I am un chien andalusia…
I don’t need to tell you how big a fan of the band David Bowie is, and I could wax lyrical on this particular subject for far longer than you would want me to myself. So I’ll leave it to the programme makers to impress upon you the importance of this band, as if there’s anybody out there that didn’t already know.
There are tons of Bowie connections to Pixies and Frank Black (formerly Black Francis as singer of Pixies), such as: they supported him on some of the European leg of 1990’s Sound and Vision tour; Tin Machine tackled the Pixies’ classic ‘Debaser’ on their 1991 tour (a song based coincidentally on Luis Bunuel’s 1928 surrealistic masterpiece ‘Un Chien Andalou’, which was shown as a support feature on the 1976 ‘Station To Station tour); David wore a ‘Death to Pixies’ T-shirt on some of those same Tin Machine dates; Frank Black performed ‘Scary Monsters’ and ‘Fashion’ with David at Madison Square Garden as part of the 50th birthday concert celebrations…and probably loads more that I can’t recall off the top of my head right now.
Bowie: “Three elements made them important I think…”
And you’ll just have to watch ‘Gouge’ to find out what they are.
David has also been quoted many times over the last few years on the subject of Pixies, and tonight is no exception. I’ll leave you with one particular quote from ‘Gouge’ to hopefully whet your appetite:
“I found it just about the most compelling music, outside of Sonic Youth, off the entire Eighties.”
And who could disagree with that?