In addition to their fabulous full-length records, the Pixies issued a number of great B-sides during their original late ‘80s/early ‘90s run. One of their lesser known—but still totally awesome—non-LP tracks was an unlikely remake.

During the 1980s, the United States government’s “War on Drugs” was in full swing. In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed into law the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug crimes. Incarceration rates for nonviolent drug offenders also increased dramatically under Reagan’s watch. It was in this era of “Say No to Drugs” that a new video game emerged.

In 1988, NARC debuted in arcades across the country. The game pitted law enforcement against individuals involved in the distribution or consumption of illegal drugs. Coming across as some sort of far right-wing fantasy, the object of the game was to apprehend or kill (but mainly kill) anyone associated with unlawful drug activity. NARC was one of the first ultra-violent games, and it raised the eyebrows of parents concerned about its display of graphic violence.
 

 
It’s been reported that during the recording sessions for Trompe Le Monde (1991), Pixies singer/guitarist Black Francis became obsessed with Nintendo’s home version of NARC. The Pixies were by no means an anti-drug band, and it’s unclear how their frontman became hooked on NARC. Perhaps he played it during repeated lulls in the studio, or absorbing himself in a violent video game was a way to blow off steam (tensions within the group would lead to a break up in early 1993). Regardless, we know that Black Francis definitely was drawn to one element of NARC—its music. There’s a brief quote that circulates online, said to be from the fanzine, Rock a My Soul, in which Francis talks a bit about the video game’s theme.

“Theme From NARC” doesn’t really have a chorus. I thought it was pretty cool, because the chord progression in it is completely fucked up. It isn’t a standard rock ‘n’ roll progression.

Continues after the jump…

 
After the arrival of Surfer Rosa in 1988, Pixies became the unavoidable new darlings of the college rock circuit—as this segment from MTV’s PostModern MTV from early 1989 amply demonstrates. PostModern MTV was kind of a truncated weeknight edition of their long-running 120 Minutes, which offered “underground” rock for a two hour programming block on Sundays.

In an MTV News segment hosted by Kurt Loder, the band is introduced purchasing knishes on the sidewalk in midtown Manhattan. Still known officially then as “Black Francis,” Frank Black is quoted as saying “We just wanna make everyone spine-tingly and everything.”

The original host of the show, Kevin Seal, kicks things off but then the four Pixies themselves take over—this YouTube video shows their bumpers and video intros but not the videos themselves. The bits were taped at the much-missed Scrap Bar on MacDougal Street in the West Village following a highly “clever” conceit that actually just comes off as “awkward.”
 

 
Seated behind a heavy iron grate, the band members were tasked with presenting their palaver “telepathically”—that is, keeping their mouths shut and gesturing emphatically in sync to pre-taped audio bits imparting the relevant info. Just watch it, you’ll see. It’s a good reminder of the tryin’-too-hard ethos of what would soon become associated with Generation X. In retrospect, perhaps the band members’ obvious discomfort with the setup was itself kind of a coded message to their collegiate (and college-adjacent) faithful.

Towards the end of the episode the band runs through the top ten “PostModern” videos, whatever that means, and based on the tracks that made the list that week, I’d peg this segment at June 1989, which was a couple of months after the release of Doolittle and also around when “Here Comes Your Man” came out. Anyone born during the Nixon administration is likely to have some strong opinions about the bands that charted that week…

More after the jump…

Head Carrier cover art
 
Good news for Pixies fans. Indie Cindy, a collection of 3 EPs that came out in 2014, failed to recapitulate the band’s brilliance (Pitchfork rudely gave the release 2.5 out of 10 points), but there are signs that the Pixies’ next album—the first since 1992’s Trompe Le Monde to be conceived as a full studio album—will please fans considerably more.

The album is to be called Head Carrier, and indie rock aficionados got a taste of what the album will sound like when it provided an advance opportunity to hear one of the songs, called “Um Chagga Lagga”:
 

 
It’s not exactly “Crackity Jones,” but it sounds passably close to vintage Pixies to my ears (not that that’s the only benchmark—merely reflecting the pressures to come through the band is actually facing). Frank Black told BBC 6 Music that the new album has “a bit of early-Pixies slosh in it” and is reminiscent of Doolittle—that could mean anything but overall has to be counted as promising. You can pre-order Head Carrier here.

In the BBC interview, Black discusses a song on Head Carrier featuring vocals by the band’s new bassist, Paz Lenchantin. (Kim Shattuck of the Muffs served as bassist for a European tour as well as some U.S. dates in 2013 after Deal’s departure from the reunited band.)

Lenchantin agreed to sing on the album, as long as Black wrote the lyrics. Black asked what the song should be about, and Lenchantin replied, “You have to write about Kim Deal ... like a thank-you letter.”

More after the jump…

No, not Eric Burdon and the Animals, a totally different group

This is as stupid-funny as it gets: A slew of animals cover Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?”

I was like “Yeah whatever. Impress me” when I first clicked play but as soon as the cat came in, I couldn’t help but be delightfully amused. It’s silliness, yes, but I’m in a slap happy mood today. Where is MY mind?

I think I left it in the car.

 
I got into record collecting because I decided when I was thirteen that I had to have every note the Pixies ever played. In the early 90s, this holy mission entailed spending a lot of time, and such money as I could get my hands on, acquiring European bootleg CDs at shops and record fairs. These used to be advertised euphemistically as “rare live imports.” Despite their widely variable sound quality, often ridiculous titles and blurry, flimsy covers, they sold for about double the price of legit albums. That’s a lot of allowance money; some musicians were not pleased. I have heard tell that, one day c. 1992, Courtney Love walked into Aron’s Records (RIP) in Hollywood and liberated every “rare live import” in the Nirvana section. It is also said that she gave everyone within earshot a piece of her mind.

It took years of hoarding this stuff before I realized what a strange hobby it was to collect recordings of Pixies shows. The Pixies were not famous for busting out new arrangements of old favorites or wild improvs in concert; it wasn’t as if I could dig through my collection and say, “Dude, you know the November ‘89 shows? Check out this 12-minute version of ‘Tame’ from Lupo’s. It’s so heavy—it’s like Santiago’s playing the seven ages of man!” No, aside from a few small variations here and there—the keyboard intro Eric Drew Feldman added to “Gouge Away,” say, or the extra part in old performances of “Subbacultcha” that became “Distance Equals Rate Times Time,” or the slowed-down ending of some versions of “Nimrod’s Son”—the live versions of Pixies songs sounded just like the records. That’s why it was such a surprise when they invited Paul Shaffer and the World’s Most Dangerous Band to take solos during the two groups’ massed performance of “Trompe le Monde” on Letterman. 

The really good stuff in my teenage nerd hoard was the B-sides, radio sessions and demos. In the intervening quarter-century, just about all of those recordings have been officially released or re-released. For whatever reason, the exception is this fine rocker, “Boom Chicka Boom,” from the band’s early days in Boston. Here’s a decent recording of the Pixies playing the song on Emerson College’s radio station in January 1987:

 
There’s camcorder footage of a 1986 performance of “Boom Chicka Boom” here.

Because so many Pixies lyrics concern unexplained phenomena, I’ll leave you with this. Two Orange County papers reported that the Pixies played “Boom Chicka Boom” on the first night of their engagement at the El Rey in 2013. But I was there, and they didn’t play it, and it wasn’t on the band’s set list or anything. (Though a new song called “What Goes Boom” was.) Get Fortean Times on the horn.

 
Interviews with musicians can be really, really boring. It’s not a defect of the artists or the interviewers, it’s just that their content is so damned predictable because the occasion for an interview is the same most of the time—a new release and/or a tour. The newest album is always “the best we’ve done yet,” and everyone’s invariably “really excited” for the upcoming tour. NO KIDDING. Artists tend to favor their newest work, and even when they know it pales, they’re often obligated by label and PR contracts to hump it for the media. Plus, artists spend all day on the phone with interviewers, repeatedly answering the same questions. That’s got to be a brain-meltingly tedious chore, so moments of refreshing insight can be rare. So I was delighted to get hipped to the untrammeled awesomeness of Kids Interview Bands.

Kids Interview Bands is a video interview series hosted by 7th graders Olivia and Connie.

The site launched in August 2012 and the girls have done over 100 interviews with touring bands passing through the Columbus, Ohio area including some of their favorites (Neon Trees, Imagine Dragons, Phillip Phillips, Walk the Moon, Tegan & Sara, Matt & Kim).

Both girls are active in sports and other activities that typical 7th graders enjoy. They aren’t sure if they want to make a living interviewing bands but they are having a lot of fun getting the chance to talk to all the great artists who have agreed to sit down and chat with them.

If you’re following music that’s Pitchforkishly trendy at the moment, you’ll already know a lot of the bands that Olivia and Connie have spoken with. But while there are a lot of here-today-gone-tomorrow festival circuit hopefuls to be found in the dozens upon dozens of video interviews the pair have posted, they’ve also landed some marquee names. There are some truly wonderful interviews in the bunch, where the musicians don’t merely humor the kids, but let their guard down and have fun along with them. For example, I’ve never been much of a Garbage fan, but I LOVE this:

 
Insane Clown Posse have become a great American cultural punching bag, and for good reason, but they’re natural, forthright and even a bit illuminating here. Shamefully, they blew a huge opportunity when they were asked what subject they should have given more attention in school—staying awake through science might have clued them in on FUCKING MAGNETS.
 

 
Some of the questions lobbed at Queens of the Stone Age are genuinely tough. I harbor serious doubts that if I were put on the spot I could pick a favorite Muppet.
 

 
Here’s the Pixies’ Joey Santiago, probably enjoying the hell out of the one interview in which he doesn’t have to talk about Indie Cindy.
 

 
Mastodon’s drummer Brann Dailor is kinda my new hero. He’s really great here. In two words: headbanging lessons.
 

 
All of these are terrific questions, are they not? I wish the kids had had the chance to ask Lou Reed stuff like this. (Or better still, G.G. Allin., though it probably would have been inadvisable to let 7th grade girls anywhere near him.) But here’s their big coup—the most virally popular of all the kids’ interviews, and justifiably so—a friendly chat with the mild-mannered, upbeat, and almost Santa Claus-ishly genial Tom Araya, lead singer of Slayer.
 

 
Tonight I’m off to see the Pixies for the first time (albeit sans Kim Deal, oh well) at the Bowery Ballroom. I thought it would be a good day to offer up this unusual unplugged set they played at the Newport Folk Festival on August 6, 2005. How many concerts have they done in which they don’t play “Debaser”? More to the point, how many have they done in which they don’t play “Debaser” and that seems totally fine?

Also, it’s a Friday and it seems like a nice way to transition into the weekend.

Here’s the setlist:

Hey
Bone Machine
I Bleed
Gigantic
Monkey Gone To Heaven
River Euphrates
Velouria
Ed Is Dead
Is She Weird?
Subbacultcha
Gouge Away
Wave of Mutilation
Cactus
Where is My Mind?
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘loudQUIETloud’: A film about the Pixies
My God this is beautiful: The Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind?’ played on piano

The Mysterious Lady (1928)

Breathtakingly gorgeous piano cover of “Where Is My Mind?” by Maxence Cyrin. Wow! Wow! Wow!