During
their brief momentous existence, the Pixies cut a noisy swath through the
alternative scene, selling a few million records , influencing a few bands
and garnering several careers’ worth of lavish critical acclaim.
Pixies
at the BBC captures the band at their live-on-the-air finest, performed
between 1988 and 1991 on the legendary John Peel Show in the studios of
the venerable British Broadcasting Company.
Aliens,
Metaphysics, Mose Allison. Over the course of six years and five albums,
Boston’s Pixies – Black Francis, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago and David Lovering
- concerned themselves with things that most people don’t even think of,
much less think about. In the process they redefined alternative music
with their dissonant guitars, skewed rhythms and surreal, funny/scary lyrics.
Pixies
at the BBC is the perfect complement to last year’s compilation Death To
the Pixies. From their spikey version of the Beatles’ “Wild Honey Pie”
to the end of “The Heaven” (both previously unreleased in the U.S.), the
album is stuffed with fifteen chaotic live-in-the-studio classics like
“Wave Of Mutilation” and “Monkey Gone To Heaven,” plus many favorites that
did not appear on Death To The Pixies, like “Is She Weird” and “Letter
To Memphis.”
The
Pixies are dead. Long live the Pixies.
PIXIES
INFORMATION: “DEATH TO THE PIXIES” PART 1
Three
kids in rock tee shirts are drinking colas at the outdoor cafe table beside
mine as I try to pull these notes together. They don’t look a bit out of
place in their alterna-rock duds even though they’re a hundred miles from
any radio station worth listening to. There’s no rock club here. There’s
no hip record stores. There’s just the modern fabric of life in America
which MTV has set the tone and alternative rock has provided the content
for the homogenization of the world. It’s a monochrome Gap wonderland from
sea to shining sea and any attempt at dressing “alternatively” is immediately
co-opted by some New York designer who plasters the same tortured individuality
across a two-page advertising spread in Vanity Fair or Details or Q. In
fact these kids could just as easily be on a photo shoot for unisex cologne
as be rock-n-roll fans. Meanwhile, there’s a huge Fuji dirigible flying
overhead and a wonderstruck old woman is pleading with passers-by to look
up. “Come on!” she implores, “That’s not something you see everyday!” But
undoubtedly it is because no one even notices her, let alone the flashing
and blinking flying machine hovering like the future above them.
Things
have changed a lot in ten years. In September of 1987 Ronald Reagan was
the President of the United States. The Soviet Union was still a communist
world power. Rick Astley was at the top of the UK pop charts and Michael
Jackson’s “Bad” was Number One in Billboard. In September of 1987 the underground
scene which had thrown up such luminaries as Hüsker Dü, The Replacements
and R.E.M., still wasn’t important enough to the mainstream economy to
have its own genre, namely “Alternative Music.” To most people, it didn’t
even exist. In September of 1987, the Pixies came to take the kids. The
world was a very different place.
Ten
months previous, I saw the Pixies land onstage at the The Rat in Boston
and with or without the ald of hindsight it was an otherworldy experience.
They had no parallel. They had no peer. They had no idea what the
hell they were doing or that it could change everything. Here was this
fresh-faced handsome blond kid, alternately singing in Spanish and then,
without warning, yelling hysterically like a flying saucer had just flown
off with his kid sister, if he had a kid sister. The lead guitarist was
making pretty much every conceivable noise with his guitar except the ones
you’d expect and I’m pretty sure that, during the last song, he ripped
all the strings off the instrument which would have been far less strange
if he hadn’t somehow continued to play it afterwards.
Meanwhile,
the rhythm section seemed perfectly normal which was the most confusing
part of this picture. The drummer, with more than his share of stick-twirling,
put down a foundation with a pile driver and connected like Siamese twins
with the bass player. She appeared decidely un-rock and had a smile that
could knock a man down. All of this was an odd contrast to the mania exuding
from the other two.
The
Pixies were up there like they owned the place exhibiting more authority
in their single-minded mayhem than comes with being in a new band. These
were not your garden variety college dropouts. Something different was
going on.
When
the show was over, I sleazed back to the dressing room and sheepishly begged
the Pixies to go into the studio with me. After a few phone calls and a
meeting over beer, Charles Thompson (still not Black Francis) came to my
apartment to parade me through the songs with a fanfare like Mardi Gras
- in preparation for recording at Fort Apache. He had this secret weapon,
apparent even on an acoustic guitar, which made the verses quiet and the
choruses explosive. That essential logic held the songs together, no matter
how bizarre, depraved or nonsensical. Wherever the songs went they kept
me along like a co-conspirator or an unwitting stooge at the scene of a
sordid crime. I put all this on tape as part of my sing-for-your-supper
series while the pasta was cooking in the kitchen. The next week I played
it for an NME journalist who was touring America with Throwing Muses and
I think it made a big impression.
A month
or so later the Pixies were in the studio, a ramshackle warehouse in the
bad part of town. We stayed in there for three days and nights, living
on sandwiches and beer until the world outside didn’t matter anymore. Charles
had just finished the music to “Levitate Me” before going in and was still
wrestling with the words, accepting input from all quarters. But when the
tape machine was running and he was alone in the cavernous, wooden-floored
space it was as though he’d known the song his whole life; in fact, it
was like a hymn that everyone knew. The rest of us were standing in front
of the control room speakers with the red record light on, the room lights
dim and a flock of goosebumps ran over me. That’s when I knew for sure
this wasn’t just some local band with an angle. We recorded seventeen songs
in three days and nights and mixed them the next week. Soon after,
the tapes were sent to 4AD’s Ivo Watts-Russell, who chose eight songs for
release and, from the lyrics to “Levitate Me,” chose the record’s title
- Come On Pilgrim.
In
the years that followed, with the records that followed, the Pixies took
over the world. Not how Michael Jackson took over the world, but in a more
insidious way. I’ve heard it said about the Velvet Underground that while
not a lot of people bought their albums, everyone who did started a band.
I think this is largely true about the Pixies as well. Charles’ secret
weapon turned out to be not so secret and, sooner or later, all sorts of
bands were exploiting the same strategy of wide dynamics. It became a kind
of new pop formula and, within a short while, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
was charging up the charts and even the members of Nirvana said later that
it sounded for all the world like a Pixies song. That was the beginning
of the end of counterculture.
History
has a horrible need to erase the details so that its landmarks stand out
against the din. The three kids beside me were probably two years
old when the red light was on for “Levitate Me.” How am I supposed to explain
to them that the world into which Black Francis started screaming still
heard it like a scream and not like fashion? How am I supposed to relate
to them that context makes all the difference in how we view a work of
art or a work or rock?
The
wonderstruck old woman has given up on the passers-by and is standing blithely
against a gift-shop window, still staring at the dirigible as it makes
its way to another city. She’s got a big smile on her face knowing that
she saw it before it was gone and that she recognized it as distinct from
the whirl of this tourist-ridden seaside town. I’m considering buying her
a soda and sitting her down with the alterna-boys because she has the right
idea. Unfortunately, I’m sure she’s never heard of Charles or Kim or Joey
or Dave or any of the records which changed lives and moved the whole tourist
culture we live in to the left a few feet. I think I might give her a real
scare if I told her and the alterna-boys that in September of 1987, the
Pixies came to take the kids. And they took them.
Written
by: Gary Smith, Fort Apache 1997
