The Pixies

The Pixies

“Where is my mind? Where is my mind?” plays at the end of the movie “Fight Club”. I think to myself that this song is the perfect end to the movie. That is where I first heard of the band, The Pixies. Like many other bands I start to like, it was because of the movies that they had been put into. I did not actually start to really listening to them until a couple of years later when I watched the movie “Fight Club” again. I downloaded “Where is my mind?” and “Debaser” and listened to them all the time. I finally decided to buy one of their albums, Surfer Rosa and loved it. I quickly found out that the Pixies have been around for the past twenty years. The thing that initially drew me to the Pixies was the rhythm of “Where is my mind?”. It is one of those songs that you can just listen to over and over again without ever getting sick of it. Sometimes I would just sit on my computer playing poker and have that song repeat over and over again and wonder. Where do the Pixies come from? How did they start out?

The beginning of the Pixies can be traced back to their lead singer, Charles Thompson a.k.a. Black Francis a.k.a. Frank Black. He was born in 1965 in Long Beach, California. By 1983, Charles was majoring in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts according to the book, Gigantic: The Story of Frank Black and the Pixies, by John Mendelssohn. He eventually wanted to start a band in college, and thus became known as the Pixies. “ From the first moment, right after they admitted to each other that they’d come to college mostly in hopes of starting bands, it somehow seemed just right that they should be playing together” (Mendelssohn 17). Joey Santiago then became the first member of the band, playing guitar. Charles Thompson then changed his name to Black Francis because he needed a stage name and thought Charles Thompson was way to traditional. Soon Kim Deal joined the band, playing bass, by answering an ad put in the newspaper by Charles and Joey. Then she remembered of hearing about a drummer at her wedding, and Joey Lovering jumped onboard playing drums. After playing many small venues, they were finally “discovered” later in the same year by 4AD Records. They worked on their first album together and released Come on Pilgrim. Their next album, Surfer Rosa, debuted in 1988. They began touring around Europe and London, and with Frank Black as their lead singer everything was going good. At the end of 1988, Surfer Rosa was named album of the year by the magazines, “Sounds” and “Melody Maker” (Mendelssohn 84). In 1989, the Pixies started a hundred show American tour by opening up for the Cure. They would sometimes perform their set in alphabetical order (just to spice up the tour) according to their songs, all the way from “Bone Machine” to “Where is my Mind?”. They began becoming very popular in America, and their album, Doolittle, was a huge hit. The Pixies then went back into the studio to record the album, Bossonova. Frank Black worked harder on his lyrics and concentrated more on putting an overall theme to this album unlike their other three albums. Bossonova was rarely played on the radio, but it still opened up on the UK charts at number three. They continued to tour Europe, but felt obligated to return to America with a huge tour while working on their fourth album, Tin Machine. During their American tour, the Pixies decided to invite Nirvana to open for them. Kurt Cobain said that ““Smells like Teen Spirit” had been his attempt to rewrite “Debaser” (Mendelssohn 102), but Frank Black would not have it. After that tour, the Pixies opened up for U2 on their Zoo TV tour. In 1992, Frank Black cited in an interview on BBC Radio 5’s “Hit the North” show that the Pixies would be no more.

Frank Black then went onto pursue a solo career from about 1992 (Pixies broke up) to about 1999, releasing solo albums, such as Frank Black and Teenager of the Year. He was basically just sick of the Pixies and wanted to go in different directions. The Pixies were gone, dead, and no more. On his solo tours he would not even perform the Pixies songs, that was just how done he was with the Pixies. He would perform a lot of covers of other artists, such as the Clash and the Beatles. He began doing shows with the future band, the Butthole Surfers, as the Frank Black Experience. They were not really a band though; they would just play radio shows to satisfy the still distraught Pixies’ fans. From about 1994-1999, Charles found a new guitarist to accompany him on his solo career. Lyle Workman began touring with Charles as he did vocals. This was happening while the other members of the Pixies were joining other bands and trying to reach such success they once had. Kim Deal was in a band called the