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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/13/2004 :  03:54:22  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
i found an old new musical express (when it was still called this) article from 1989 where among other things, frank describes the origins of each of doolittles' tracks.
there are many of these kinda things complied around the net, but i have never seen these exact ones reproduced anywhere.

anyone interested if i type them up?



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Edited by - benji on 01/13/2004 03:59:58

Cheeseman1000
>> Denizen of the Citizens Band <<

Iceland
8201 Posts

Posted - 01/13/2004 :  04:54:31  Show Profile  Visit Cheeseman1000's Homepage
Surely they're on Alec Eiffel? Paste a link, save yourself some trouble.


"I joined the Cult Of Cheese/E-Damn!"
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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/13/2004 :  05:01:10  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
nah, i had a look at alec eifel, and they aren't there.
which was quite a suprise to me.

seeing as they've got a pretty comprehensive "song titles" page, some of these nme ones are similar, but from just a quick glance, others tracks, like HCYM, are almost ignored on alec eiffel but get a full descritpion in the article.

what i think i'll do is scan for any that are a bit scant and type those ones only....
cause i'm a lazy fucker and certainly don't just wanna repeat what otherwise is easily available.
and anyways, it'll give me something to do at work.


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vilainde
>> Denizen of the Citizens Band <<

Niue
7438 Posts

Posted - 01/13/2004 :  05:41:33  Show Profile  Visit vilainde's Homepage
You lazy fucker!
Just kidding. Thanks for sharing the info.


Denis

"I joined the cult of Cult of Frank/Turns out he's the stupidest person on Earth"
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Jettison
- FB Fan -

USA
228 Posts

Posted - 01/13/2004 :  07:31:43  Show Profile  Visit Jettison's Homepage
i'd like to see what he said about each of the tracks.

can you scan it on to your computer? if so e-mail me and i'll write it up for posting.

thanks.
-jet black river

www.thecroakers.com
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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/13/2004 :  07:40:57  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
sorry, no scanner available to me...
will probably have to get drip-feed to the forum depending on how much time i can get away with wasting at work on it...

i'll just start tommorrow and see how it goes...

thanks for the offer tho.

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billgoodman
>> Denizen of the Citizens Band <<

Netherlands
6009 Posts

Posted - 01/13/2004 :  10:06:56  Show Profile  Click to see billgoodman's MSN Messenger address
Hey, type it please, this is very interesting!




"I joined the Culf of Frank/ And now I do not know what...to do"
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STITCHES
= Cult of Ray =

USA
915 Posts

Posted - 01/13/2004 :  10:15:18  Show Profile
yeah, I want to see

------------------------
MY LOVE IS LIKE A TICKING CLOCK--BERSERKER!
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUCK MY COCK--BERSERKER!
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PixieSteve
> Teenager of the Year <

Poland
4698 Posts

Posted - 01/13/2004 :  10:17:59  Show Profile
man, i read this at school, but only very briefly, and so after school i went and bought NME expecting there to be this Doolittle song discription thing. haha, i'm such an idiot.
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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/14/2004 :  01:28:45  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
well i forgot to bring these to work today, so it'll have to wait to tommorrow.

ah, the suspense.....

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Mr Grieves
- FB Fan -

88 Posts

Posted - 01/14/2004 :  07:01:40  Show Profile  Visit Mr Grieves's Homepage  Click to see Mr Grieves's MSN Messenger address
Cool, looking forward to seeing it!

They got a ranch they call No. 51!
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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/14/2004 :  07:03:23  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
quote:
Originally posted by PixieSteve

man, i read this at school, but only very briefly, and so after school i went and bought NME expecting there to be this Doolittle song discription thing. haha, i'm such an idiot.



HAHA!!
you bought NME..
you are now an idiot twice over.

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PixieSteve
> Teenager of the Year <

Poland
4698 Posts

Posted - 01/14/2004 :  07:44:52  Show Profile
*hangs head in shame*
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Douglas
= Cult of Ray =

Sweden
308 Posts

Posted - 01/14/2004 :  07:47:40  Show Profile
looking forward to reading it!
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a guy in a rover
= Cult of Ray =

United Kingdom
535 Posts

Posted - 01/14/2004 :  13:21:00  Show Profile  Click to see a guy in a rover's MSN Messenger address
Yeah I'd love to read that?
Is it ever gonna materialise?
Plus, what site is the best to read shit like that on do you reckon?
Is it Alec Eiffel?

"You are the son of a mother fucker"

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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  01:44:44  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
ok, i remembered to bring the article to work today...
so here goes the drip feed of the songs...
i decided to do them all for completeness - althought many will shed no light on what is already knwown....
ah, it's a slow day...

all the following quotes are taken from the article "Takling with the Animals" published in New Musical Express, 22nd April 1989, pages 44, 45 & 49

Debaser:
There’s a cord progression, that’s the first thing. Then a word or a phrase at the most. Then a topic evolves around that. I thought of Un Chien Andalou and I thought an arty French movie was an equally dumb thing to write a song about.
Debaser fitted well because at the time of the movie the Parisiens were ripping up their seats in the theatres because of another film and the point of Un Chien Andalou was to debase morality. To debase standards of art. The classic film school shot is the razor slicing across the eyeball. Eyes are the main way people communicate; you can hold unspoken conversations. I guess that it’s the most important part of your body unless you’re talking to a blind person.


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  01:55:19  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
Tame:
I don’t want to sound like a male chauvinist, but I have a male perspective, because I am male. ‘Tame’ is about women more than men. But the way some men treat their hair it’s incredible and I can[‘t] understand all that deodorant and stuff. I’ve never related to it. My family’s rather spartan.
It’s about putting all that time into sexual presentation. I don’t mean it in a dirty kind of way. Where I live in the city, women spend time presenting themselves and still come out forever bland and mediocre.


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  01:59:36  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
I Bleed:
In the first two verses there’s no topic whatsoever; all this is just a rhyme structured AABCBDD. It’s all very automatic. The rest is about Arizona. There’s a very famous cliff dwelling there, with two or three storey houses about a mile up inside these cliffs. It’s about 900 years old and you can still see the handprints from the people who pressed the plaster onto the walls. And you can take your hand and place it in the print and it’s very wooh.


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  02:23:38  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
Wave of Mutilation:
Mostly I try to stick with more physical imagery just because it’s more tangible mentally than he or she or it, like ‘Little Red Corvette.”
The first line is a joke on The Beach Boys and Charles Manson. They hung out together and all that. And he wrote this song called ‘Cease To Exist.’ And supposedly The Beach Boys used a lot of his lyrics and gave him a sports car or something. And they had this boys loved girl song where they went ‘cease to resist’ and changed his lyrics around. They couldn’t have ‘cease to exist’ because it was all powerful suicide stuff! He’s just some glorified charismatic figure like Hitler. But he does say some interesting things, he’s a result of something but I don’t know what.


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  02:46:59  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
Here Comes Your Man:
This is a pre-Pixies song that I wrote when I was about 15. It’s about wino’s and hobos travelling on the trains who dies in the California Earthquake. Before earthquakes everything gets very calm, animals stop talking and birds stop chirping and there’s no wind. It’s very ominous.
I’ve been through a few earthquakes actually ‘cos I grew up in California. I was only in one big one in 1971. I was very young and I slept through it. I’ve been awake through lots of small ones at school and at home. It’s very exciting actually, a very comical thing. It’s like the earth is shaking, and what can you do? Nothing.


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  02:54:44  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
Dead:
This is the story of David and Bathsheba of the Old Testament. King David was on his rooftop one nighttime watching a woman bathing in the nude and he was aroused, I guess. Anyway he sent some men after her and I don’t know whether it was rape or a seduction, but she became pregnant. So David arrange for Uriah, her husband, who was a soldier in his army, to be sent to the battle on a suicide mission. So ‘Dead’ is a metaphor for sex reduced to the most basic; ugly, bad lust with equally bad results.


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  03:32:38  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
Monkey Gone To Heaven:
‘This monkey’s gone to heaven’ is not connected to the rest of the song at all, it was the working lyric and we couldn’t come up with anything better.
I’m not really trying to address any issue: the sky and the ocean are both very ancient, spiritual and mythological places. And I’m just trying to talk about them in surreal kinds of ways: there’s a hole in the ozone layer scientifically, but the unreal side is that there’s a hole in the sky and the sky means alot of things and has alot of implications to lots of people in different cultures in past, present and future, right? Like the man dying from the sludge in the water in New Jersey, is just me getting mythological again. It’s Neptune I picture dying from the pollution.


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  03:36:54  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
Mr Grieves:
It’s about the end of the world I guess. Mr Grieves is the Death character of mythology. The ‘man in the middle’ is Dr Doolittle, because if you could speak to the animals you would be the great link between mankind and the animal world. There’s this theory that if not smarter than us, animals are aware of what’s going on and if we could communicate with them, they could give us the answer of the future and make everything ok. But I’m assuming that a nuclear winter will mean that Mr Grieves is going to win in the end.


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  03:45:56  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
Crackity Jones:
Joses Jones is a roommate I had in Puerto Rico. I lived in this men’s dorm that was half homosexual and I had this really crazy drug addict psycho weirdo guy to share with and this is all about him.
I would be speaking to him in Spanish so everything would be a little vague to me and he kept talking on and on about Paco Picopiedra and La Muneca. I couldn’t work out what he was talking about and it was Fred Flinstone!


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  03:55:26  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
La La Love You:
There is no love in here. Not a drop. I’ve never written a love song. It’s just like an abstract sort of joke; ‘la la love you don’t mean maybe’. It’s just mimicking a really bad 1950’s song or maybe I should say 1980’s. ‘First base, second base, third base, home run’ is a very Shakespearian crass joke in America, a crude joke for full copulation. I’m just being as minimalist as I can, but it conjures up lots of images – well one image I should say.


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  04:00:46  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
Number 13 Baby:
This is a collage of images of when I was growing up in Los Angeles. Number 13 traditionally means bad luck, but in America, especially in the 60’s among bikers and chicanos, the number 13 is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet: M for marijuana.
It’s a really goofy sub culture, but it’s kinda funny, and even today you can see it spray-painted on walls ‘The Meter Boys Number 13’. So it is about a Mexican girl or a Samoan girl, a boyish, sexual, adolescent collage of Southern California living.


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  04:06:04  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
There Goes My Gun:
There’s nothing to this apart from that one line. It’s the hook right? It’s the chorus. I could have written a verse but it sounded cool without the lyrics so it’s much more effective and theatrical. These are just popular phrases I would associate with having a gun, ‘Looka me’ because it’s a position of power. I don’t own a gun, I’m afraid of them.
People keep asking me is this some sort of phallic symbol, you know ‘There goes my gun’, an orgasm. I mean I suppose that could be true but I get the impression that in the literary world anything that is taller than it is wide is a phallic, you know what I mean? I’m just talking about guns I guess. I just want to make a cool rock ‘n’ roll song.


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  04:09:09  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
Hey:
It’s a relationship song about two classic sad figures. Myself or maybe not myself. Uh is the sound of sex and also of childbirth. I dunno I’m just sorta sad about about how sex goes the wrong way in a very basic sort of way and how it results in very amazing things like childbirth and stuff.


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  04:11:25  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
Silver:
This is a song me and Kim wrote really fast one night sitting around bored in the studio waiting for whatever to happen with the engineers. There were other lyrics that were supposed to have been written for the actual song but all we’d got left were the original phrases that we came up with so that was that.


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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  04:15:33  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
Gouge Away:
Yeah, you’ve got it in one. It’s a story about Sampson and Delilah, you’re the first person that’s actually realised - probably because the song doesn’t actually mention Sampson or Delilah. It’s a sort of sex story: Delilah shows up as a secret spy of the Philistines and has an affair with Sampson. I don’t know what he was getting out of it. But enough sex and drugs and relaxation to give up his secrets. Maybe he loved her, I dunno. But they gouged his eyes out in the end.


so thats them all.



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Jettison
- FB Fan -

USA
228 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  06:02:37  Show Profile  Visit Jettison's Homepage
very cool.

thanks.

-jet black

www.thecroakers.com
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Owen
- FB Fan -

USA
165 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  08:55:39  Show Profile
Gr stuff, benji.
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andyn
- FB Fan -

United Kingdom
169 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  09:27:53  Show Profile
Well done Benji, liked that a lot.
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apl4eris
~ Abstract Brain ~

USA
4800 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  10:17:50  Show Profile  Visit apl4eris's Homepage
Wow, my brain feels all floaty now. Thanks very very much benji.

I'm guessing this should be put into that song definitions/meanings database there was talk of a while back?.....was it Jop that was doing that? Also, these could be equally useful in the quotes section...even more bang for your time and effort :)
http://forum.frankblack.net/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3120

(Just a suggestion.)


What da ya want for nothing? ... a rubber biscuit?
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Carl
- A 'Fifth' Catholic -

Ireland
11546 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2004 :  10:42:48  Show Profile

BENJI...
Thank you, thank you, a million times thank you....I've always wonder what No.13 Baby-and a lot of other Pixies songs,mind-was about.

BRAVO!

By the way, that Croakers bass-player is awfully pretty.

Carl

Edited by - Carl on 01/15/2004 10:44:22
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benji
> Teenager of the Year <

New Zealand
3420 Posts

Posted - 01/16/2004 :  01:15:03  Show Profile  Visit benji's Homepage
quote:
Originally posted by apl4eris

Wow, my brain feels all floaty now. Thanks very very much benji.

I'm guessing this should be put into that song definitions/meanings database there was talk of a while back?.....was it Jop that was doing that? Also, these could be equally useful in the quotes section...even more bang for your time and effort :)
http://forum.frankblack.net/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3120

(Just a suggestion.)



i might have a go at trying to get myself a "quote accumulator" tag (or whatever they actually decided on) when i get back from Prague...

but i'm glad you all enjoyed them....it does shed some light on the tracks...
there are some other pretty interesting quotes in the main text of the article i might type up too later on.

right...bring on the beer!


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