Retro Music Thursdays: The Pixies

After my first post here, I immediately started getting requests to talk about The Pixies (mostly because y'all know my immense love for them already). I was trying to remember the first time I heard them, but I think it was when my then-boyfriend, now-husband got a tape of Come On Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa from a friend of his and came over to play "I've Been Tired" for me. "I wanna be a singer like Lou Reed," "I LIKE Lou Reed," she said...

Great stuff. But it was when I heard Doolittle that I immediately fell in love with them, and then I think I liked Bossanova even more. I think the first time I saw the Pixies was in late 1991 in the same week I saw Tin Machine and someone else... we lived in London Ontario and had to drive two hours to Toronto every time we wanted to see a gig all through high school, and there were some weeks where we were traveling there two and three times a week (it still boggles my mind that my parents were OK with that...) Black Francis, as he was then known before he became Frank Black (though his real name is Charles), is notoriously quiet on stage. He does his thing, he sings his songs, but it's Kim Deal who does all the talking.

Oh Kim Deal. The other "Kim" love of my life after Kim Gordon. Again, the one I watch through every set every time I see them. I remember going to see them at the Concert Hall in Toronto (now the home of CTV, I believe) and during their set one of their amps blew. And I don't mean it stopped working, I mean it BLEW UP, loudly. You've never seen Charles move as quickly as he did then. He just turned and RAN, and I don't think I've ever seen the man do more than a slow saunter before or after that. Things were dealt with and they returned to the stage fairly quickly and continued their set, but I still remember my husband and I in stitches watching it (after our own hearts started beating again... it was LOUD). But to his credit, I think he caught a shock off his mike, so that couldn't have been fun for him. Let's just say he wasn't in the best mood for the rest of the show (and that's saying something about this usually sullen frontman).

Live, The Pixies can't be beat. Frank's vocals are spot-on (even when screaming... I've always been in awe of the fact that he still has such a powerful voice after all these years of stripping it raw through screaming). Kim Deal is the audience favourite. Joey Santiago rarely looks up, but he's always brilliant, and David Lovering stays in the background playing drums, only coming to the fore to sing "La La Love You" (a song I hate). The audiences who have been going to see them for years all know the signs for "This Monkey's Gone to Heaven" -- you hold up one hand with five fingers for "If man is five," then both hands with one fully extended, and one finger on the other hand extended for "Then the devil is six," and hands way up in the air, two fingers extended on the other hand, screaming and jumping up and down for "Then GOD is SEVEN!"

Doolittle remains the best album to watch them perform live, though most of the best stuff is packed at the front end of the record. I remember one time seeing them open for U2 on the first leg of the Achtung Baby tour, and the band looked absolutely miserable on stage and it was the worst time I'd seen them. Later they said U2 barely acknowledged their existence, but the real problem was within. A few months later, the Pixies had broken up.

But in 2004, they reformed, and they've probably made more money on the reunion tours than they ever did before. Seeing them in November 2004 was my first concert after my first baby had been born. She was three months old at the time, and I remember clutching a cellphone throughout the show, while being in euphoria that I was finally seeing the Pixies again. I've seen them a few times since then, and they never, ever let me down. A documentary came out a few years ago called Loud Quiet Loud (a description that sums up pretty much every Pixies song) and it showed what was really happening behind the scenes, and was fascinating.

It's tough picking just one song, because usually whatever Pixies song I happen to be listening to at the time is my favourite. But if someone said to me, "Quick, name your favourite Pixies song," I think I'd always answer the same way: Debaser. Inspired by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel's surrealist film, "Un Chien Andalou," it's Frank at his screaming best, Kim with her perfect girlie voice, a great opening bass line, out-of-tune guitars, and a hook that you just can't get out of your head.