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Frog in the Sand
-+ Le premiere frog +-
France
2715 Posts |
 Posted - 06/28/2005 : 08:31:00
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http://www.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=3547771
Hope it's not a repost.
FRANK BLACK: Perfectly Frank
By Kory Grow
Frank Black's on top of things. By 9:30, the Pixie-turned-papa has already made pancakes and lunch for his kids and has whisked them off to school. Before he begins tromping le monde for another month, he's found some time to unload his rootsy new solo record, Honeycomb (Back Porch-EMI). Recorded a week before the first reunion show, the album features session men such as guitarist Steve Cropper, who co-wrote the first song Black ever played, Wilson Pickett’s "In The Midnight Hour."
What did you talk about with your session men?
I was like the kid, so I didn't really try to instigate a lot of conversation with them [laughs]. It was much more interesting anyway to just sit back and listen to them have conversations. Both me and the producer just kind of sat there grinning because they were just saying all that classic stuff. When you're around all these legends, if you're into rock trivia, it's good to just shut up and listen to what they’re talking about, because chances are they're talking about how it really went down when they recorded "When A Man Loves A Woman." Stuff that you’re probably not going to read in a book.
"Song Of The Shrimp" was in Elvis's Girls! Girls! Girls! Did Elvis play a role in your decision to cover it?
Well, I still haven't heard the Elvis version of that song. I heard it from a Townes Van Zandt recording. It's just a live nightclub performance, with all these pregnant pauses and stumbles and little side-banter. It's very funny. Any time I did a radio spot [with the Catholics], like I'd be in Switzerland talking to some DJ about, [compressed DJ voice] "So Frank, tell us about the Pixies" or something. And I'd be like, [party guy voice] "Hey man, whoooo!" Radio people just want you to make noise. They don't care what you do. So I'd always have my guitar with me, and I would always somehow work in the shrimp song. I used to even have them translate the lyrics for me in their native language. I would play a line and kind of whisper it in their ear, then they would do the line. I was always just goofin' around with the song in some way.
I did this acoustic version at a gig in Boston a couple of years ago, and I made it into a sadder, darker song. When I did that, it definitely became my own, as far as I was concerned. Anyway, I thought some of the guys that played on the record have played with Elvis, actually, and certainly understand the music of that era. So when I ended up playing with them, there was no talk about how we were gonna do it. They just played it at this rockin' tempo. The way that they played it, coincidentally, sounds very "Elvis backing band." There's just something about it that has this kind of fast, shuffley kind of thing. I don't know what the Elvis version sounds like, but it's much closer now to the original, I would imagine, in some strange way. I gotta go rent that.
Regarding Honeycomb’s "Sing For Joy," you said, "No matter how shitty things get, you just have to do a little dance." How long did it take you to realize this?
I guess it feels like something I've believed probably all along. I probably wouldn't have been able to say something like that very convincingly until about the time I wrote that song. Life experience definitely adds to the weight of that. It's one thing to recognize something as potentially very truthful than to actually go through a bunch of shit in your life. I've listened to I’m Your Man by Leonard Cohen many times over the years. I don't know how old he was at the time, probably in his mid-50s. But there's definitely a lot of great lines in that record that a 25-year-old man might come up with, but it just wouldn’t ring true the same way. Hearing a 55-year-old guy [sing], "I ache in places where I used to play," it has weight. It has credibility.
In a recent interview, Joe from the Queers said you "mentioned how, for all the noise about the Pixies' musical genius, the point of the band was mostly to drink beer and get laid."
I never said that. I would never say that. That is exactly the sort of sentiment that I just looove. That sort of, [druggy rock-star voice] "Yeah man, I just got in the music business so I could meet girls." I hate that. I'm not saying we took ourselves seriously when we started, but we certainly took the whole concept seriously. Starting a band and making a record: we took all that seriously. We tried really hard. The reason we did that was music.
Do you feel a need for a new Pixies record?
I think there's a need for it when we become bored with playing our old hits, but we still want to do gigs because we enjoy it, and we enjoy earnin' the dough and stuff. I think if we want to continue to do it and not feel like being hacks, I think we'll say, "Okay, let's go. Let's try to prove ourselves one more time and make a really killer record."
What has the Pixies' touring atmosphere been like?
I don't think that it was super-crazy or wild or weird or tense or extreme in any way before. Touring with the Pixies is always a little laid back. We were younger and there was probably alcohol, so now we are older and there's not the backstage shenanigans stuff. I think it's just more mellow.
Now that the Pixies have reunited, are there any bands you'd like to see get back together?
Maybe the Jam? They've got a nice repertoire. I think a lot of people, in the States anyway, became fans a little bit after the fact. By the time I got around to listening to them, they had already broken up. It's pretty high-energy music. I'd go see that.
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Another recent interview (in English :)
