerged to deliver a fresh masterpiece. Andrew Perry meets him
Frank Black is a very popular man. A recent TV documentary about his first band, Pixies, started with plaudits from no lesser rock personages than David Bowie, Bono and Thom Yorke. Each effectively proclaimed him the greatest songwriter of the late '80s and a huge influence on their own work. Kurt Cobain also famously confessed that Nirvana was his effort to rip off Pixies.
At the other end of the talent spectrum, my friends are no less enamoured. From the fortysomethings to the relative babes-in-arms, they each expressed awe when I announced that I was off to meet Frank. In the next breath, however, they all wondered what he's up to these days. For an entertainer still so beloved, the obscurity of his current operations defies belief.
Born Charles Michael Kitteridge Thompson IV, he formed Pixies while at Boston's University of Massachusetts. He soon dropped out, renamed himself Black Francis, and, during a six-year career of rapid-fire creativity, created three classic albums of the pre-grunge years - Surfer Rosa, Doolittle and Bossanova. Rock hadn't sounded so alive since the Sex Pistols.
Since he split the band in 1992, his solo records - especially his annual albums with current group, the Catholics - have been greeted with blanket derision, as if to repay him for terminating everyone's favourite band. The criticism hasn't always been without foundation, but his latest one really deserves a warmer reception.
It reminds me of Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. Like Dylan in the early '70s, here is a man cut adrift from his former all-eclipsing credibility, suddenly spurred on by traumatic events in his personal life to reinvent himself via a bruised, country-tinged masterpiece. He has recently separated from his wife, Jean, and the album's title, Show Me Your Tears, is what his therapist said when he arrived for his first session thereafter. The lyrics aren't explicitly about his own plight, but their pain, sadness and anger are real.
Despite the fact that his music has touched so many so deeply, Black, like Dylan, has rarely seemed to give away much of himself. (Perhaps this was what his therapist was driving at.) As I touch down in his new hometown of Portland, Oregon, I have no idea what to expect.
He is an hour late for our appointment because, having just moved up from Los Angeles four days before, he was having his phone connected. Then he locked himself out. The weight of such minor problems, at least, is visibly lifted for him by the presence of his new flame, Violet. Every time they converse, they sink into each other's eyes for a few gooey moments.
It transpires that it's impossible not to have fun in their company, as we cruise around in Black's huge '50s car, a Cadillac Fleetwood the colour of banana flesh. We soak up some of Portland's upwardly-mobile funkiness, some sunshine, some latte and, once the locksmith has been and gone, eventually wind up at the new pad, a top-floor conversion where the two of them are set to engage in what they gigglingly call the "loft lifestyle" together.
Black leads the way down to the courtyard outside for our interview, and I'm surprised how upbeat and animated he remains, frequently touching on the once-sticky topic of Pixies.
"It was all real spontaneous," he recalls fondly. "It came from being exposed to surrealist art films from the '30s and '40s and recognising that there was this whole movement that just went, 'Yeah! This is from my mind! Wooo, here it comes, whatever it is! It makes no sense!' So I was like, 'Here I am, I'm a surrealist!' "
In Black's exuberant, often goofy way of expressing himself, you might readily recognise the author of such Pixies' tunes as Debaser ("Got me a movie, I want you to know/ Slicing up eyeballs, oh-oh-oh-oh!"), a homage to Bunuel's film Un Chien Andalou.
Perhaps his songs were just too surreal, his occasional screams too scary, because, no matter how catchy Debaser or Monkey Gone to Heaven or Velouria were, Pixies never managed to translate their arty coolness into mass sales. It took Kurt Cobain's more direct explosions of angst, not to mention his poster-boy good looks, to achieve that. Towards the end, they became frustrated. Black called time, and started making solo records which, in his own words, "embrace cliche".
He says: "I'd hear Roy Orbison singing, 'Pretty woman walking down the street' and think, 'Wait a minute! That guy's cool and he's just singing some simple little song. I want to be able to do that.' You begin to appreciate things that are more universal and closely related to folk music."
He switched his name around to the more normal Frank Black and began recording his albums live in the studio. To the ears of many, though, this whole process snuffed out the fire in Black's work, leaving just the rather sketchy ashes of what he once was. "We're not trying to be off-the-cuff," he says. "People think that we play one take and 'Aw, that's it!' But it's not like that. It's really intense."
The intensity has reached critical mass with Show Me Your Tears, which lurches between boozy nights and caustic goodbyes with a whole new sense of purpose.
"My wife," Black says, pausing to correct himself, "soon to be ex-wife, I guess - she's always been encouraging me to be more direct and emotional. I've been dabbling with that for a few years, but, of course, there's something about actually breaking up, and going to therapy - it totally makes you [airy-fairy voice] 'Yeah! I need to tell everyone about my life!' And there's also some [forlorn voice] 'Oh, I thought I knew what heartbreak was, but now I really know what everyone's been talking about.' "
Black has spoken very openly about his career for an hour or so, but still I'm struggling to pin him down about the tough stuff: how Pixies split allegedly because he and bassist Kim Deal, now singer in the Breeders, were at each other's throats, and how their failure to reconcile is the main obstacle preventing a Pixies reunion.
Suddenly, Violet appears and sits on Black's knee. He says the arguments weren't as bad as people made out. "You get older," he shrugs, "and things that seemed dramatic and intense 12 years ago seem more laughable now. We keep in contact, but everyone has their own lives."
His past is hard to escape, though, and in these transitional times for him, he was forced to confront his old self sifting through behind-the-scenes footage for a Pixies DVD. "I almost didn't recognise myself," he says. "What an arrogant prick!"
More grist to the therapist's mill, no doubt, but until that audio-visual bonanza arrives, Show Me Your Tears should see the man back on track.
'Show Me Your Tears' is released by Cooking Vinyl on Sept 8.
Next story: Success is sweet for the Sugar Man
External links
FrankBlack.net [fan site]
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DruggedBunny
= Cult of Ray =
United Kingdom
395 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2003 : 16:03:31
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DruggedBunny - stop subscribing to topics until you've got a working email address. If i get ONE MORE bounced subscription message from your account, i will lock it. Got it?
How polite you are. Changed.
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DruggedBunny
= Cult of Ray =
United Kingdom
395 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2003 : 16:09:48
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Re-reading that, I can't fucking believe your tone.
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BLT
> Teenager of the Year <
South Sandwich Islands
4204 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2003 : 16:16:11
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| I can't fucking believe Frank moved to Portland. |
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Jason
* Dog in the Sand *
1446 Posts |
Posted - 09/03/2003 : 19:25:08
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| So does that mean the next album will have a few songs about obscure Portland history? |
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Dave Noisy
Minister of Chaos
Canada
4496 Posts |
Posted - 09/03/2003 : 23:42:21
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Considering how many bounced messages i had to deal with from you (on several accounts), you should simply apologize and put a sock in it. It ain't my job to babysit morons who can't look after their own email addresses. (You should know what i'm talking about.)
I'm not asking for much; when the system and my time is abused, i don't take it lightly. Act like a prick, and you're gonna hear more of that 'tone'.
Thank you for using a legitimate email address. |
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Stuart
- The Clopser -
China
2291 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2003 : 00:30:03
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calm down calm down (said in a Scouser accent).
Bacon....... Its not fantastic |
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DruggedBunny
= Cult of Ray =
United Kingdom
395 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2003 : 07:19:01
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I'm not asking for much; when the system and my time is abused, i don't take it lightly. Act like a prick, and you're gonna hear more of that 'tone'.
Maybe you could notify me via a simple reply to one of the subscribed topics and, I dunno, ask me politely before you take that obnoxious, insulting tone and call me a moron, simply because I forgot to update my email address on one of the many forums I happen to subscribe to.
Fucking prick.
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Edited by - DruggedBunny on 09/04/2003 07:21:30 |
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Dave Noisy
Minister of Chaos
Canada
4496 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2003 : 13:11:48
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You didn't just forget to update your email address, you attempted a few days ago to do it with another email address that didn't work (and which appeared to have SPACES in it.)
And then you subscribed to another topic.
So you want me to notify you via one of your subscribed messages..what..so that i can send yet another bounced messages TO MYSELF?
Forgetting to update your email address does not qualify you as a moron. That's fine, and i didn't have a problem with it.
Attempting to update your account with an illegitimate email address, then subscribing to more topics (gee, why were you unsubscribed?) confirms my claim to your mental abilities, and is a clear abuse of this system.
Why should i be nice to you, after you force me to manually hunt down which topics you're subscribed to TWICE, dealing with all the bounce messages, and witnessing your use of a false address?
If you were running a message board and this happened, just how would you feel, and how would you react? |
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Jettison
- FB Fan -
USA
228 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2003 : 13:32:18
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you two should both fuck off...
the real tradegy here is that this wanker flew all the way to portland and spent an afternoon with frank and all he could reveal is his new girl's name. bring a tape recorder next time asshat!
www.thecroakers.com |
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DruggedBunny
= Cult of Ray =
United Kingdom
395 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2003 : 15:01:18
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quote:
Attempting to update your account with an illegitimate email address, then subscribing to more topics (gee, why were you unsubscribed?) confirms my claim to your mental abilities, and is a clear abuse of this system
I'd be most interested to find out what email address I tried to register since I haven't touched the profile since I joined. You are either full of shit or someone else is 'abusing' your system.
quote:
Why should i be nice to you, after you force me to manually hunt down which topics you're subscribed to TWICE, dealing with all the bounce messages, and witnessing your use of a false address?
I haven't used a false address; it was still set to my old address, james@thesurfaces.net, when I changed it at your 'request'. If I'd known it was set to that sooner -- ie. you'd notified me -- I would have changed it sooner.
I resent being treated like a fucking moron because you're too stupid to simply let me know the email address was bouncing so much (I guess you tried to tell me by emailing me, judging by your obvious lack of smarts in this). Coming out with all this 'false email address' shit really takes the biscuit and proves to me that you have no idea what you're talking about.
The sad part is, I haven't run into problems with *anyone* here, I've posted plenty of relevant stuff -- in fact, I was the first other than you to post on this forum when you started spamming/killing the Abstract Plain list -- and I have never been treated so shittily by anyone before; if only you weren't hidden behind the barrier of The Internet...
I'm not the idiot you seem determined to try and portray me as, but sadly I have learned a hell of a lot about you.
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Dave Noisy
Minister of Chaos
Canada
4496 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2003 : 22:44:00
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I have since deleted the message telling me someone was trying to change their email address, i could be mistaken, but i'm 99% sure it was your account. 'DruggedBunny' is not something i'd mistake. I apologize if i am mistaken, and you've only attempted to change your address once.
>>If I'd known it was set to that sooner -- ie. you'd notified me -- I would have changed it sooner.<<
How was i supposed to let you know? I had an email address that didn't work. I'm not gonna bother telling people that their email addresses don't work. So i unsubscribed your topics.
Then late last week or early this week i got another message from your account, telling me your attempt to change email addresses failed because an illegitimate email address was used. A few days later, more bounced messages.
Can you explain that? And you failed to explain how you would feel in my situation given the experiences i told you i had.
I notified you here on the board, since you had just posted a message.
>>I haven't run into problems with *anyone* here<<
I don't understand why you're getting so defensive - i never said that anyone has any 'problems' with you, short of what appears to me as someone abusing the system.
If you didn't - fine. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. But you have heard (and failed to address) my experience.
Nice of you to accuse me of spamming and killing the AP list (which is clearly ludicrous.) Perhaps you've got some issues you need to deal with.
If this is the most 'shittily' you've been treated on the internet, then consider yourself pretty lucky.
I'd be just as content to tell you this to your face as on this message board. You will not be able to find a single account of me taking advantage of this supposed 'anonymity' the internet provides.
Don't bother posting anymore of your trite platitudes, i won't be responding. Your accusitory and premeditated tones betray your supposed integrity. |
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DruggedBunny
= Cult of Ray =
United Kingdom
395 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2003 : 03:47:41
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quote:
Your accusitory and premeditated tones betray your supposed integrity.
Yes, all very eloquent; I guess it should be suprising I take an accusatory, defensive tone after being called a moron and a prick, told to "apologise and put a sock in it" for an error I was unaware of (and you refused to tell me about), accused of abuse of the forum for reasons that remain a mystery to me given that I've been a fairly 'normal' forum user (posting relevant stuff, not trying to annoy people, etc -- why on earth would I want to abuse the forums?), and generally treated like a dick.
Addressing your experience, I frankly find it hard to sympathise with the bounced emails given the approach you took with me; notified of the problem and treated decently I would have been genuinely apologetic for it and sorted it out as soon as possible.
Ah, well, life goes on.
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MMD
- FB Fan -
United Kingdom
233 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2003 : 05:36:18
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quote:
Originally posted by Jettison
you two should both fuck off...
the real tradegy here is that this wanker flew all the way to portland and spent an afternoon with frank and all he could reveal is his new girl's name. bring a tape recorder next time asshat!
www.thecroakers.com
You do know the Telegraph is a newspaper right? Newspapers generally don't give people audio content being that there are printed on paper and all. |
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Jettison
- FB Fan -
USA
228 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2003 : 09:20:05
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quote:
You do know the Telegraph is a newspaper right? Newspapers generally don't give people audio content being that there are printed on paper and all.
okay, thanks.
www.thecroakers.com |
Edited by - Jettison on 09/05/2003 11:03:18 |
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carsonwerner
= Cult of Ray =
USA
254 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2003 : 10:48:19
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| There's too much hate in this thread. :( :( :( |
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ProverbialCereal
- FB TabMaster -
USA
2953 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2003 : 12:01:37
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Perhaps there is too much hate. Maybe we should ask these questions to ourselves:
WWMTD?
WWGD?
WWtPD?
WWDND? oh... wait...
-Derek |
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Stuart
- The Clopser -
China
2291 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2003 : 18:28:13
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Quality, but where did you get those pictures of Billy Zane?
Bacon....... Its not fantastic |
Edited by - Stuart on 09/05/2003 18:37:00 |
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