ComicDorksCast: From The Dorks’ Soundtrack: Hey! It’s the Pixies!

Sunday, July 19, 2009

From The Dorks’ Soundtrack: Hey! It’s the Pixies!

Pixies

Album: Doolittle

Song: "Hey"

Perhaps one of the most underrated bands of the late 80’s and early 90’s. Somehow, illogically placed behind such grunge bands as Nirvana, Pixies gained incredible success in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe but achieved only limited success in the United States. The history of this band starts in Boston Mass., where Black Francis (lead singer/guitarist) and Joey Santiago (guitarist) shared a room together at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Santiago showed Francis to the music of David Bowie and 1970’s punk rock and the two formed a band. Over the next couple weeks, the band welcomed Kim Deal (bassist/singer) and David Lovering (Drums). Not much later the band signed with record label 4AD and produced their first recording, Come On Pilgrim EP. This EP was a success and debut hit songs such as “Caribou”, “Ed is Dead”, and “Nimrod’s Son”. The band quickly followed up Come On Pilgrim with their first full-length album Surfer Rosa. This album debuted possibly their most popular song to date, “Where is My Mind” along with other great songs such as “Gigantic” and “River Euphrates”. Pixies then recorded their second full-length record in the last six weeks of 1988 and produced Doolittle. Doolittle was a clear departure from the previous two works and was a much more cleaner sound than the raw sound heard on the previous two albums. The song “Hey” was featured on this album along with many other great tunes. Surfer Rosa and Doolittle together brought great attention to this east coast band, which was beginning to create music that the world had never heard. After a short hiatus the band reconvened and created two more albums Bossanova and Trompe le Monde, which was not received as well as their previous two albums. Shortly after Trompe Le Monde, the band broke up when Francis surprisingly stated on BBC that the band was finished.

11 years later, rumors began circling of a reunion. The band began touring again but was producing no new music. Black Francis stated in 2008 that he was interested in creating new music with the original band but for now it was “a waiting game”. The band has a legacy that reaches as far back as the birth of grunge. There are many music icons that were influenced by this band such as Kurt Cobain and Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Allmusic.com summed up the band perfectly:

“Combining jagged, roaring guitars and stop-start dynamics with melodic pop hooks, intertwining male-female harmonies and evocative, cryptic lyrics, the Pixies were one of the most influential American alternative rock bands of the late '80s. The Pixies weren't accomplished musicians -- Black Francis wailed and bashed out chords while Joey Santiago's lead guitar squealed out spirals of noise. But the band members were inventive, rabid rock fans who turned conventions inside out, melding punk and indie guitar rock, classic pop, surf rock, and stadium-sized riffs with singer/guitarist Black Francis' bizarre, fragmented lyrics about space, religion, sex, mutilation, and pop culture; while the meaning of his lyrics may have been impenetrable, the music was direct and forceful.”