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pixie punk
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 Posted - 10/11/2004 : 10:24:13
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The Pixies: For love and money
Seminal group reunites for the music, but for the cash, too: Frank Black talks about then and now
Friday, October 08, 2004
MARY COLURSO
News staff writer, mcolurso@bhamnews.com
Ever wondered how Frank Black takes his coffee?
We know: macchiato, double espresso, with a little bit of foam.
At least, that's how he orders it in Columbus, Ohio, on the morning of a Pixies date at Veterans Memorial Auditorium.
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The Pixies' formidable frontman is multitasking at 10 a.m., juggling his cup, a cell phone and questions from a reporter who's entranced by the Pixies.
Of particular interest: the band's Tuesday appearance at Boutwell Auditorium. Unlike most other concerts on the group's hotly anticipated reunion tour, the Birmingham show hasn't sold out immediately.
In places such as Atlanta, Chicago and London, thousands of seats have been snapped up within minutes, and scalpers have been offering tickets for resale on eBay for hundreds of dollars.
Despite slower ticket sales here, the Birmingham date's still on, unlike an Oct. 4 booking in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that was nixed in favor of Columbus.
Black, 39, is pragmatic about the Pixies' site shuffle - you can almost hear him shrugging - and simply says the band is doing better in some cities than others.
The Pixies tour, which runs through Dec. 18, continues to draw rhapsodic reviews from critics, many of whom consider the group's reunion the biggest rock 'n' roll story of 2004.
"There's a lot of goodwill toward the band," Black says. "I don't want to compare us to the Beatles, but we do have a lot of well-wishers, including some in the ranks of journalists."
He's understating the case in his serious, cordial voice - which, by the way, sounds very different from the shrieking, barking, screaming Frank Black beloved by fans of the Pixies.
Among those in the know, an excited groundswell of support has been building ever since Black (born Charles Michael Kittredge Thompson IV) unexpectedly announced on a radio show that he'd be bridging a 12-year gap and playing again with former band mates Kim Deal, Joey Santiago and David Lovering.
Black, who used the stage name Black Francis during his first go-round with the Pixies, roughly 1986-1992, had dissolved their partnership by fax, turning a buzzworthy college-rock quartet into an underground legend.
Although all four band members pursued solo careers, Pixie dust clung to them tenaciously. And, after the Seattle music scene exploded into a national phenomenon, the Pixies came to be regarded as alt-rock pioneers, fashioning a distinctive staccato style — strolling verses followed by slamming choruses — that influenced dozens of bands, including Nirvana.
Legendary, too, were the tales of creative tension between Black and bassist Kim Deal, both of whom wrote songs for the Pixies and wanted to chart its direction. Their angry differences contributed to the Pixies' split, and until recently, lasting bitterness was said to doom any hopes for a Pixies reunion.
Black had some frank comments on that score, and on other matters pertaining to the Pixies, during a 40-minute interview:
Q: How will you prevent the bad feelings and burnout that caused the Pixies' demise the first time?
A: Wisdom, I suppose. There were a lot of factors at work the first time around. As you get older, you learn to do stuff differently. You learn how to sleep. You learn how to take care of yourself. You become less arrogant. When you're in your 20s, you're a screaming idiot. Things are a lot easier now that we're older. We're people who've found themselves. We're at peace.
Q: Will the tour really end in December, or do you plan to keep it going?
A: Right now, we're booked through December. There's a chance that we'll go out next summer. Some of us are having babies and things, so we're trying to work that out. We may go the family bus route. Joey just had his second child — well, his wife, did, of course.
Q: What about your family?
A: I am in a new family situation. My new girlfriend has two children, and we are expecting a child. So I don't necessarily want to be gone for three or four months.
Q: You like kids?
A: Oh, yes. We're having a grand time. I'm getting quite good at making pancakes.
Q: What are your feelings about touring?
A: I love it. I think that's probably half of a musician's addiction to the lifestyle. There's the romance of being in a place: "Hey, here I am. I've just come off the long, winding, mysterious road." Then: "Oh, gee. I must be going now. The wind is calling me." There's a romantic concept and you feel it.
Q: Are the reunited Pixies a different band on stage?
A: Not much, really. We're all slightly better musicians, and I think our shows are more consistent than they used to be. It's not necessarily a bad thing for a young band to have a lot of train wrecks. It can be kind of charming. But we're more together now.
Q: Some people are confused by the Pixies lyrics, while others say you wrote them in a stream-of-consciousness style. Did you?
A: Well, it was more musical than that. Not just stream of consciousness, but paying attention to rhythm and rhyme and scheme. It's like saying: "Here's a song that doesn't make much sense to you, and if you pursue it, you can find an answer to the riddle." Or not. You can just listen to the way the words sound, the way they roll off the tongue.
Q: In articles about the Pixies reunion tour, writers say things like, "the Pixies are doing this for the money, but we're sure glad they did." How do you respond to that?
A: It's fine, and they're probably saying that because I have made some frank comments in interviews. But it's not as if that's the only reason we did it. You do music because you love it. Maybe your career is successful, maybe your career is obscure, maybe it's a little bit of both — and I think that's how mine has been.
But there's a feeling of, "That's my share; that's my cut; that's where I get the appreciation." The Pixies have been defunct for 11 or 12 years; now we're back on the market. Whatever fee we command, we earned that.
Q: The Pixies never had the reputation of being a commercial band, though, correct?
A: We're not monks. We don't need to be spiritually clear. I mean, I believe music is spiritual. Our aesthetic has always been completely, firmly where we think it should be. It's in a pure place. But there is a business side of things. It's not a crass kind of thing — we don't sit around the hotel counting money. But as a musician, you do want the financial freedom not to have a day job.
Q: Was it awkward when you began performing with your old bandmates?
A: It wasn't really hard to go back to that place. And that's partly due to the personalities of the band members. As different as we all are, we share similarities. There's a tiny subculture from whence we sprang — Eastern seaboard college rock. You just get up there in your T-shirts and play. You don't really do a lot of the rock theater stuff. The ¤'80s mainstream was kind of plastic. Bands like us were playing in these grubby little clubs. We felt we had to be genuine. And we still feel that way.
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