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New Pixies video: Catfish Kate

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Video: Pixies – “Catfish Kate”

Video created by Neirin Best and Lianne Pierce. From Beneath the Eyrie, due September 13.

It’s easy for music snobs to scoff when a band gets back together years after splitting up and has the audacity to release new music. Especially if they don’t have all the original members. How dare they! How crass! They’re diminishing their legacy!

But really, who the hell are we to tell somebody how they can or cannot make a living? What kind of privileged bourgeois bullshit is that? Charles Thompson has every right to don his Black Francis persona and make Pixies music with or without the participation of Kim Deal or the approval of a bunch of pin-headed geeks furiously typing into their phones.

I’ll admit I would have never gone out and bought a ticket to see the new incarnation of this band when they recently opened up for Weezer on tour. But a pal had an extra ticket and I tagged along and I’m really happy I did.

Not only is going out with your friends and seeing live music a life-affirming thing to do in general, but seeing the Pixies in concert reminded me that Joey Santiago is one of my favorite guitar players and Dave Lovering is a hell of a drummer and Black Francis has written some of the greatest songs of all time. Of course you’re going to miss Kim Deal’s incomparable voice and chug chug chug bass, but the new girl gets the job done. They sound good. They are good.

And “Catfish Kate” is a good Pixies song. Sure, you keep waiting for Santiago to go nuts and it’s disappointing that he never does, but hey, it’s a creepy song about woman getting abducted by a catfish. What more do you want from the Pixies in 2019?

Pixies: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

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Missed opportunity: Come on Pixies, you know we love you!

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You may have heard that the Pixies are celebrating the 30th anniversary of Surfer Rosa with a big box set.

Three CD and Three LP editions out on September 28th, 2018 with new artwork reimagined by original designer Vaughan Oliver and the bonus disc, Live From The Fallout Shelter – one of the earliest recordings of the band, a radio concert that first aired in late 1986 on WJUL-FM in Lowell, MA.

It’s cool that they’re digging up a rare old concert for this, but what a missed opportunity to reissue these classics with the respect they deserve by gathering up all the music they recorded during this era.

It’s easy to imagine what could’ve been.

We all know that Come On Pilgrim was originally recorded as a demo tape to try to get a record deal. It worked, of course, because 4AD heard it and signed the band. 4AD selected 8 of the 17 songs from the demo and released them as Come On Pilgrim, clocking in at a generous twenty minutes and thirty seconds of music.

Most of the remaining nine songs were subsequently re-recorded and released on later albums and singles. Songs like “Broken Face” and “Here Comes Your Man.” All of those nine original demo versions were eventually released by spinART Records in 2002. They’re awesome.

And there’s no reason they shouldn’t be included in a special deluxe anniversary edition. Especially since the 17 songs altogether add up to under 39 minutes.

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Ticketstubs: The Pixies in Kalamazoo, 1992

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I had recently gotten home from a semester abroad in Scotland. While I was there the Pixies had released Trompe Le Monde, and I bought the cassette at the Aberdeen HMV the week it came out. The Pixies were one of my favorite bands, and the Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim two-fer had been the soundtrack of my sophomore year of college. “She’s a real left winger ’cause she’s been down south and held peasants in her arms.” Yep, that pretty much nails it. Bossanova got me through some tough times. “Is she over me, like the stars and the sun?” Yes, she was.

To this day listening to the Pixies conjures up those intense conflicted emotions of college: liberated but sheltered, idealistic but cynical, innocent but itchy, that desire to push it too far. “We’re not just kids… We got ideas!”

I loved Trompe Le Monde with all its abrasive guitar and spacey lyrics, but I remember being concerned about the lack of obvious Kim Deal input. There were rumors… Trouble in paradise?

The week before the show I picked up a brand new pair of wire-rimmed glasses from one of those places in a strip mall with the warranty where if anything went wrong they’d replace them for free. Something went wrong.

When the Pixies came onstage at the State Theatre they all seemed to be in a nasty mood. They were in the middle of a huge arena tour with U2 and this was a one-off show in between dates. They didn’t look at each other or say anything to the crowd; they all stared straight ahead and ripped into their set. Nevertheless, they sounded tight and great and the Kalamazoo crowd went nuts. A mosh pit formed immediately, and before the end of the first song my brand new glasses got knocked off my face and disappeared into the abyss. I’m not totally blind, but I can’t really see.

So I guess I can’t actually say that I saw the Pixies live in 1992. I heard them. And that was still impressive.

The setlist for this show isn’t available online, and I can no longer recall the details, but other setlists from that era reveal they played a lot of newer stuff mixed with a bunch of older classics. Nothing quite like the summer of 1989 when they played their songs in alphabetical order. Wish I would have seen that!

They didn’t say a word between the songs. After their final song, Black Francis dryly quipped, “Thank you very much we’re the Pixies U2’s up next,” and they exited the stage. No encore.

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Got (Almost) Live If You Want It

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PixiesHollywood once used the phrase, “You’ve read the book, now see the movie” to promote their latest offerings. But given the acceleration of time, music vendors can now use the phrase, “You’ve just heard the concert, now just hear the concert again,” and make that statement approximately 10 minutes after the show is over.

At least that’s the case with the performances of the Pixies, starting November 23 in New York. The firm Abbey Road Live is recording the shows and then burning CDs of the performances. The Pixies, as seems to be the case with some vintage bands that are still striding the boards (e.g., Steely Dan) are doing the complete version of “Doolittle” from 1989 (although unlike S.D., this isn’t a matter of the fans voting for it, they’re getting it each night of the tour).

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MP3s

Download Four Live Pixies Songs

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The Pixies are sharing four live songs from their Doolittle 20th Anniversary tour.

The way it works is the standard Topspin deal: you submit your email address, and then they email you a link to a 22 MB zip file. You download it, unzip the 320kbps MP3s, listen to them, and enjoy. Track listing is:

1. Dancing the Manta Ray

2. Monkey Gone to Heaven

3. Crackity Jones

4. Gouge Away

Pixies: iTunes, Amazon, Insound, wiki

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Black Francis to Naysayers: Go fuck yourself

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Frank Black (Francis) talks to Rolling Stone about the Pixies reunion, playing the whole Doolittle album live, and making money:

It’s like someone saying, “You don’t have the right to go up there on a stage and sing your songs.” My response would, be, “Go fuck yourself.” Are we making more money? Yeah. But it’s not because we’re demanding more money. It’s because the patrons have converted other patrons. We’re going to fly first class and stay in a nice hotel and people are gonna carry my guitars for me. Maybe someone’s who’s really uptight and has as lot of revolution in their soul might have a problem with that. But I’m in fuckin’ show business, man; I don’t work for the Peace Corps.

Enjoy the nice hotels, Charles. You’ve earned it!

Pixies: iTunes, Amazon, Insound, wiki

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Lollapalooza 2005: Day One

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Lollapalooza 2005Holy shit, it was hot on Sunday. I was pretty sure we were all going to die for a while there. But hey, Glorious Noise suffers unbearable heat so you don’t have to.

It’s hard to believe that the first Lollapalooza was 14 years ago. I was a dopey college kid who could barely drive straight when my pals piled into my mom’s Corolla and we drove across the state to see Perry Farrell’s brand new music festival. I was looking forward to seeing Ice T and Jane’s Addiction, but was most impressed by the Butthole Surfers when guitarist Paul Leary picked up a rifle, aimed it right at my face 60 rows back, and pulled the trigger. I swear to god I saw fire shoot out of the barrel and expected to feel the bullet split my skull. Good thing Leary’s a lousy shot.

This year no one fired a gun at me. But I was blown away by a couple of bands that I wasn’t expecting that much from. It’s a much different world now (George Bush, Iraq, economy, etc.), but a few things remain the same: good music still isn’t played on the radio, and young people still love to get half naked and stomp around in the dirt and listen to bands.

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