...or the Flaming Lips, can't remember which, a buddy of mine told me I really needed to listen to the Pixies. He was kinda right.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
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Doolittle, like Ziggy Stardust, is an album I have bought several times becuase of wearing out the vinyl on previous copies. Once you get past the "hits" on doolittle you really appreciate the masterfulness of the whole.
As long as you're going back in time and along some sort of musical tree (although the Pixies and the Lips were contemporaries at one point, with the Lips' first album coming out in 1986 and the Pixies' first coming out in 1987), try Gang of Four or Mission of Burma.
Of course, the Flaming Lips in the late 80s sounded more like a Meat Puppets cover band.
Well...yeah.
Ok, TNC, it has to be said.
If you like the Flaming Lips, you must listen to Steve Burns.
Yes, that Steve Burns. The guy from Blues Clues.
His stuff is not quite the kind of measured nuttiness that you get from the likes of the Lips, but it's really very delightful, and has it's own kind of nuttiness. He released one really excellent (imo) album, called Songs for Dustmites pretty soon after leaving Blues Clues, and has been talking about releasing a follow-up for freaking AGES (the most recent release date was "summer 2009," so, you know, whatev). He's worked with the Lips (apparently, he was exposed to them at a party, and upon hearing a song or two, ran out -- literally left the party -- and bought an album and sat down and listened to it straight through, became obsessed, and if I remember my own obsessive reading correctly, used his fame to get in touch with them and they are now all buddies. This is the correct way to use fame, people!)on a variety of things, from music to movies, and has released a kind of wonderful kids' album with the Lips' Steven Drozd (sample lyric: "Now I'm pooping in the toilet bowl, now I'm pooping in the toilet bowl, I'm gonna sit right down and use what I know, now here I go!... Once you eat your food, your body makes it poo, your poo was once your food!")
Listen to Dustmites! http://www.myspace.com/steveburnsofficialmyspace I swear, you will not regret it.
PS Dude used an ice-cream carton and the Thinking Chair as percussion instruments on Dustmites. I'm just saying.
no offense, but I'm pretty sure everyone whose ever heard anything remotely resembling an alternative rock song has been told to check out the Pixies. They are a very good band. But they get way too much credit for it.
The Pixies get too much credit? I don't think so. The Velvet Underground gets too much credit. The Pixies deserve every little bit they can get.
hahaha....It's funny you say that, I always use the Velvet Underground as the other example. Again, I really like them both. I don't have anything against the Pixies at all...in general, I'm just skeptical of any one band's influence on an entire genre.
I don't think it's the issue of a single band influencing all other bands, but I think The Pixies, Sonic Youth, and Jane's Addiction were pretty important to the evolution of a lot of the bands that hit in the early 1990s, and after.
Big Star.
I'd say there's three or four records from the 88-89 that directly led to the explosion of 'alt-rock' in the early 90s and two of them were Pixies records.
Daydream Nation and ?
Well, you could argue a hair-metal album or two in a way haha...
I was going to say Nothing's Shocking, although for sentimental reasons I feel like I should include Lincoln by They Might Be Giants. Or maybe I only want to include them because my son can't get enough of the children's music they do nowadays and I can never get any of it out of my head.
As to hair metal, were I to include 1987 it would have been pretty difficult to avoid Appetite.
How about some love for Dinosaur Jr? 1987's You're Living All Over Me, for example.
I've got lots of love for those guys. Maybe I should have included Bug, which fell inside the 88-89 spectrum. But You're Living All Over Me would have probably made it into the 1987 list.
I have no problem heaping credit upon The Pixies. But I think Husker Du needs more credit. The Pixies took what Husker Du was doing- blistering speed + abrasive guitars + primal screams + melody- and catapulted it into a whole new galaxy. But Husker Du still did that formula a few years earlier, and they did it really well.
You fuckin' die.
I remember seeing them live at a small venue in '89 and the crowd going bonkers for this song. Amazing energy. Best show I ever saw.
It's funny how uncool they look here. T-shirts tucked into their jeans and everything.
I saw them live at a fairly large venue in 2004, and they were still amazing. They opened with Kim singing "The Girl in the Radiator" song from "Eraserhead" with the stage still completely dark. Absolutely haunting.
Out of all of the "older" acts that I've seen live (and there have been a few now) they were by far the best.
I should also note that it's strange for me to see Frank Black/Black Francis with hair. For most of my music-listening life he's been a bald, screaming baby-man.
Pixies.. best listened VERY loud going really fast down an abandoned hwy.. cliche, yes.. but true none the less
Whilst singing along at the top of one's lungs, natch.
Pixies.. best listened VERY loud going really fast down an abandoned hwy.. cliche, yes.. but true none the less, and sooooo good live.
Don't sleep on Frank Black's solo stuff, either. "Los Angeles" is one of my favorite songs of all time.
His two genuine solo records are pretty great. The ones he did with The Catholics are far less inspiring, though by no means terrible.
I happen to really like most of the Catholics stuff - I got my wife into the Pixies by taking her to a Catholics show in Santa Barbara in...2000 maybe? (That's also the show where we first heart the song Hum by the Sheila Divine, one of the first bands we really got into together...and a VERY COOL dead band).
They've got some songs that really stand on their own (St Francis Damn Disaster to name one) but mostly I found the albums really solid. It's just a different kind of music - if you're looking for the Pixies alt-rock, it's not really there. With the Catholics project you're getting quirky alt-country/folk/mellow rock.
Not to mention The Breeders.
ok, we've got to be close in age. The Breeders were in town & nobody would go w/ me. There is a great doc on the Pixies filmed while the Deals were working on the next album.
I've seen that one. It was made a few years ago during the Pixies reunion tour. Pod and Last Splash are kind of like George Harrison's All Things Must Pass.
Ahh, the ever-chain-smoking-Deal-sisters. I saw them in ...'99 maybe? It was a pretty low quality show as I recall, no one looked like they gave a shit. Sure, that's the image, I get it, but man I'm glad it was a free show.
No, you're right. I more or less mean the earliest one or two incarnations of the band. Pod and Last Splash are both pretty great. The early 90s had some pretty kickass bands with female frontpeople.
oh my yes. They are just... so good. All over the place.
And I mean, one of the bands on my top 10 list at almost all times. Excellent choice.
TNC, you've heard TV on the Radio's cover of Mr. Grieves, right?
Yeah. I like it better than the original. I know that's blasphemous. But I do.
What can you say about musicians who have been so successfully covered by so many different bands? I guess they must have been pretty good song-writers. Personally, Placebo's version of Where Is My Mind? has the edge over the original, but that'snot to say that they don't both rock, and I don't particularly dig much of the rest of Placebo's stuff (except their covers that is).
The Pixies should do a cover of Ambulance.
The possibility of my favorite writer (TNC) discussing my favorite band (Pixies) just made my day.
Whoa. So I put on "Doolittle", surf on over here to see the days postings and there's Black Francis/Frank Black staring back at me. How's that for a random/cool coincidence?
And may I suggest you check out the Jesus & Mary Chain? Another favorite band of mine from the late 80s/early 90s. In fact, the Pixies did a great cover of one of their songs.
Nirvana cites them as huge influence. Rock solid pop/alternative.
I listened to part of Trompe Le Monde on the subway today. Loading my iPod i thought, "it's almost fall, it's time to dust off the Pixies." Why is that? They're my fall band. (The Fall is my summer band.)
If man is five, if man is five..
then the devil is six
... then GOD is SEVEN, then GOD is SEVEN...
Wow, I'm trying to remember why I decided to grow up get married buy a house have a kid...
can't I be seventeen again?
No, but you can always look forward to your mid-life crisis in a few years!!
Just like Patton Oswald, when i`m old I want to say that I saw the Pixies play in Boston before everyone had ever heard of them, and it was literally just me and the bartender at the show and afterwards we did a lot of cocaine, and my grandkid will say but Granma wouldnt that make you like 3 years old then? And I`ll be like "Shut up! How did I end up with grandkids anyway?"
This post has made my day. I know people disagree on this, but Doolittle is my favorite album of theirs. Probably just because it was the first one I listened to. 'Debaser' is probably one of my favorite ten songs of all time. This isn't too far behind...
My wife (not white, but into white music) got me (white, into not white music) into the Pixies over time. I really dig them. Now if I can get into Smashing Pumpkins... ugh. Give me some rare soul 7"s and an Above The Law CD.
TNC, are you trying to confuse all us Atlantic blog readers into thinking Yglesias is still writing in this spot?! He used to post a Pixies YouTube like every week. Next thing we know, you'll be writing about mass transit and the NBA.
*Stupid Me-Firstism Alert*
I was into the Lips back in my first year of university back in '99 before Arcade Fire even started playing together. That summer I took a trip up to the Scottish Highlands, and Soft Bulletin was on continuous loop all the way - tall mountains, incredibly blue skies, long walks, and good times with friends and family - one of my happiest memories, and I think of it every time a song off that album plays.
Nearly a year of lurking and this is what gets me to sign up to comment. I don't really care if they were one of the most influential blah blah blah. They were one of the best. That's all I need to know. And they still don't get the recognition they deserve for it.
I was too young to ever have seen the Pixies live the first time around (one of the great misfortunes of my life), but I saw Frank Black twice at medium-size venues in Chicago and he was absolutely amazing. He's just an incredible performer who puts every bit of himself into it.
I saw the Pixies on their reunion tour in 2004, and even though part of me hated myself for going to what was obviously a ploy to capitalize on their post-breakup popularity with a younger generation, it was still pretty damn cool.
TV on the Radio's cover of Mr. Grieves is very good. It was that song that turned me on to TV on the Radio.
Worth noting, perhaps, that two great and defining Pixies songs are covers. Hang on to Your Ego is a Beach Boys cover and Head On is a Jesus and Mary Chain cover, and in both cases (in my humble opinion) the Pixies version is the better version.
Is Hang on to Your Ego technically a Pixies cover or a Frank Black one? It's on Frank Black's eponymous solo record.
It's a Frank Black cover of a Beach Boys song.
Random note: Surfer Rosa, great album cover or what?
They're playing live in DC at DAR Constitution Hall on 11/30- I'll be there, and I'll buy you a beer if I see you, TNC.
There is pretty much no significant memory of my teen through college years that doesn't have a Pixies soundtrack to it.
I disagree that the defining Pixies songs are covers. There are too many to mention them all, but just hearing the first few notes of 'Dig For Fire' still gives me the chills.
Not sure whether to be happy for you since you're on the verge of discovering all these great albums or sad because you've missed them up until now...
I didn't mean to say that THE defining Pixies songs are covers. Just that those are two songs, that are covers, that are great Pixies songs and that are much more strongly associated with the Pixies than with the bands that first recorded them.
I kind of struggled with that word "defining." It wasn't exactly what I was getting at, but I couldn't think of a better one. I think that, after maybe Wave of Mutilation (which I think was on a movie soundtrack - Heathers?) those are among the better well-known Pixies songs.
And seconding Gang of Four as absolutely fantastic.
If you are a Pixies fan, you need to listen to Frank Black's cover of "Sugar Daddy" from Hedwig and the Angry Inch (one of my absolute favorite movies). It is one of the coolest and most incredibly intense recordings I have ever heard.
All right...taking this thread off track. I absolutely love The Pixies. The raw emotion of the lyrics, vocal and instrumental performances is staggering. It pisses me off that I didn't catch on to them until after the break-up. If you're drawn to the Pixie's overwhelming intensity, might I suggest you check out The Thermals. Especially '04's Fuckin A and '06's The Body, The Blood, The Machine. Heavy on the religious imagery with plenty of punk overdrive.
Here's Your Future is in my all-time Top 10. Not that that means anything to anyone here. I'm just sayin.
Another reason to like the band? From Wikipedia:
"The band turned down a $50,000 offer for the right to use their song "It's Trivia" (from More Parts Per Million) in a Hummer commercial. Harris commented on the decision in a February 2006 asap article: "We thought about it for about 15 seconds, maybe...it was a really easy decision. How could we go on after soundtracking Hummer? It's just so evil."