The Pixies

On a Boston-Area Band of the Late 1980s and Early 1990s

by Cavalier Jeremy-Joseph Rosen
The Pixies

In 1987 The Pixies, labelled an alternative rock band, released a song entitled “Nimrod Son” as part of their first EP recording Come on Pilgrim. “Nimrod Son” is evocative both of the later evolution of popular music as well as The Pixies’ antecedents in rock, country, and other popular musics. “Nimrod Son” is one of the best examples of The Pixies’ often deranged and humorous lyrical content, unparalleled technical ability in relation to other groups of the time, and their influence upon contemporary and later musical groups.

To gain a better understanding of the lyrical content and its meaning we must examine the actual form of the piece as it has a large impact on an analysis of the lyrics. “Nimrod Son” opens with a steel guitar riff reminiscent of bluegrass and country music. Two bars later the bassline and the addition of the drums playing a shuffle strongly reinforces this country-bluegrass feel. The A section contains an odd number of bars and two endings both of which contain two measures of stop time with the vocalist, Black Francis, singing throughout both measures with the melody delivered mostly on one note.

The B section is odd-measured as well, suggesting an influence from early American Punk music. The first part combines two measures of a new bass line and guitar riff with two measures of those from the introduction and A section. The second half of the B section moves into a more solid rock and roll sound ideal. There is less rhythm guitar present, but the melody moves quite a bit with a backup voice adding harmony above the melody. In less than thirty seconds of music, the song has moved through influences clearly derived from at least three distinct forms of music.

Before returning to the A section a transition on a new theme enters and the tempo is slowed down by half. This transition is completely instrumental and moves around the key centre by step. A brief pause and the band is back to a repetition of the A section, then a guitar solo. The band stops briefly and then begins again from the introduction through an A section.

The range of form, tempo, and technicality of this song is quite distinct from the same elements in many other bands of the time. 1987 was a year wherein “heavy metal” bands, groups with very loud, guitar-driven songs and a rock star image were at the height of their popularity and groups like The Pixies, with odd songs and initially no commercial image at all, were still considered “underground.”

bands

The Pixies both predicted and created the later grunge music scene which was first recognized in Seattle, though it was present in quite a range of metropolitan areas. Grunge, or alternative, music was more diverse in its forms and content across the spectrum of musical groups and can be cited as a commercial label rather than a distinctive sound. One could say what was and wasn’t grunge, or alternative, but one couldn’t always place parameters around it. See so-called world music for a similar U.S.-centric commercial classification of music.

Much of this was due to the fact that The Pixies began and spread a formula of song writing that most groups of the time didn’t. Black Francis, the leader and main writer of most of the songs in The Pixies’ book created music of great dynamic variation. Songs would often begin with a quiet intensity only to explode in the chorus with his voice, usually backed up by bassist Kim Deal, singing loudly and often without definite tone. This wide dynamic formula was adopted in due course by bands anywhere The Pixies’ music was available in recorded or live form. “Nimrod Son” is one of the earliest examples from which this influence is derived.

While exhibiting numerous differences with other groups of the time, The Pixies shared one obvious similarity borne out within the lyrical content of “Nimrod Son.” This is a propensity for typically strange and pictorial lyrics in order to either disturb or amuse the listener. A popular take on such lyrics is that they are there to frighten and scare parents and conservatives with their content. This was likely present, but unimportant, within the band’s ethos during their earliest phases because there wasn’t much of an audience for their type of music.

Following this amusing and disturbing lyrical trend, however, “Nimrod Son” apparently describes a man who discovers that he is the child of incest between his father and grandmother. This revelation is placed within the space at the end of the A section where there are only vocals and adds a huge emotional wallop as a result. On top of this the man discovers that his current lover is also his sister. Again this revelation is placed within the same space in the A section. The bridge, with its distinct change from the A section expresses his revulsion and confusion with what he has discovered through a wailing melody that floats over the rhythmically faster musical accompaniment.

Of course by itself this content is merely amusing or disturbing and it can realistically be claimed that there is little beyond Black Francis’ writing than a progression of strange images. In fact much of this type of music can be criticized for lack of literal, and even metaphorical, sense.

When the lyrics are taken within the context of the musical background of the song a more intricate description appears. Because of the obvious nod to bluegrass music in the A section I see this song as a comment on the stereotypical image of the South where people supposedly have intimate relations with close relatives and drive pickup trucks as another line from the song states. It becomes clear, however, that the exact comment being made upon this situation is essentially impossible to discover because, again, The Pixies are more concerned with imagery than commentary.

Frank Black

Unfortunately there is no resolution, no obvious solution, to this question contained anywhere in the song. These revelations are restated for the listener and because they have been heard before have much less impact the second time around. This could possibly be an effort to mimic the reverberations of the revelations within the man’s mind, but other songs of the period and after are rarely so introspective while being so visual simultaneously. For the most part there is nary an attempt at resolution. There is merely a picture presented and it is left up to the listener to reflect, enjoy or refuse to analyze. This would mirror quite well the historical and documented intent of the band.

Part of The Pixies’ distinction as an influence upon the rock genre is that some of its members and production staff went on to work with others in the field. The producer of the sessions on Surfer Rosa, the follow up album to the EP, Steve Albini, went on to work most notably on Nirvana’s first commercial success Nevermind and with Stone Temple Pilots. His production sound is distinctive and he is responsible for transmitting the sounds of The Pixies throughout the rock music world. He also later spoke out against the music industry (see “The Problem with Music” from Baffler No. 5).

Black Francis’ history, like his music, was quite interesting as well. Born Charles Thompson, he changed his name to Black Francis during the sessions for Come on Pilgrim. After internal tensions between Black and bassist Kim Deal the band split and Black Francis went on to become Frank Black and produce three albums departing widely from The Pixies’ sound. They seemed to take influence from many of the groups that were at first influenced by The Pixies. He abandoned the formula present in “Nimrod Son” and as a result of the mood at the time fell into commercial disfavour.

Kim Deal found more involvement in the aftermath of The Pixies’ influence over rock and roll than any other member of the band. After the breakup of The Pixies she joined the band Belly which took a major part in the beginning of the adoption of The Pixies’ sound throughout the rest of rock and roll. This band definitely was quite obviously influenced by The Pixies internally through its lyrics and externally because of its association with the commercial label of alternative music.

Leaving Belly Deal went on to form The Breeders with her twin sister Kelly. The Breeders returned to many elements of the sound of The Pixies and did more in spreading that aesthetic in the early nineties. Deal was the other main force in The Pixies and her desire to have more involvement in the song writing and singing led to The Pixies’ demise, so it is no surprise that the band she fronted afterwards was similar in sound ideal. She formed an incredibly short-lived band call The Amps which released one album Pacer before
dissolving. The last The Breeders album, Title TK, was released in 2002.

By 2001, though, the importance of The Pixies as a pedestal of more than a decade of rock and popular music was quite obvious to even casual listeners. The band topped the lists of favourites of those who could only have enjoyed the work of Sharon, Lois, and Bram at the time the band was still together. People from the teens to the fifties recognized them for their importance; more importantly a continuing cavalcade of current musical acts recognized and acknowledged their influence. And so, in 2004 the band reunited for a tour which was at once a critical, financial, and fan success, touring with contemporary supporting acts who were influenced by them.

“Nimrod Son” and its sister songs on Come on Pilgrim as well as the songs in the same vein from Surfer Rosa spread quickly throughout rock music and had a heavy influence on it. “Nimrod Son” expanded, unwittingly I think, upon previous forms and ideals from the underground, adding to them until it created something different yet accessible to listeners. The ability to internalize other styles of music, as in “Nimrod Son,” without becoming a strange melange of different musics became a staple of later alternative music as did the wide progression of dynamics. “Nimrod Son” stands, upon analysis, as one of the definitive sources of the music of the early nineties, the commercialization of such music in contemporary culture, and the basis of a vast swath of contemporary musical groups. In total, the rock music scene today would not exist without The Pixies.

Historigon: Haduary 2007

This Month in History:

  • 2006 AD: Earl Thomas, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, looks at a website which features images of non-clothed women.
  • 1992 AD: U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle correctly spells pusillanimous in the first round of a Trenton, NJ elementary school spelling bee.
  • 1967 AD: Producers of Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. successfully sue the Beatles, who are forced to come up with a new name for their upcoming album Sergeant Carter’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.
  • 1936 AD: Alabama State Legislator Atticus Finch shoots a dog. Not the rabid one, another one not mentioned in the book.
  • 1885 AD: The Emperor Meiji, in order to help Japan’s great advance, offers to adopt the name Emperor Mr. Charlemagne Van Der Thompson. Aides most respectfully explain that this would require inordinate amounts of paperwork, and the matter is quietly dropped.
  • 1662 AD: John of Strathclyde invents a one-wheeled cart stabilized by primitive gyroscopes. It is not adopted because such an idea is rightly considered stupid.
  • 1515 AD: While the location has been forgotten, an East African, an Indian, and a Chinese are the first such people to visit that location many years before a European did.
  • 1296 AD: Explorer and traveler Marco Polo decides to leave out the chapter of Le divisament dou monde wherein he describes in detail his love of nubile young Asian women.
  • 899 AD: Biff steals a kiss from Magdalen at a mid-Summer’s festival in Burgundy. Magdalen’s father has Biff executed as a lesson to all future osculatory thieves.
  • 678 AD: Several kingdoms in Britain which few rightly remember, if at all, go to war for some reason or other. Probably over a fishing hole or a particularly green hill.
  • 630 AD: In an episode slightly less stunning than his ascension to Heaven, Muhammad is taken up by the Buraq and shown a vision of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
  • 280 AD: Comedians Li Ri Bo and Po Zu Ti win the Emperor’s favor in Datong by setting a live chicken on fire and performing a humorous dance as the hapless fowl dies.
  • 40 AD: Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened this month. Move along.
  • 238 BC: The Parthians invent heavy cavalry through the use of larger horses.
  • 753 BC: Rome is actually founded by Romulus in this month, not in April as contended by historians. It is also founded about five feet to the west of where it is traditionally believed to have been founded.
  • 849 BC: Court musician Latha of Parsa adopts the stage-name Latha Lyre.
  • 1225 BC: Out of barley and wheat, Snebit the Libyan creates a liquor out of grass and palm leaves instead. It isn’t any good and Snebit is thrown into a nearby river to drown.
  • 2002 BC: Korean merchant Hwandan is the first person to come up with the idea of “buy one, get one free.”
  • 4888 BC: A ditch digger with one leg shorter than the other plies his trade across Central Europe. His handiwork is discovered 6600 years later by “archaeologists.”
  • 8306 BC: Dartho upsets Ungot and becomes the best spear-thrower in the clan.
  • 721,238 BC: While strolling through the plain, Mumaugue sees storm clouds on the horizon. For a moment he shivers in the cold wind.

The March of Progress: Haduary 2007

megastring

Newton got you down? Did Einstein get into your brain like sand in your swim trunks? Are you tired of the same old, day-to-day physics of string theory, M-theory, and the intensely adjectival super-string theory? Throw those theories in the dustbin and look no further! Megastring theory is here to take your physics to the next level.

Megastring theory is not for the faint-of-heart. It’s not for the weak-willed or the past-their-prime. Megastring theory is not on the path to the theory of everything. Oh no. Megastring theory is the theory of everything, the Holy Grail of Physics. Let me tell you how you can tap into the awesome power of Megastring theory. There are no complicated equations here, just eleven easy steps to Universal understanding. Are you ready to dive into the rest of your life? Let me tell you how.

1. Space is not just multi-dimensional, pan-dimensional or other word then dash dimensionals. In fact, it consists of exactly 1,409 spatial dimensions, 13 temporal dimensions, and four dimensions of a consistency with over-cooked spaghetti. These dimensions are not folded up. In fact, they can be found in an old cigare box in Mortimer J. Jacobson’s basement. Most smell of fresh apricots, though at least two could be considered more of a dried plum.
2. Most of these dimensions are inhabited by what looks like, and in fact is, stupid pudding. Also, there are eels there. The eels eat the pudding and then excrete gravity. What holds you to the Earth is hyperspatial eel poop. It’s a fact.
3. The 695th dimension consists entirely of a two-fingered old woman with no name. Two comical gnomes constantly antagonize her: Shortimer and Flango. Shortimer and Flango are always trying to steal the vast cold-cut and sliced-cheese spreads the anonymous woman has put out for her dinner guests who never arrive. These guests do not arrive because they learned early on that there were no cold-cuts or sliced-cheeses when they arrived. Though the old woman attempts to stop them, Shortimer and Flango invariably outsmart her and all the cunningly complicated traps she lays for them. In fact, they are only cunning by comparison to members of her species with one finger because her specie’s brain is located within each of the digits of its hand. The interaction between the woman and the gnomes creates meta-friction which produces the pudding people mentioned in point #2. When Shortimer sneezes, it creates the weak nuclear force. When Flango breaks wind, it creates the strong nuclear force.
4. All pudding people, eels, gnomes, and old women exist because of the interaction of a pot and a kettle in the 501st dimension. As each goes back and forth calling the other black, the other beings are maintained via the interaction of the pot and kettle’s negritons, allowing the gnomes to exist.
5. Made of marble, the 45th dimension is covered in cheese which is often smacked by a hammers wielded by tiny elephants. The cheese, thus stricken, vibrates, producing ventricles, or the particles apparent in lower dimensions such as ours. This is also where Madam No-Name Two-Fingers gets the cheese for her platters. The tiny elephants are not pleased about this, but being so tiny there is very little they can do about it.
6. Electromagnetism is there also.
7. Gravity, electricity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces are all mixed in a bowl and stirred regularly by Isis, who is mayor of the 1000th dimension. They are slowly poured into our dimension, which has already been greased around the edges, but not before mischievous, sentient catamarans decide to inject magnetism into the mix, much to the bedevilment of Isis.
8. The universe came into being because of the above mentioned things.
9. Once Flango and Shortimer eat all the cold-cuts, all the electromagnetic forces in the universe will begin to flow upside down, and the strong nuclear force eventually disappears.
10. Because the cause of Flango’s sneezing was actually a reaction with the extra-dimensional pepper molecules found in Shortimer’s flatulence as a result of his consumption of cold-cuts, the weak nuclear force will also eventually disappear.
11. CAUTION: Should gravity for some reason invert someone should go to Mortimer J. Jacobson’s basement and shake the cigar box. Not too hard, though. That should right everything and help recharge the universe. Do it a bit to the left, too, as I’d like to wake up perpetually to the smell of strawberries.

And that’s it. The universe in a nutshell. Megastring may seem complex or counter-intuitive, but remember that it has ten times more empirical evidence for it than super string does. 10 times zero is still zero.

News of the World: Haduary 2007

primary

With the 2008 Presidential Election only fifteen months away, the American-Freedom Party frontrunners have converged on the new state of Willinois in anticipation of Mega-Marsday when eleven states (roughly 11/6oths of the total number of states) hold their official primary. While recent Gallup polls have given Free-American party incumbent Dick Armstrong an 87% approval rating, the American Freedom party candidates seem ready for the challenge.

Alaska’s junior senator Robert Shoemaker shot out to an early lead when he openly criticized President Dick Armstrong’s handling of the Noodle Incident. But, Shoemaker lost in the polls to Ponderada Governor Mary Tarzan after being killed by the rabid wolverines he routinely carries in a specially contracted backpack.

In Calvert, Accadia last week Governor Tarzan appeared for a meet-and-greet with important members of the beef jerky industry. While stacking flatware in an artful way, Governor Tarzan expounded, via haiku poetry, on the need for real solutions to the growing Oboe Crisis. After taking several photographs of figs, she answered questions from a seamstress and a clerk named Stephen, before repairing a unicycle and dancing the flamenco with several members of the Valve Lobby.

Tarzan gained the American-Party lead by announcing, earlier this week, her four point strategy for her proposed Embettering America Plan. The plan includes increased soup exports to Slovenia, demanding that Europe abandon A4 for letter sized paper, a 15% increase in north-bound Amtrak service and a mandatory national curfew of 9pm, so that people don’t wake up all grumpy. Other candidates, such as Ohio congressman Mitch Damage were quick to attack Tarzan’s soup export strategy. In a series of attack, the Committee to Elect Damage (CED) endlessly repeated their extra catchy slogan “Slovenia has enough soup for now and we do not need to send more at this time.” Later ads set the slogan to a ragtime tune for added political power.

While Tarzan has refrained from name-calling, Katharinetowne mayor G. Thomas Borden has publicly referred to Damage as a milquesop, an act which earned both Borden and Damage a half-point poll increase. At a recent meet and greet in Tarpaulin, CA, Damage and his entourage took time off from a tour of bowling pin factories to stop off for an asparagus brunch at the local Milquesop Café where he posed for a silhouette and demonstrated his finance skills by balancing hardboiled eggs. Not one to be undone by amateur theatrics, Tarzan appeared at the nearby Dutch Omelet House where she demonstrated her knowledge of foreign affairs by wolfing down seven plates of Belgian waffles and nine cups of Irish coffee. Staggering about the café afterwards, Governor Tarzan called her opponents “a bunch of reactionary f***tards with the combined intellectual capacity of a wet hammer.”

Dark horse candidate Lurien Prut disproved this later in the day by organizing a game-show style contest where he, Damage and Borden went head to head against a wet hammer in a test of geography knowledge. While only Borden was able to name the capital of California, the wet hammer failed to score a single point, despite its being redunked in a bucket several times throughout the showdown. Afterward, Borden distributed free “Ponderada Sucks” promotional kites, a move which earned him several points in Ponderada, the Humble State.

Former Vice President Al Page, bedecked in a sequin jumpsuit and special Vice Presidential helmet, visited a convention of yolk-separators early Tuesday morning and followed with an afternoon of miniature golf. After going twelve above par on the difficult Eiffel Tower hole, Page held an impromptu press conference. When asked what he thought of Armstrong’s presidency, Page paused to collect his thoughts and cram several dozen coffee beans into his mouth before launching into a four hour diatribe during which time he explained, in great detail, the inadequacy of the White House soaps and lotions. He explained that, when visiting, he was forced to bring his own soap and proceeded to pass it around for sampling and sniffing before breaking into an impromptu jig. Afterward, Page flapped his arms several times, wrapped himself in a blanket and ran away.

election poll

Of course, recent polls have Vice President Page trailing Field Marshal Rupert Olive by as many as two points. The war hero who led the Good Guy armies to victory in the War has yet to officially announce his candidacy, but when asked if he will run has repeatedly responded by winking coyly, smiling, and patting the papers in his breast pocket. Many pundits believe that Olive could lead the American-Freedom Party to the White House, despite Olive’s close connections with the Armstrong administration and rumors of his addiction to spoon collecting.

On Wednesday afternoon, the five American-Freedom party candidates Page, Prut, Tarzan, Damage and Borden met at the Calcium Flats Convention Center on the outskirts of Pinkerton, PA for the first in a series of eight debates. While not officially invited to the debate, Platha State Union candidate Alexandra Hague turned up anyway, but was not allowed to enter after she refused to check her firearms at the door.

Thus far, President Armstrong has been biding his time before beginning his reelection campaign, instead focusing on the escalating situation in Alberta. But for the American-Freedom hopefuls, it’s ready, set, go for the start of what appears to be an exciting race.