The Pixies are super flipping good. Love 'em. Love the weird merging of surf rock and whatever the heck it is that is their music. Some say punk... I guess yeah a little bit, but so much more. So very 1990's alt rock. Was the Brit snobbery around music, but friendly to US Alt rock, was that all part of it or just my personal bias view? Those Brits, they hated "heavy metal" or whatever they were calling all hard music... UNLESS it had a bunch of weird alt-rockness to it, then they loved it. Like The Pixies, The Breeders, Nirvana, etc. Hey you kids know about the hidden track on the Nevermind Album, right? The Brits didn't know till I showed 'em. :) So I say.
I like this trivia about Cactus, via Rolling Stone Mag: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/readers-poll-the-10-best-pixies-songs-10588/9-cactus-228419/
- ‘Cactus’
- Black Francis tackled topics that few songwriters dared to go anywhere near, including incst, mutilation, Hebrew numerology, STDs, alien abduction and sxual perversion. "Cactus" is about a guy in prison asking his girlfriend to "bloody your hand on a cactus tree/ Wipe it on a dress and send it to me." Oddly enough, it's one of the sweeter tunes on Surfer Rosa and the closest thing they really had to a love song. David Bowie covered the song on his 2002 LP Heathen.
- ‘Gouge Away’
- Is about Samson and Delilah. The hair being cut and all that.
- 'Here comes your Man"
- Written when Francis was 15 they say. Redone later. Awesome song.
- ‘Wave of Mutilation’
- The ... 1980s, ... stories about Japanese salarymen su-c-ding themselves and their families ...driving off piers "into the OooOcean" b/c "failed" in business. Francis wrote "Wave of Mutilation" about it they say. Freaky.
- The slower version "UK" version, is supposedly played in concerts along with the original. Hmmph, wouldn'ta thought.
- 'Debaser' - was about that nearly 100 year old French movie Un Chien Andalou where the opening scene is slicing someone's eye open (I think really a cow eye). Gross. And Francis wrote a song about it... it "debased the movie lalala standards stuff". And they played video clips during tours 2009-2011, so I guess it's true. Yikes.
- 'Where is my mind' is about Francis going scuba diving in the Carrib' b4 forming the band. Fish "chased him around" and freaked him out they say. Kinda funny. But yeah, hearing this on the Fight Club helped bring it back... I remember hearing it on college radio a little before along with a few of their other songs here and there.
- 'Hey' - was some popular 2005 era youtube vid made by some random young chicks. It's about bible stuff and whores. Weird. Can't even find it on youtube.
- But I did find this acoustic where, shock I had forgotten, the twin chick Kim Deal rejoined for a bit b4 hers and Francis's egos musta clashed too much and she left again (or something): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQXU8bHFVo&pp=ygUPcGl4aWVzIGhleSAyMDA1
- HOLD UP, Wikiped saves me on the info, Deal stayed with 'em for a good while. Says:
- leading to a 2004 reunion and sold-out world tours. Deal left in 2012, and was replaced with Kim Shattuck for their 2013 tour. She was later replaced with Paz Lenchantin, who became a full member in 2016
- I coulda swore Francis and Deal were too at odds to stick together that long, but hey, they did it, cool.
