The Pixies - Surfer Rosa (RS500 - #315)

I was driving home from work today and listening to WBRU, when the DJ made a statement that made me feel very, very old:

The Pixies' Surfer Rosa was released 25 years ago today.

Twenty-five years . . . jeez.  It doesn't seem that long ago - and yet . . .   To put it in perspective, Surfer Rosa itself was released exactly 25 years to the day after the release of another historic record, Please Please Me, the Beatles' debut album.  Now, think about the progression, change and development of popular music in that quarter century between the Beatles and the Pixies' first albums - through bubblegum, progressive, glam, metal, punk, post-punk, New Wave, No Wave, New Romantic, etc.  The spark the Fab Four lit in 1963 ignited an explosion in popular music that is still being felt today.  The arrival of the Pixies should have signaled the start of another 25-year rock music renaissance.  And it did, sort of, for a while - but it didn't last nearly as long as what followed in the Beatles' wake.

As 'switched on' musically as I claim to be, I have to say that Surfer Rosa didn't come across my radar for quite a while.  In the first place, it was released overseas on England's 4AD, and its U.S. distribution (handled by Rough Trade) was somewhat limited.  Secondly, in 1988 I wasn't in one place long enough to pause and get a broader overview as to what was going on musically - around the time this album was released, I was moving from Georgia to Virginia to begin my military career, and shortly after I arrived in Norfolk, I departed with my ship on a long European deployment that keep me out of the States until just before Christmas.  Outside of the Boston area (the band's home base) and more musically 'with-it' locales (of which Norfolk was not one), the Pixies didn't make much of an impression on the overall U.S. music scene in 1988.

It was the release in the following year of their second album, Doolittle, that got me into the Pixies.  Doolittle was the band's first widely-distributed international release (Elektra took over the U.S. rights from Rough Trade), and as such it seemed to everywhere all at once.  Like practically everyone else who 'discovered' the Pixies that year, the gateway song for me was "Monkey Gone To Heaven", which I first heard one evening on the short-lived Hampton Roads alternative radio station (call letters long forgotten) while I was driving home to Virginia Beach down I-64 after a hard day's work at the Norfolk Naval Base.  By the time Black Francis was screaming ". . . And GOD is SEVEN!  And GOD is SEVEN!  And GOD is SEVEN!", I was already making a swerving detour onto I-264 towards the mall to buy this album as fast as I could.  I picked up a cassette copy at Big Daddy's Records & Tapes store at Military Circle Mall (that store's big claim to fame was its "lifetime guarantee" - if any tape or CD ever broke or went bad on you, they vowed that they would replace it for free, no questions asked.  Needless to say, the place no longer exists . . . ).  

Later that spring, my ship entered Norfolk Naval Shipyard to get a new fire control system installed.  With no overseas deployment scheduled for that year, I spent the warm spring and summer days and weekends In the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area, going to the beach and hitting the clubs with my friends, with Doolittle blasting through my open car windows the entire time.  I absolutely loved this album, so much so that I quickly began looking for additional Pixies releases.  I found a cassette copy of Surfer Rosa up in DC at my old standby, the George Washington University branch of Tower Records. 

I thought that nothing could top the brilliance of Doolittle . . . until I heard Surfer Rosa.  EVERY song on this album was a winner, including my personal favorites "Brick Is Red", "Cactus" and "Break My Body".

Big Black's Steve Albini, who produced the album, was openly contemptuous of the Pixies during the sessions, and soon afterwards said several disparaging things about the band and their music, admitting in interviews that many of the seemingly innovative recording techniques he used on Surfer Rosa (having band members sing in an echo-ey concrete restroom, running vocals through guitar amps, or including extended studio banter on the record) were done basically to amuse himself, and not necessarily to benefit the band (yes, he's (or at least was) an asshole . . . but he later apologized for his remarks and attitude, heaping praise on the group).  But despite Albini's personal feelings at the time and however you feel about him, whatever he did on Surfer Rosa worked.  He and the band created a unique, groundbreaking, classic album.

Looking back, you would have thought that the release of Surfer Rosa and the rise of the Pixies in the late '80s/early '90s would have led to the same sort of long-term, lasting emergence of musical innovation and variety that occurred in the wake of Please Please Me twenty-five years earlier.  And for a while, that was the case - I think that that five-six year window after the Pixies' debut album came out was not only the Golden Age of alternative music, but really the last time when great music not only seemed to be coming out of everywhere, but was being duly acknowledged as 'great music' in its present period, not long afterwards by music critics of the future.

[Now, I'm not saying that the Pixies were the direct cause of all of this happening; Lord knows that there were many other influential bands around during and before this time also serving as groundbreakers and catalysts.  But the band and this album serves as a convenient touch-point, a place to point at and say "See?  Here's where the floodgates began opening" and fantastic tunes began flowing in from seemingly every corner.]

During that time period, bands that a few years earlier were and might have been little-known, little-heard 'cult' bands - Ween, Sonic Youth, They Might Be Giants, Nitzer Ebb, The Sundays, Pavement, PJ Harvey, Stereolab, Cocteau Twins . . . (I could go on and on) - became widely recognized, popular and commercially successful groups.  It was the heyday of independent and college radio stations, which were widespread across the country and had the courage to buck the mainstream and play 'non-commercial' music.  Alternative music morphed into several subgenres - indie, jangle pop, Madchester, riot grrl, ska-punk, and of course grunge, to name a few - all of which thrived, at least for a while.  But this "golden age" was relatively short-lived, and by the mid-1990s it definitely felt as though an era had passed, and the apparent willingness of the media to continue exposing and championing new bands and cool sounds had come to an end.  

You can't quite put a definitive date on when music started turning to shit in the 1990s, but the breakup of the Pixies in early 1993 is a pretty good point to mark the beginning of the end.  I remember following the various rumors and bulletins related to their demise during the winter of 1992-93, first with disbelief and shock, then with sadness and resignation.  It was heartbreaking, witnessing their acrimonious end; in a way, the Pixies had become more than just a band, to myself and many others.  I don't think I'm overstating the feeling that lots of us shared back then - the Pixies and their music represented more than just a genre (alternative) or a style (LOUDquietLOUD) or a location (the fabled 'Boston Scene').  They represented an entire era, when the unfamiliar and experimental and exceptional, for a while, became the norm - an era that with the band's passing would never again come to pass . . . sort of like the Beatles, in a way.

OK . . . I guess I've said more than enough about this group and this disc.  Music is what you're here for, and music is what you're gonna get!  Here, for your listening pleasure, is Surfer Rosa, the Pixies' first full-length album, released March 21st, 1988 on 4AD (what I'm offering here is actually the Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim compilation, which I picked up on CD a couple of years after my cassette purchase).  Enjoy this album as you think back over the past twenty-five years of so of YOUR life (assuming you're that old) . . . and as always, let me know what you think.

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The Kelley Deal 6000 - Boom! Boom! Boom!

I first met Kelley Deal in 1995. I was in my final few months of living in Christchurch, New Zealand, when I read in the local music paper that the Breeders were headed to town on the Asia/Pacific leg of their world tour in support of their blockbuster album Last Splash. Being a Pixies fan, I idolized Kim Deal, so I was fully into the Breeders at that time. In fact, I went to their show (for the Pod tour) at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC just before I left for NZ. New records were always slow to get to New Zealand, so I had a friend mail me a copy of Last Splash the moment it came

out in the States. So I was practically the only person in town who had fully absorbed their new album by the time they made their swing through Christchurch. I was so jazzed about seeing them, that I took the morning off of work to rush down to the box office (in a converted theater in Cathedral Square, around the corner from Lochinvar's Irish Pub), arriving early for what I just KNEW would be a huge line for tickets to the show. However, when I arrived early that morning, there wasn't another soul in sight, and in the couple of hours that passed as I stood there, not a single other person joined the ticket line behind me. When the window opened, I quietly paid for tickets #0001 and #0002 (don't know why I bought two - my girlfriend at the time was not a fan, and I couldn't think of anyone else who might have wanted to go - I guess I wanted a souvenir) and left.

On the day of the show, a week or so later, I arrived extra-early, in order to get a good place in front of the stage, and (hopefully) to meet some of the band members and get some autographs, especially Kim's. As I approached the bar in the back of the place, I immediately recognized the Breeders' bassist, Josephine Wiggs, standing with one of the Deal twins, who I assumed to be Kim. I sidled up to them, trying to act all cool and nonchalant, and spouted off a "Hi Josephine! Hi Kim!" greeting. Of course, I was wrong - it wasn't Kim I was talking to, but Kelley. Anyway, she turned out to be as super-cool and nice as could be - I think that she was just happy to be talking to an American in the middle of New Zealand. We spoke for a long time before the show, talking about the tour and life on the road and all. She called her sister Kim over and introduced me to her, and just before they went on, the whole band signed my copy of Last Splash with the pen I brought. I stood in the front row the entire show (which was packed - I guess the line appeared AFTER I bought my tickets), and at the end of it, Kelley leaned over and handed me her guitar pick. Overall, it was a great night.

In the following months, I moved back to the U.S. from New Zealand, and the Breeders imploded, helped along by Kelley's problems with the law, related to her getting busted by the feds after receiving a half-pound of Black Tar heroin in the mail. I entered grad school, but still found time to see bands now and then. Kelley did a drug rehab stint, and started a new band, the Kelley Deal 6000. It seemed that everywhere I went for the next year of so (I traveled a lot during the second semester, interviewing for summer intern work), Kelley and her band were there as well, so I ended up seeing a lot of their early shows. DC: New York: Cambridge, MA - I went to all of those performances, and made a point of trying to say Hi to her at each one.

After grad school, I got a job with a company in Texas, and moved the the Dallas area. Sure enough, a month after I got there, the Kelley Deal 6000 came to town, to play a funky little bar in the Deep Ellum area. Of course, I went to the show, and got there early enough to speak with Kelley. I said hello to her, mentioned that I had first met her in New Zealand, and talked about all the other places I saw her band. She looked hard at me, and said "****** [my name], right? I REMEMBER you!" From then on, we became friends. We exchanged addresses that evening, and every once in a while I would hear from her from her home in Minnesota. She came to Dallas twice more in the first year I was there, and each time we hung out together before and after the show. The last time, I brought my girlfriend along, a big Breeders fan who didn't really believe that I knew Kelley Deal that well. Her doubts were extinguished upon our arrival at the club, where Kelley was standing outside the door. She looked up, shouted my name, and ran over to hug me. Later that night, during the encore of "I Wanna Be Your Dog", Kelley pulled me up on stage to sing backup with the rest of the band. It was a pretty cool night, to say the least, and my girlfriend was most impressed.

At that time, the band was touring on its second (and last) album, Boom! Boom! Boom!, released by New West Records in 1997. I've always considered this album superior to the band's

debut, Go To The Sugar Altar. The song structures and sequencing seem to be a lot more focused here, and the band even experiments with some different sounds and arrangements, as can be heard in songs such as the all-drum "Total War" and the warm but eerie "Scary". I would have loved to have seen what the Kelley Deal 6000 would have done on subsequent albums. But the band went on indefinite hiatus in 1998, and Kelley rejoined the Breeders in late 2002, where she remains.

Many years have passed now, and Kelley and I have long since been out of touch. It's doubtful that after all these years she even recalls my name or who I am; if she does has any recollection, it's probably just that of another fan getting into her face. Oh well. For a brief moment in my life, I was happy and proud to call someone as cool as Kelley Deal my friend, and I wish her the best in everything she does.

Here's the album:

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