Frankly we don't care what Charles Thompson calls himself. He used to be Black Francis, lead singer and songwriter for the fiendish postpunk pop group, the Pixies, the most gloriously odd quartet of the pomo era. His stage presence was a cross between a grown-up Spanky and the "Poodle with a Mohawk" poster--"He's back, he's bigger, and HE'S MAD AS HELL!!!"
Despite listener's attempts to project high weirdness or extraterrestrial origins onto him, Charles Thompson is, by his own admission, merely "A Humble Guy With Healthy Desires". His former band was labeled everything from wiggy airheads to the house band for "Late Night with David Lynch". Pigeonholing the Pixies remains a futile endeavor. Though they wore some of their influences on their lapels, they warped them to such a degree that rockcrit intellectuals like Simon Frith went running for their Kristeva texts. The classified ad that Charles placed in a Boston music paper back in '87 in search of a bassist says more about the roots of the Pixies than a library full of rock criticism: "Bassist wanted for rock band. Influences: Husker Du and Peter Paul & Mary." That an Ohio-born cheerleader with a sweet face and a helium voice would answer that ad says even more.
Emerging in 1987, their albums "Come on Pilgrim", "Surfer Rosa", "Doolittle" and "Bossanova" plowed through a few of Charlie's favorite things: S&M, Mexican hardcore, serial killers, space travel, surf utopias, "Un Chien Andalou", incest, deformed and mutilated bodies, animal transubstantiation, vampire women, and the U.S. government's notorious Area 51. These themes and more were delivered wit the tense vocal interplay of Black's hair- raising holler and Kim Deal's airhead harmony, and backed by punkpopmetal lifted from some Martian surf records. Now that's sassy.
All good monkeys eventually go to heaven. Following 1991's "Trompe Le Monde" and an unflattering arena tour with U2 (under the ignominious rubric "Support Act"), the band abruptly went on "vacation". This January, the vacation became officially permanent.
During the respite, Thompson, with the help of Pere Ubu's Eric Drew Feldman, clicked on to a Macintosh and started writing new tunes. The result was a solo flight into what he considers his first recordings in cyberspace.
Under the guise of Frank Black, this "eponymous debut" bears the mark of a man who's traveled the galaxies. Instead of a Neptune Surf Club t-shirt, Thompson brought back a big sonic valise stuffed with UFOs, SynchroEnergizers, more Mexarcana, and John Denver. Back are the bratty hooks and acid lyrics Pixies' fans adored, tempered by a certain, well... wisdom.
I met him high atop the Time Warner building in Elektra's unnervingly hip corporate meeting room. With his stomach busting out from under his black button-down shirt, and his hair shaved to an enviable fuzz, Thompson fidgeted, rolled back and forth in his chair, and ultimately settled down to earth for an hour's talk about cosmic things.
Oh...as he suggests in the press kit he wrote, please call him Frank.
MONDO 2000:
The original idea for this album was cover songs. Who did you
want to cover?
FRANK BLACK:
Husker Du, Jimi Hendrix, The Kinks, My Dad Is Dead, Angst.
A combination of mainstream bands and obscure little punk bands. But
that didn't happen, so ...
M2:
So you ended up writing "I Heard Ramona Sing", about the Ramones and
"Czar" about John Denver. Were they also on your list?
FB: No, it would have been difficult to do a Ramones song and do it
justice. The Ramones deserve to have a song written about them and lo
and behold, I've written two. I didn't realize it until I was three
weeks into my press tour: "Oh yeah, I've got two songs about other
artists here." In a musical and romantic kind of way, there's a song
about the Ramones. There's a song about John Denver for reasons that have
nothing to do with music.
M2:
Spiritual?
FB:
No, his quest for space.
M2:
Does this mean we should look for future collaboration with John Denver?
FB:
No. [laughs] Although, I'd be honored.
M2:
What kind of a song would you write with him?
FB:
A song about space, I suppose. He must obsess over it if he's
willing to offer NASA and the then Soviet Space Agency ten million for a
ticket.
M2:
To the moon?
FB:
To anywhere...just out of the atmosphere, out of gravity's hold.
That's what the song "Czar" is about.
M2:
You've had outer space imagery in your songs before, but it's quite
prevalent on your new album. Does this reflect your life?
FB:
Yeah. Actually it reflects what's *not* happening in my life and
what's *not* happening to most people on the planet. With the
advancement of technology through electricity and artificial light, human
culture has lost its connection with the cosmos. It's always been
connected religiously, scientifically, through navigation even. Only in
the past ninety years or so has that connection been severed.
M2:
By technology?
FB:
Well, specifically by artificial light. When the sun goes down, an
artificial sort of sun rises in people's homes. For this reason alone,
people don't look up into the sky anymore. This is not a new idea, but
it's an idea that I'm warming up to. Fortunately, through scientific
journals and even lighter mags like OMNI, people are becoming familiar
with the cosmos, but in an indirect kind of way. I guess I'm trying to
get back to it. I don't have a home in the desert and I don't have any
telescopes, but I'm thinking about the sky and I'm looking up into it. I
read "Sky and Telescope" now. I think the cosmos is important. I don't
know why ... but it is.
M2:
Do you think that through technology you can create a link to the
cosmos?
FB:
Absolutely. This is the potential, where everything's headed. If
not directly into space, then through this computer simulation thing
everyone's seen on their local news. Now we can explore Olympus Mons on
Mars, and become familiar with those places.
M2:
Virtual space travel?
FB:
As detailed as virtual reality gets, I don't think that it can ever
replace what once was. In the end, people are just going to have to put
down whatever it is they're doing--like watching fucking "Nick at Nite"
like I do, or sitting at their computer terminal, or reading books, not
by candle light, but by artificial light. Eventually people are going to
want to have that old connection. To just walk out there and look up.
Hopefully, there won't be so much light pollution that they won't be able
to. Of course, you *can't* do this in most urban centers. I just
think the solar system is awesome! As awesome as what your magazine might
discuss. To me that's more awesome, that something that has been part of
human culture for thousands and thousands of years is just gone like
that! [snaps fingers]
M2:
Your song "Old Black Dawning" is about Biosphere 2 in Arizona. Did
you go there?
FB:
Yeah, like a typical tourist. I took my drive out with my
co-producer Eric Feldman. It's worth the ten bucks to take the little
tour. I don't know if Biosphere 2 is a good thing or a bad thing.
Obviously, it has very strong critics. Some are Green political
thinkers, and some are regular Joe Blows living in Tucson who are like,
"What the fuck are those guys doing in the middle of the desert with a
damn greenhouse?"
M2:
I've heard more sinister suggestions. Like maybe a dress rehearsal
for some post-apocalyptic internment camp.
FB:
It's interesting--whatever--whether it works or not. Even if it's
some evil plan for billionaires to be protected from pollution or bombs.
That may be only one element, though, as it obviously has connections to
space technology.
M2:
In "Parry The Wind, High, Low", you go to a UFO convention and use
some "electric glasses with light"
FB:
Yeah, you mean the glasses with the pulsating' light and stuff? I
tried those at this UFO convention. I always wanted to buy one. This guy
was charging ten bucks or something ridiculous for ten minutes, and he
had this whole collection of CDs. It was the worst! I don't know if he
had the wrong program or was afraid to get sued by someone who went into
heart palpitations but he was a rip-off.
M2:
There's a place like that in Soho, where you're listening to
waterfalls and whale farts and stuff while the lights are flashing.
FB:
Then I went to this other guy who was charging three bucks for five
minutes. You just sat down in a chair and he was like, "How hot do you
want it?" "Yeah, all the way!" VVVVVVRRRRRRMMMMM! I was, like, "Oh
Yeah, here we go!" In the song, it gets a little fictional at that
point. You know, the "electric glasses with light" become a kind of
doorway,a gateway to a kind of cyberspace where he can communicate with
things from beyond, from out in the cosmos. Other planets, basically. I
didn't experience that, though. The song jumps back and forth between
some lonely desert road where some poor fucker in a Buick is getting
abducted by aliens, to the real UFO convention where they only *talk*
about that stuff. I go back and forth through the electric glasses.
M2:
Have you ever seen a UFO?
FB:
No. I've been *exposed* to one. I was told by my family, at a young
age. Broad daylight, 1965. Nebraska.
Over the house, a big saucer. Everyone in the front yard thought it was
the end of the world. Called the state police. Followed it for awhile.
Big incident. But I was an infant, so if I do have any memory, it's
subconscious.
M2:
So what's your answer to the classic stoner question: if you could
board a UFO and check out another planet, but there's no way of getting
back, would you go?
FB:
The catch is I couldn't come back? I'd consider it, if I could bring
my girlfriend.
M2:
She'll be happy to read that.
FB:
[Laughs] Well, a better question to ask is: given the choice of
travelling to your typical Martian colony of the future or travelling
through the space/time continuum to another time on Earth, which would
you pick? Would you pick a celestial body, or move in time on your own
planet? That for me is a tough choice, 'cause I'm thinking, "Well, I
could definitely get into going to Mars, but I could definitely get into
going backward or forward a few years as well."
M2:
Would you go backward or forward?
FB:
[Long, ponderous pause] I think, backward. But that might be just
some paranoid vision of the future. You know, if you go too far, you
don't want to end up ...
M2:
Right when the bomb's going off!
FB:
[Laughs] Yeah.
M2:
How about the sound of the new album? When I first listened to it,
it had some similarity to your other work, but there's some new
elements--horns, reggae.
FB:
well, I should mention--especially since you're from MONDO 2000--that
the music wasn't rehearsed in a rehearsal space with musicians, but in
cyberspace, on a Macintosh computer.
M2:
You hadn't done that before?
FB:
No. In fact, even this time, I wasn't that connected to it. I would
show the arrangements to my colleague, Eric Feldman, and he would
rehearse the music on the computer, using artificial sounds. That's how
we laid out the map for the whole record. We then added a lot of real
instruments to it--like real drums, real guitars. And we kept some other
things.
M2:
Did you like the way the computer affected your work?
FB:
Oh, it was wonderful! It was a little scary at first, kind of like
Kraftwerk or something, but I got over it. It was just a map, just a
guide to where we would eventually end up. I thought it was a wonderful
way to work. I'll probably work that way again. I mean, it's nice to
get four musicians together in a room and jam and rock out, but there's
something about using computers that gives you a chance to ponder a bit.
Not necessarily over-fiddling or crawling up your own ass and taking
forever ... It was just good to be less emotional, be more cold. [laughs]
It was just nice working with computers. I loved it.
M2:
How do you see computers impacting the evolution of pop music?
FB:
Well, the perfect example is the metronome-- totally part of pop
culture. From little kids to old ladies, people are really [knocks on
the table] used to hearing things knocking out precisely there on the
beat. You start throwing off that time meter and you're in a different
world. You're not in the world of radio or even TV advertising.
M2:
Has MTV affected your songwriting?
FB:
It's affected how much money is spent on the record, because record
sleeves have sort of disappeared. You've got this *other* thing
representing you--if they actually fucking broadcast the thing. And if
they don't, it's money down the tubes. So, no--it doesn't affect my
songwriting, it just makes me spend more money. But, I'm interested in
videos. It's too bad that it really hasn't become
the art it pretends to be. But this might change with interactive
video. As soon as they get a combination of interactive video and
transmitted music over the phone lines, then Music Television can
happen. Right now, it's just a very faint echo of its potential. I mean
they've had MTV, technically, since 1958. And people have been lip
synching for years. I look forward to the day when karaoke stars will
emerge in 2-dimensional form. They won't give concerts--they might give
broadcasts, but they won't appear like you and I in this room--they'll
exist only in cyberspace!
M2:
Cyberkaraoke!
FB:
That's Music Television! But the formats have to change. The
interesting thing about visual information from a commercial perspective
is that it has to be so great that you want to rewind it and watch it
again. But you're not going to get kids to do that. This might change if
you can incorporate gaming or inter- action with the visual information.
M2:
In
"Distance Equals Rate Times Time"
on
"Trompe Le Monde",
you "had a
vision/there wasn't any television from looking into the sun". Is the
vision still there?
FB:
[Pauses] Yeah--I mean I love TV and I hate it. I love it 'cause I
get to watch "Dragnet" every night at ten o'clock. I mean, I like it
even when I'm fucking watching early 70's cop shows dubbed into German
and I'm sitting in my hotel room going, "There's nothing on except this
shit." I'm addicted to it like anybody else. [pauses] But when they
finally get fiberoptics going and it becomes like CB radio, where
everyone can fucking set up a video camera in their house and broadcast
... Try driving around in the city and listen to CB radio. Out in the
open highway, it's just some truckers giving halfway useful information.
But back in the city, it's some crazy guy sitting up in his room with
masking tape on the CB, going, [yells] "RRRRGHHHH RRRRGGGHHH
RRRRGGHHHH!!!" And there I am listening to the guy! He's working. The
guy is broadcasting, and I'm fucking tuning in! When the phone's hooked
up with TV, you're going to see a lot of bad things too--a lot of
exploitation.
M2:
Flashers.
FB:
Pornography and all that kind of stuff, but there will be good things
too. Your TV Guide is going to be like the phone book.
M2:
Let's flip on the TV and see what Mrs. Smith is up to.
FB:
[Laughs] Obviously, not everybody's going to be dancing around in
front of the video camera. But, there's going to be plenty of people who
will spend some of their leisure time broadcasting. Maybe a few people
will see broadcast for what it is--power. The power of broadcast is very
special.
M2:
You wrote a nice bit of social criticism in your song
"Subbacultcha".
What do you think about MTV's mass marketing of
"alternative" culture?
FB:
Well, if it sells the shit, more power to them. I don't care, I don't
really watch MTV myself. There's nothing really worthwhile. It's *not*
some karaoke star existing in cyberspace with a 2-dimensional character
creating Music Television. It's just guitar players like me lip syncing
and prancing around, and not doing a very good job of it. If I'm going to
watch video programming, I watch country music television. I don't
relate to it as much, so it's kind of entertaining.
M2:
So you're not encouraged by the increasing popularity of alternative
music?
FB:
It might be blowing a little hot air into the scene, but as far as
I'm concerned, most scenes are a bunch of hot air anyway. The only thing
that really matters is quality. Between alternative and corporate
there's a very thin line.]
M2:
What happened to the Pixies?
FB:
What happened? They broke up. What led to the breakup? My boredom.
[laughs] There you go. There's nothing else to say. I wish...well, I
don't wish there was anything else to say. It's sort of like, [lifts up
a copy of MONDO 2OOO] maybe you're quite happy writing for MONDO. Well,
let's say it develops into a full-time thing and they pay you pretty
well. That would be nice, wouldn't it? Well, let's say after four or
five years, they said, "This is what you have to do for the next ten
years." I mean, that might not be such a good proposition. It's like
always making cowboy movies. After a while you might want to get into a
detective movie or a comedy. It's like, "Not another cowboy movie, come on!"
M2:
So are you free as a solo artist?
FB:
Yeah, there's freedom, in that there's less people to ask for
opinions. There's just me and the engineer. But, heck, I've got to go on
tour this summer and I've got to pay these guys. I've got to get hired guns!
M2:
It's still a job.
FB:
I mean, you got your Beatles and you got your Bowies. It's just two
different ways to do the same old thing.
M2:
Now that you can officially look back, what do you think were your
best Pixies songs or albums?
FB:
Well, i thought that
"Bossanova"
was probably the best record. I
don't really listen to them, though. Once you make 'em, man, you've heard
them from every possible angle. I've heard them more than the most
ardent fan will ever hear them. I don't have a lot of nostalgia for
them, not just yet. If someone wants to hear me wax nostalgic about my
records, talk to me in ten years. [laughs] At the moment, I'm just
fucking sick of them.
M2:
What about the range of subjects in all your songs? You've written
about Sea Monkeys, caribou, about the Eiffel Tower. What makes you think
"I've just got to write a song about Sea Monkeys?"
FB:
Subjects are just there, like so many memories. Or daydreams. Or
daydreams, which aren't memories, but a memory of a non-existent future,
I guess. I don't need subjects, 'cause they're already there. What I
need is a good song for the subject to occupy. I just work on the
little space that the word is going to finally occupy, and then I go and
try to find some words. There's so many. [flourishes a MONDO, fanning
through the pages] I mean, look at all the words in here. Thousands of
them! So many words, so many ideas. You can sing about anything.