Here comes your men (and wife), Kurt – slightly weathered
As Nirvana took the world by storm with their album “Nevermind” and single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in the early 1990s, frontman Kurt Cobain came out with the startling admission that “I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit.” Cobain would soon die before he grew old. If he were still around, one wonders what he would think now of the reformed, aging, diminished version of the Pixies that will appear in Budapest Park on August 30 this year?
The Pixies and Nirvana were contemporaneous, with the Pixies forming in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1986, the year before Nirvana reunited in Seattle, Washington, USA. The Pixies’ tumultuous career lasted only seven years before the pressures of touring and personality clashes collapsed the group in 1993. Nirvana’s demise came with Cobain’s suicide in April 1994.
In 2003 the Pixies reformed and toured and released three albums. The 2022 incarnation may still be able to excite Budapest, but it’s generally accepted that the early spark has all but disappeared. Above all, highly regarded bassist Kim Deal stepped down in 2013 and was hard to replace.
Of the two bands, and Cobain’s quote connects them, Nirvana was perhaps the most iconic band of the whole 1990s pack. They had achieved huge success in 1994 with hard music dubbed grunge, and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is surely one of the defining songs of the decade. Meet the world’s first triple-platinum punk rock band.
Cobain made his now famous statement when speaking to David Fricke of Rolling Stone magazine in 1994 about the recording of their breakthrough album “Nevermind.” He said of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”: “I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit. When I first heard the Pixies , I connected so much to this group that I should have been in this band – or at least a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, going soft and quiet, then loud and hard.
Cobain’s respect for the Pixies ran deep. According to Kerrang! magazine, he considered the Pixies “Surfer Rosa” to be her second favorite album of all time, surpassed only by Iggy and the Stooges’ “Raw Power”, from 1973. Critics agreed that “Surfer Rosa” proved you could marry pop smarts with a punk edge and create music that’s alive with both romance and surrealism.
The Pixies’ unique blend of aggressive punk rock and infectious pop music melodies helped establish the sound that would define alternative rock in the 1990s. The original members were Charles Michael Kitteridge Thompson IV (also known as name of Black Francis and Frank Black, born April 6, 1965 in Boston), Joey Santiago (born June 10, 1965 in Manila, Philippines), Kim Deal (born June 10, 1961 in Dayton, Ohio, United States) and David Lovering (born December 6, 1961 in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA).
Singer-guitarist Thompson and his former Boston University roommate, guitarist Santiago, decided to form a band, and they advertised in a local paper for “Hüsker Dü bassist and Peter, Paul and Mary”. Hüsker Dü was an American punk rock band formed in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1979. rockPaul and Married was an American folk band formed in New York in 1961 (Thompson had a sense of humor). The announcement was answered by Deal, who brought in his friend Lovering as drummer.
The Pixies quickly gained a reputation as part of Boston’s local club scene. After an eight-track mini-LP, “Come on Pilgrim,” in 1987, they released their first feature, “Surfer Rosa,” in 1988. The album was an instant critical favorite and received airplay. considerable on American college radio. . But while American critical response was positive, it was also muted, and the real success came in Europe, a reaction that persisted for much of the band’s career.
Although rougher than the Pixies’ later work, “Surfer Rosa” established their signature sound: an aggressive outburst of searing guitars and Thompson’s shrill vocals, which were oddly but effectively counterbalanced by enchanting pop melodies and backup vocals. Deal softer.
Equally distinctive were Thompson’s eerie and cryptic lyrics, which over the years encompassed references ranging from his Pentecostal UFO upbringing to Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel’s surreal 1928 film “Un Chien Andalou” (“An Andalusian Dog”). ).
“Surfer Rosa” was album of the year in UK music weeklies Sounds and Melody Maker. Sounds felt that Pixies “are a rock ‘n’ roll band unparalleled at the moment, reaching a kind of dark heartland while teetering delightfully off the precarious cliff edge of self-deprecating comedy”.
In 1989 the band released “Doolittle”, their most revered album, which built on the existing Pixies formula and perfected the stop-and-start dynamic that would become perhaps their greatest legacy to later alternative bands. especially Nirvana. It featured favorites “Here Comes Your Man” and “Monkey Gone to Heaven”.
“Bossanova”, a variation inspired by the surf music on previous albums, followed in 1990. At this time, tensions were rising in the band. Deal, once a co-songwriter, contributed little to the album, and the band had effectively disbanded by the time of the release of “Trompe le Monde” (1991), which is generally considered the most successful effort. low of Pixies. (Sounds good here at the Budapest Times.)
Then the group was over. Thompson (changing his stage name from Black Francis to Frank Black) went on to release memorable solo albums, some under the name Frank Black and the Catholics, including ‘Teenager of the Year’ (1993), ‘Dog in the Sand (2001) and “Honeycomb” (2005).
Deal focused on her former side project, the Breeders.
In 2004, the Pixies reunited for a highly anticipated multi-city tour, captured in the documentary film “loudQUIETloud” (2006). (Of course, in truth, others had been loud before; the Pixies didn’t “invent” it.) Although Deal left in 2013, the band continued to tour and record. The following albums “Indie Cindy” (2014), “Head Carrier” (2016) and Beneath the Eyrie” (2019) are not really considered by fans or critics to live up to the bar set by the first four .
Many say the Pixies aren’t the same without Kim Deal. Kim Shattuck joined for a European tour in the fall of 2013 but was fired five months later and replaced by Paz Lenchantin (born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in 1973), so all three bass players were female.
Pixies aren’t what they used to be, though it’s probably a disservice to condemn them as an “act of nostalgia.” And what would Cobain think now? His death made him a member of the “27 Club” alongside Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Nick Drake, Amy Winehouse and, earlier, Robert Johnson. “Live fast, die young, and have a beautiful corpse” is an oft-repeated quote from the 1947 book “Knock on Any Door” by Willard Motley, also found in the 1949 film version starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame.
For Kurt Cobain, it was unfortunately “better to burn out than to disappear”, Neil Young’s phrase from his song “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” which Cobain included in his suicide note in 1994.