quote:

---

BY STUART BERMAN

Back in late 1989, SPIN magazine asked Charles Michael Kitteridge Thompson IV -- better known to Pixies fans as the band's hyperactive frontman, Black Francis -- what the 1990s would bring. He replied: "The rise of the karaoke superstar." Even coming after l'affair Milli Vanilli, the comment seemed more joke than prophecy. Fifteen years later, the only one laughing is Ashlee Simpson, all the way to many banks. Thankfully, we still have the Pixies, making a feral, frantic noise that just can't be lip-synched.

Of course, we didn't have them for about 12 of those 15 years -- after a five-year, five-album run that saw them blast out of the Boston club scene in 1987 to the top of every college-radio playlist around the globe, the Pixies crashed and burned in January, 1993 amid rumours of pent-up animosities and power struggles.

Bassist Kim Deal would go on to nurture her initially successful, eventually unstable Breeders project, guitarist Joey Santiago formed the low-profile Martinis, drummer Dave Lovering became a magician. Thompson, meanwhile, assumed another alias -- Frank Black -- and has released nine albums since 1993 (both solo and with his Crazy Horse-like companions The Catholics) that have gradually refined the Pixies' sci-fi surf-punk frequencies into classic-rock clarity.

And then the next thing you know... the Pixies started touring again this past April. Just like that. Why? Don't ask Thompson -- he's the sort of guy who believes every "why?" deserves a "why not?"

"It just feels like we took two years off," he says. "We're like, 'Oh yeah, how's it going? I can't believe it's already been two years!' Except that it's been 12."

Thompson's calling from Milwaukee, where the Pixies began the second leg of their fall tour last week. They hit Toronto Nov. 24 and 25 at the cavernous, charmless environs of Arrow Hall -- which should make for a strange, dislocating experience for local fans who got used to seeing Frank Black and The Catholics at the Horseshoe over the past five years.

"It's nice to perform in the limelight, I can't deny that," Thompson says of his sudden upgrade from clubs to 5,000-capacity halls. "But that's not why we're here. We're here because there's a demand for us to be here, we enjoy playing music, so let's just do it."

That increased demand speaks to the flipside of Thompson's karaoke-superstar prophecy -- the fact that the label could equally apply to the Pixies' own alt-rock offspring. Everyone from Kurt Cobain to Thom Yorke have credited the Pixies with teaching them how to whisper and scream, and over the past 12 years the spectre of the band's influence has intensified to the point where the Pixies now receive retrospective treatments -- a ceaseless stream of anthologies, B-side collections, BBC sessions and DVDs -- that practically rival the Beatles and Stones.

"It's nice -- I feel validated," Thompson says. "But we're definitely in scraping mode now... which is fine. I have a CD of Neil Young playing a couple of songs in his first surf band from 1962."

Now, Thompson can point to his own career equivalent with the new two-CD set Frank Black Francis (Sonic Unyon). The first disc features 15 all-acoustic demos recorded by Thompson onto cassette Walkman in 1987 and effectively exposes the melodic logic at play beneath the Pixies' shrieks and shocks. But on the second disc, Thompson counters the nostalgia with something new: 13 extreme space-jazz makeovers of Pixies classics recorded last year with trumpet player Andy Diagram and guitarist/violinist Keith Moliné, a.k.a. The Two Pale Boys (the current backing band for ex-Pere Ubu figurehead David Thomas).

The timing couldn't be more fortuitous -- with the Pixies currently selling out concert halls, earning the mass acceptance and financial payback that eluded them in the late '80s, Frank Black Francis liberates these familiar songs from any kind of dated context, reminding us that they had a much different life before we knew them and that they carry possibilities for future transformation.

"If you come away with something as poignant as that, then that satisfies me," says Thompson, who, naturally, has a less sentimental take on the project. "The demos are pretty bootleg sounding, so I just wanted to give the buyer... of the product!... something extra to make it worth his while. I hate to say something like 'I'm just a businessman,' but I am to a certain extent. There's no sentimentality in any of this. I don't want my art to be all sentimental. It can still be arty, creative and passionate and from the heart, without being sentimental or nostalgic. Those aren't really part of my palette."

Thompson's equally unmoved when discussing the origins of "Bam Thwok," the first piece of music from the newly reconstituted Pixies, released last April as an exclusive download from the iTunes store. "It's a really dull story," he groans. Bore me, I say.

"Some music supervisor called our manager from Shrek 2, blah blah blah: 'We think you guys are really groovy, we're big, big fans... we're looking for something kind of adventurous.' We said, 'Sure, no problem, here's a song.' 'Hey guys, we love the song... it's a little too adventurous....' End of story."

Well, perhaps the kids weren't ready for a band famous for songs of mutilation and Buñuel-inspired eyeball-slicing. Not that Thompson cares what the kids think -- lately, he's been having too much fun hanging out with old guys. His next, already completed solo album, Honeycomb, was recorded in Nashville with a living, breathing history of rock: Steve Cropper, The Band's Levon Helm, Cheap Trick's Tom Peterson, Small Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan and Funk Brother Bob Babbitt, among others. Being surrounded by veterans has taught the 39-year-old Thompson that the prospect of still singing "The Holiday Song" onstage at age 60 isn't necessarily something to fear.

"Why not, I ain't going back to shipping and receiving," he says. "Who gives a fuck how old I am? Leonard Cohen's 70 years old -- amen, hallelujah, that's what I say."

And then, in his best "you fucking die!" voice, he adds: "Fuck all these stupid motherfucking young people! Stupid in the head, fucking tight-pants-wearing jive bullshit, you know what I'm saying!

"Seriously," he continues, reverting to his casual elocution, "I don't like that whole old versus young thing. Look at Tom Waits. He's got a lot of records, that guy... if I could just get him to produce the Pixies, I would be happy."

---