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NimrodsSon
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1938 Posts |
 Posted - 04/01/2004 : 18:50:48
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It's an alright article; I don't know what to really think of it, but here it is:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2098075/
The guy at least used some good song clips (If it Takes All Night, Preacher's Daughter, Superabound, Western Star, Everything Is New)
¡Viva los Católicos! |
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Dave Noisy
Minister of Chaos
Canada
4496 Posts |
Posted - 04/01/2004 : 20:17:15
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music box
Back to Black
The long-anticipated Pixies reunion.
By Alex Abramovich
Posted Thursday, April 1, 2004, at 3:22 PM PT
When the Pixies last toured, in support of their fifth and final record (1991's Trompe Le Monde), they squabbled pettily, drank heavily, smoked too much dope, and limited their personal interaction to public appearances. The band broke up via phone and fax in 1993, and its members haven't spoken much to one another since. But a decade (and the promise of a check) works wonders, and the newly reunited Pixies are about to set out on a six-month tour that's extensive (and Northerly) enough to do justice to their first great song, "Caribou." If you live in Europe, Canada, Minneapolis, or on the West Coast, you can still get a ticket (on eBay, where pairs were recently fetching £142.00, C255.00, and $625). If not, you might catch them sometime in the fall—that is, if the Pixies remain on speaking terms and their headlining appearance at California's Coachella Festival goes according to plan.
Their ascent had been effortless: Forming in Massachusetts in the mid-'80s, the Pixies followed their big-brother band, the Throwing Muses, onto Britain's chic 4AD label and rose to the top of England's indie charts before signing with an American company or finding an American audience. But their first stateside release, 1989's Doolittle, on Elektra, barely grazed the Billboard charts. In subsequent years, America's mass-market radio stations ignored the Pixies, the mass audience avoided them, and, despite a high-profile gig opening for U2 on the 1992 Zooropa tour, fame eluded them.
And yet the Pixies were remarkably influential: Sonic Youth may have coined the phrase "verse-chaos-verse" to describe their own formula, but it was Pixies frontman Black Francis who perfected the trick of sailing airy, folklike melodies into seas of screams and white noise. "I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies," Kurt Cobain said in 1994, when Rolling Stone asked him about the runaway success of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Seven years later, Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood told British television that "the reason we don't use as much guitar now is there are only a handful of Pixies albums. You can't keep copying them." (Compare the famous scrape of Radiohead's 1993 breakthrough single, "Creep," to Pixie guitarist Joey Santiago's work on Doolittle's "I Bleed.") Of course, a great many bands have done just that—as Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters put it recently in New York Times, "The quiet/loud dynamic that's dominated alternative radio for the last 14 years can be attributed to one and only one band, the Pixies."
The Pixies' arrival coincided with a best-forgotten hair-band explosion, but their aesthetic—based on pastiche, collage, and bricolage—remains in force today. On tour, they were known to play their set-list alphabetically, or in reverse chronological order (starting with the encore). In the studio, their lyrics took the shape of anagrams, sonnets, and haikus. For them, meaning was secondary to sound and syntax, and depth was an illusion—what counted was the meticulous construction of surface attributes: not the stock rock explications of what "our love is…" but the sharp enjambment of
Our love
Is rice
And beans.
"Our songs are random," Black Francis told interviewers. "I write songs by singing a whole bunch of syllables to chord progressions and they become words."
Captain Beefheart, Brian Eno, and the Fall had conducted similar experiments. They, too, were influential. But the Pixies dreamed of mainstream success; less an art band, they were more of an inspiration to the next generation of aspiring rock stars, and their songs, which never quite cracked the Top 40, helped form the basis for a new musical canon.
At their best, those songs were nasty, brutish, and short: Only 16 of the Pixies' 66 album cuts topped the three-minute mark, but each one relied on sharp juxtapositions of tone and texture. The drummer, David Lovering, played danceable, boom-chicka beats, and Kim Deal's bass lines bounced her next group, the Breeders, straight into MTV's "Buzz Bin." But guitarist Joey Santiago favored darker shadings (a favorite trick was striking the same note on two consecutive strings, then letting them swim slightly, wrenchingly apart), and Black Francis seemed happy to scream his way through melodies that wouldn't have been out of place on a Peter, Paul, and Mary record. Despite the band's East Coast origins, Francis and Santiago were Californian and Filipino respectively, and the surf music they'd grown up listening to lent the Pixies' sound a sense of space, mystery, and B-movie malice. The Spanish influence—a touch of Touch of Evil Mexico—was also a surf-music convention, and it, too, explains how the Pixies became massively influential without breaking out of the very college-rock bubble they'd helped to explode. By setting these opposing tendencies against one another, the Pixies managed to force beauty, noise, craft, and the anarchic impulse through the narrowest of apertures. In the process, they broke rock down to its essential building blocks and built song structures today's bands continue to inhabit.
But those same structures left little room for the Pixies' own resident genius: Today, the artist formerly known as Black Francis performs under stage name Frank Black. (His given name is Charles Thompson.) He's bald, fat, and nearing 40, and he is 12 albums into a solo career of steadily diminishing returns. (The most recent, made with his post-Pixies band the Catholics, was recently dismissed as so much "Midwestern shit-rock.") Are Black's solo records really so bad? Or are the members of Frank Black's non-audience (the entire population of the world, minus the 16,443 people who had bought his last record as of mid-March) missing out on a great second act, just as they missed out on Black Francis the first time around? (I'm firmly in Black's corner, but click on the sound files below to decide for yourself.) Either way, Black's years as a solo artist can't help but inform his playing in the newly reformed Pixies, and anyone shelling out $200 for Pixies tickets would do well to spend the spare change on 1994's Teenager of the Year, 1999's Pistolero, or 2000's Dog in the Sand.
When Black's solo projects stand on their own merits—as they do on these records and not a few others—it's because of Black's steadfast refusal to cave in to fans who wish he'd kept them supplied with a steady stream of Pixie songs. Instead, in 1996, Black formed the Catholics and set out to explore conventions the Pixies had so fastidiously avoided. In subsequent years, Bowie, Bolan, Bruce, and Bob began peeking through cracks in Black's chord progressions. He took the country-fried California sound out for a spin and mastered the rock-heroic. Soon, Black found himself writing around the clock and touring incessantly. At home in Los Angeles, he took singing lessons and spent time on the therapist's couch. Last year, in a self-penned press release, he summed up the results: "I'm not interested in your damn brain," the doctor had told him. "Show me your tears!" "And so," Black told his audience, "here they are."
The Pixies would never have let their hearts slip so precipitously sleeve-ward. Their frenzy wasn't meant to focus attention on the suffering soul, but to conceal a carefully wrought architecture—a set of formal devices that allowed the band to communicate emotional intensity while guarding it from mawkishness or self-pity. Black, however, managed something more on his own: He found a way to combine formal dexterity with emotional directness and to convey his heartfelt passion for rock 'n' roll itself. And if he manages to carry that new-found conviction into the Pixies' reunion, we just might see a better band than the original Pixies ever got to be.
Alex Abramovich is writing a history of rock 'n' roll. He lives in Astoria, Queens.
 Join the Cult of the Flying Pigxies - I'm A Believer! |
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The New Bolero
= Cult of Ray =
394 Posts |
Posted - 04/01/2004 : 22:21:15
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| Isn't Frank 9 albums(10 if you count oddballs)into--ahem--a solo career of steadily diminishing returns? And wasn't it Josephine Wiggs's bass lines that bounced the Breeders straight into MTV's "Buzz Bin? (Kim played guitar). This guy's writing a book on the history of rock n roll? |
Edited by - The New Bolero on 04/01/2004 22:22:37 |
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Chris Knight
= Cult of Ray =
USA
899 Posts |
Posted - 04/03/2004 : 10:33:48
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| Can anyone confirm that SMYT has sold a mere 16,000 copies? I'm in utter disbelief. |
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Stuart
- The Clopser -
China
2291 Posts |
Posted - 04/03/2004 : 18:04:57
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I was under the impression that the Catholics were more popular than ever nowadays.... I disagree with that article, especially the bit about bad reviews. The reviews for SMYT were 80% positive.
This guy seems like he's read one or two reviews and then decided to write a bullshit article.
Who's the man that won't cop out when there's danger all about? |
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Jason
* Dog in the Sand *
1446 Posts |
Posted - 04/03/2004 : 18:47:53
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I don't think I'll be buyin' this guy's book. Factual errors aside, this article is weirdly choppy and cliche-heavy (I'd like to take a moment to say I hate the constantly used expression "country-fried"). It's like the first draft was accidentally published.
And for a writer who claims to be "firmly in Black's corner", he sure seems to enjoy putting him down. |
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rockmusic84
= Cult of Ray =
USA
256 Posts |
Posted - 04/03/2004 : 21:01:45
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I agree with you guys. This guy's blowin' smoke out of his ass. I also don't dig the personal shots at Frank. And the whole thing about them not speaking or working with one another since the breakup? Helloooooo!! It's a known fact that Kim and Joey have been to many a Frank Black and the Catholics show, and David even opened up for Frank a few times doing his science bit, didn't he? And HOW many Frank Black albums has Joey worked on? This guy better do the math. Especially if he wants to write a book on rock music. I suppose in it he'll say that Elvis is alive and well. Pathetic.
Join The Cult of U-MASS - IT'S EDUCATIONAL!!! |
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VoVat
>> Denizen of the Citizens Band <<
USA
9168 Posts |
Posted - 04/04/2004 : 16:04:15
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quote:
I'd like to take a moment to say I hate the constantly used expression "country-fried"
What about "kitchen fresh"?
quote:
I suppose in it he'll say that Elvis is alive and well.
You mean he ISN'T?
Join the Culf of Buttoms / Correctly spelled cults are so passé. |
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rockmusic84
= Cult of Ray =
USA
256 Posts |
Posted - 04/04/2004 : 18:48:12
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No VoVat, the guy you see in a blue jumpsuit at the 7-11 is just someone's crazy uncle. :)
Join The Cult of U-MASS - IT'S EDUCATIONAL!!! |
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two reelers
* Dog in the Sand *
Austria
1036 Posts |
Posted - 04/08/2004 : 01:12:11
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i'm sick and tired of everybody quoting the "huuuuge influence" of the pixies, and how they invented quiet/loud dynamics. just why can't all these super critics, rock'n'roll historicans and fellow musicians see that charles thompson is an extremely gifted songwriter ??? and this is 80% the reason for the pixies' success. of course the other 3 are also extraordinary good & creative musicians, but somebody should do frank some justice...
 I joined the cult of this mouse / and now I occidentally tic-tac |
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PsychicTwin
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1772 Posts |
Posted - 04/08/2004 : 12:13:17
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| Yeah, i think dude should study up on his rock lore for a few more years before writing a BOOK on the topic. Weak article indeed. |
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martha_promise
= Cult of Ray =
USA
398 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2004 : 13:10:58
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Wow, that was amazingly bad.
~~Pollyann drove steel like a man~~ |
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new article
