Records: The Pixies' Death to the Pixies

By Dan McGarry

I hadn't yet started high school when the Pixies broke up. Odds are, neither had you. We missed out.

Oh sure, it may have been a cool band for a select group of upperclassmen you didn't hang out with; they were the same guys who wore those weird Hüsker Dü t-shirts and bought Nevermind before it was big. For my part, I had to wait until I was a junior to hear the Pixies. A senior friend of mine left a tape in my car which included a number of Pixies songs, as well as some of lead singer Frank Black's post-Pixies solo efforts. It was true love from the first listen. My friend still hasn't gotten that tape back.

At the time I didn't know who they were, what they'd done, or where they'd come from, but I knew that their music had something that, even in 1994, set it apart dramatically from the everyday issuance of gener-alt rock radio. A younger me thought that music this spectacular had to be popular.

At least one of their songs, "Here Comes Your Man," still gets some radio play, and I imagine it sold some records in its day. But the Pixies really didn't have "hits" in the sense of chart-topping ditties that make it into the DJ's bin for months at length, for use at every summer camp social and Carnival Cruise congo line. Also they didn't have classics in the sense of some gray-beard Rolling Stones tunes, the opening chords of which can perk up the ears of a large portion of a whole generation; that is, I strongly doubt Microsoft would ever base a national ad campaign around "Bone Machine."

Death to the Pixies, the new reissue of both studio and live Pixies material, dutifully and justly uses the term "classic tracks" to describe its contents. And truly classic, if not classics, they are: the poppy "Here Comes Your Man" still has the power to inspire sophomore girls to mouth along with bassist Kim Deal's sugary "so long"s, just as the dialogue at the beginning of "I'm Amazed" can still produce sophomore boys' jokes about field hockey players.

From 1987 to 1991, the Pixies earned a following as faithful as their music was demanding. For despite their possession of all the tools required to make rock music explode in all its glory, very often the Pixies let it come crashing in on itself and grounding it to a screeching halt--sometimes all in the same song. This tended to diminish their potential fan base. But among those fans, some individuals would prove to have a little looser grip on life than Frank Black, and would bring their versions of Pixies rock into the multi-million selling mainstream: notably alterna-cherubs Kurt Cobain and Gavin Rossdale. Elektra probably aims Death at their fans.

If you are already a Pixies fan, or have any of their albums, you are better off buying the rest of their albums than buying Death. The first CD, all studio tracks, contains no rarities or curiosities other than a slightly different version of "Gigantic" taken from the single of the same name, but if it's that you want, hunt down the single and get some always exciting b-sides in the bargain.

The second, a live CD, is the never-before-issued recording of a 1990 Pixies show in Holland. All the songs except for the b-side "Into the White" are tracks from the five albums, and there's not even much interesting crowd dialogue. Unless you have a thing for live recordings, the second CD is little more than a pleasant diversion.

In all, Death is a worthy tribute to the best American band of the last two decades, showing off some of their most amazing material. Even though it offers little for the diehard, hopefully one of those kids wearing a Nirvana t-shirt will pick it up.

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