Pixies: Classic or Dud

I started at Doolittle (as I imagine many people did) and by the time TLM came out, it sounded really pop.

Do you mean that Doolittle sounded really pop, or Trompe le Monde?

Yeah, to me, Doolittle is the pop album. But something upthread reminded me of why I don't ever listen to them anymore, and it's not exactly their fault. They were never exactly a secret band for me, even in the early 90s. They had pop appeal, and every cute girl knew the Pixies. They were never underground, in that sense. Maybe like the Shins today? Different channels of distribution etc, but the Pixies weren't a club, the way, say, the Wedding Present were at the same time. But over the past decade + half, Where is my Mind has become Blister in the Sun, and Here Comes Your Man has become New Slang. Again, not their fault, but it doesn't make me want to hear them. They just remind me of Urban Outfitters by now.

what hip and new bands do you listen to, paulhw

At the time it was released, I was talking about TLM; now, I agree that Doolittle is the poppier although neither are particularly challenging.

X-post. Dayo, this baiting thing is silly. I was just sharing my more general cultural sense of hearing them in 1989, and the cachet they have now. Things is they were *received* as slightly silly "college rock" then, not to be taken too seriously. Journalists were writing about, i dunno, House of Love or something then. Not that I would defend that. For me, they're funny college rock, which is fine. The reason they've stuck is the novelty value: Frank Black had a curious lyric, or a noisy bit, or an interlude, that drew people in. 17 year olds today say "there were rumors he was into field hockey players." fine. just not for me.

are you into field hockey players, paulhw?

I came into the Pixies backwards, because when they originally happened I was in junior high and the first couple years of high school (where I lived without MTV or any good radio stations or any record stores or any cool older friends/relatives). Once I got to college, iirc this happened within the first three weeks of my freshman year, I heard "Monkey Gone to Heaven" and "Debaser" on the school's alt-rock station and was sold. Doolittle was the first record I bought after that, from then on I was pretty much in love with these guys. So, yeah, I encountered it all with fresh ears and didn't have any larger career arc to tie my expectations to.

my initial exposure to them was the alec eiffel video on a taped episode of 120 minutes that I watched over and over again. then I gave someone a cassette of surfer rosa for her birthday, along with several other rough trade cassettes from the sam goody bargain bin and we listened to that tape a few times that evening.but i didnt really get into them until summer 94, when a friend of mine bought doolittle and trompe le monde on CD and they soundtracked the summer, which for us was the summer of learning to smoke pot.

I should note that we weren't total stoner shut-ins at this point. so we weren't treating doolittle like dsotm stoner headfuck material. it's more like when we weren't out in the woods getting stoned, we were inside listening to the pixies.

I do think there is a "you had to be there" element to the Pixies appeal. They were sexy, weird, funny, catchy, dark, pretty, abrasive. They were sincerely ironic - or was that ironically sincere? You couldn't hear them on the radio (except for college radio), or see them on MTV (except if you stayed up for 120 Minutes). They were cool and only a few people seemed to know about them. You accepted their strangeness as a kind of shibboleth, separating those hip enough to "get it" from those who didn't. No one worried too much about what it all meant. It's hard to hear all of that in their music now.

I have never gotten irony from The Pixies

(then again I couldn't tell you how "U Mass" went)

I think they were ironic in that free-floating '90s zeitgeist way. You could never tell how seriously to take them. This is part of how they seemed slightly (like 1-2 years) ahead of their time.

Somewhat perversely, "Pixies At The BBC" was the first album of theirs I had, and I hated it at first. It took me a long time to get my head round just how RAW it sounded. Now I think many of the tracks are preferable to the album versions, particularly the ones from Bossanova. The version of "Is She Weird" on there is just immense.

It's amazingly concise too, only two tracks out of the fifteen even top the three minute mark!

Btw, here's a great post on Nirvana and irony which I think also could go for the Pixies in a lot of ways:

http://agrammar.tumblr.com/post/241860089/nirvana-irony-90s

they were *received* as slightly silly "college rock" then, not to be taken too seriously.

I seem to recall them being taken very seriously by the UK papers.

A lot of you folks not getting or not impressed by or altogether not something the Pixies actually do kind of get it: they were both challenging and abrasive and perverse and catchy and accessible. Which is what made them the perfect bridge act from the college rock/Amerindie scene to the mainstream. It's not a coincidence that their relatively cultish career (at least in the US; they were pretty huge in the UK) coincided precisely with what may have been the nadir of American pop, and that mere months after their breakup Nirvana had become the new pop.

in the US, it's not like your mom knows who they are. at least not my mom.
i don't know, even with the mystique-deflating reunion, the pixies' records still seem to me to among the best american rock records ever.

Their whole career was squashed into about 15 months for me. Someone taped Doolittle for me in about May or June 1990, then I bought Bossanova when it came out a couple of months later, then I went backwards to Surfer Rosa in late 1990, then I taped Come On Pilgrim off another mate in early 1991, then got Trompe Le Monde when it came out (Aug? Sep? 91) and didn't like it as much as the others. Then they suddenly split up.

It's not a coincidence that their relatively cultish career (at least in the US; they were pretty huge in the UK) coincided precisely with what may have been the nadir of American pop,

sez you!

Says me, yeah, Not one, not two, not three, but four number one Paula Abdul singles!

Four!

two of which were terrific!

One with an animated cat!

(was that a terrific one?)

two steps forward

there's a great outtake of black francis/kim deal doing "opposites attract"

I think my challop-meter is on the fritz.

people would have really understood the subversive current of that song if they'd gone with the original name of MC Shit Snatch

Also: the Brit charts were not by any stretch at their nadir.

I said American pop, dude. No broadening the pool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1W6-ErrHls

Actually, that one's OK. Sounds like Cheap Trick.

Exactly. There's far worse examples.

Anyway, the Pixies song I'm always in the mood to play is "Hey."

woops -- I meant "Tame."

there's a great outtake of black francis/kim deal doing "opposites attract"

― tylerw, Monday, October 24, 2011 6:16 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

are you fucking with me?

ha, yes

but can't you just hear it

oh dammit, I was going to rickroll

is she weird
is she wack
cuz OPP-O-SITTES AT-TRACT!

I first heard the Pixies well after they broke up. I think I was 15, which means it was '96; I had to search them out, which I did because they were constantly being mentiomed in Nirvana and Breeders articles. My grandma took me on a shopping spree and I had her buy me Bossanova on cassette, mostly because of some derogatory comment on a review of Last Splash about how "No Aloha" sounded like an outtake from that album. I instantly loved Bossanova and a few weeks later the school druggie approached me asking to borrow it. He had a copy of Doolittle (one of maybe five irl ppl I've met that were into the Pixies; we're actually still good friends) which he lent me. I wasn't as big a fan of that one, though I like it more now.

But it wasn't long after that that I somehow procured Surfer Rosa on CD, and THAT hooled me. Still one of my all-time favourite albums...

Hooled = hooked

I love reading vintage ILM threads like this front-to-back, it's like examining the rings of a redwood trunk

"Every cute girl knew the Pixies" is totally OTM, and I initially was persuaded to like them by a cute girlfriend. Trompe Le Monde was where they lost the cute girls, and is probably the only album of theirs that I still play from time to time. Wasn't there an indie-schmindie song back in the 90's where someone (probably female) was berated for liking the Pixies? Dead Milkmen? Or someone else?

Ok, now I'm going crazy trying to remember that song. I think there was a lyric like, "You love the Pixies!" but I may be making that up....

Now I'm thinking it was, "You like the Pixies," and maybe it was an Irish/Scottish band. Fuck, this is killing me....

sounds like Noise Addict/Ben Lee imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7BE6t2CxYs

I think that may be it. Unless I can remember something else, I'm going to go with it.

I'm sure I didn't know any cute girls who liked the Pixies until I started hanging out in the outloud room.