Talk:Pixies (band)

Definite article

If this group have devised their own variation on English grammar, then it ought to be explained in the article. --Multivitamin 16:26, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll write a footnote to clarify usage - good idea. Don't know why I didn't think of that before. CloudNine 17:42, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Allison

Are you sure the song "Allison" is about Mose Allison? I vaguely recall reading an interview back about the time the album was released in which Black Francis said it was somehow inspired by James Allison and the Allison Engine Company. I also heard it suggested somewhere that it has something to do with Jerry "Ivan" Allison, who played with Buddy Holly and co-wrote "That'll Be The Day" and "Peggy Sue". Unfortunately I can't find a reference which has Francis/Black/Thompson giving a definite explanantion. In the absence of something definitive it is possible the Mose Allison thing was a conclusion that someone jumped to at some point in the past and which has just got copied and repeated so many times that people wrongly assume it's definitive. Circusandmagicfan 11:27, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

[1] says it's about Mose Allison (from a Q article). [2] is transcribed from a Rolling Stone interview, and says the song is about Mose Allison. We can say beyond doubt that it's about Mose Allison. CloudNine 11:43, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Discography

The Infobox musical artist could use verifiable dates for all four record labels listed, and the band template needs release dates for albums and singles. Without such data, I find the band career hard to track, as would many visitors to Wikipedia. - B.C.Schmerker 04:34, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Surely the information is already available in the prose? I see no other (featured) band article that does this; perhaps you could point me towards a few examples? CloudNine 06:40, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Release dates, at least in selected discographies in articles for bands with many releases, are somewhat irrelevant. Oh, they'd be nice to have if someone wants to type them out, but I doubt they're mandatory. At most the year of release should be listed. They cetainly don't belong in the template, though. That would look very messy (I'm thinking mainly of the RHCP band template). WesleyDodds 10:08, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

The

I'm pretty sure this band should be referred to as just pixies without 'the'. See all their album covers. It's correct in the title but not elsewhere in the article. See the two live images, one captioned 'Pixies in concert in Greece...' and the other 'The Pixies in concert in Kansas City' --Neon white 01:28, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

There's been discussion about this before in the talk page archives. While the band's name is officially "Pixies", the band itself always says "the Pixies" when using the name in a sentence. WesleyDodds 03:33, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

There are examples of both usages. Nevertheless it should really be consistant across the article. --Neon white 15:28, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Could you point out others? I've fixed the image caption. (Note that "the only Pixies album" and similar is fine). CloudNine 16:25, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Well firstly the title of the page is just Pixies. Maybe the naming thing needs a mention. After the name was shortened to simply 'pixies' how soon did people add 'the' to it? Maybe something like 'they are now almost exclusively known as the pixies except on album covers. Interestingly Doves never aquired a 'the' --Neon white 21:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

There's a footnote virtually at the start. It's acquired one because band members refer to themselves as part of "the Pixies"; so we reflect such usage. To clarify: it's the Pixies, not The Pixies. CloudNine 22:31, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I dont see any footnote. --Neon white 23:28, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Here. It's after the first instance of the band's name. CloudNine 08:48, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Thee Headcoats and Thee Hypnotics must make you people froth at the mouth —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.125.110.223 (talk) 21:46, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

dynamics

"Pixies songs typically feature hushed, restrained verses, and explosive, wailing choruses"

i realise it might be a little pedantic but some songs have loud verses and quiet choruses, such as 'gouge away' and 'where is my mind' so i find this statment a bit general. It's not that important but one of the reasons i like the pixies so much is that they did the loud quiet dynamics both ways while all the artists that copied(in a sence) this technique only did loud chouses. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.74.193.131 (talk) 20:02, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Hence the word "typically". There of course were exceptions, but in general, Pixies songs were noted for the above dynamic. I'll look further into things though. CloudNine 20:57, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Misinformed

Black Francis is a misnomer; his real name is Charles Thompson. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.26.100.31 (talk) 02:10, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

not really —Preceding unsigned comment added by Petchboo (talk • contribs) 15:13, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Origen

The article itself refers to the meeting of F.B*(B.F.) & J.S at UM Amherst. This is where they started to play. This is where the band """was formed.""" Some Brit deciding s/he knows all about the geography of Massachusetts, with a citation to a couple music magazines, well, this does not fly. It happened at UMass, .cf the article. Umass' flagship is located in Amherst. F.B.(B.F ) met J.S. at UMass. They played there. B.F w/o J.S != Pixies.

And like I said earlier, we have bigger things to worry about than Limeys' appraisal of geography.

No. Black Francis and Joey Santiago state they formed the Pixies in Jan 1985 in Boston. This is from Fool the World, a book written about the Pixies.

I haven't seen you provide a citation to a reliable source that states otherwise. Could you please provide one? (A personal attack involving my current location is not too convincing.) CloudNine 22:41, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

We're arguing the first time the word "Pixies" was uttered, vs. when music started to be made. It's a stupid argument, especially, since we're both right. Fine. Boston it is. "History

Formation The Pixies' history began when" is good enough for me.

Because I'm not <<currently located>> overseas

Ok. The first Pixies songs were composed when Francis was a teenager ("Here Comes Your Man" and "Velvety Instrumental Version"), so the band could be formed in California by that definition. We stick to when the band officially forms. CloudNine 09:26, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

date of establishment

I'm sorry to say that but Pixies established in 1986, not 1985. The pair Santiago-Thompson were not Pixies. Not yet. Charles Thompson got back from Puerto Rico in march 1986, in order to start a rock'n'roll band. You can find this information in every good book about Pixies.

Red-E (talk) 19:33, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

No. The band was formed in January 1985 by Santiago and Francis (who spent 1984 working). Deal joined two weeks later, and Lovering joined later. All sourced to Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies (a good book). What's your source for claiming Francis returned in March 1986? (which I've never read in over a year of research on the band). CloudNine (talk) 19:38, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

In the Spin article, Santiago says: "He wrote me a couple of letters from Puerto Rico. One of them said, 'Screw the academics, let's just start the damn band!' So he came back and we drove to UMass. It was the last day to withdraw to get your full tuition back, and I got my money back and we drove to Boston." It doesn't list a year, though. WesleyDodds (talk) 00:00, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

So, CloudNine, that's all you read about Pixies? Is Fool The World your only source? I read some books with Santiago and Francis statements too. For example, Francis explained he returned to Boston instead of going to New-Zealand to observe Halley's comet... By the beginning of 1986. Oh, where did I read that? Books were in Spanish and French, so no need to give you the titles. But they're good too, believe me. Red-E (talk) 18:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

No. I have access to other sources, including Doolittle 33 1/3, and a number of magazine and web archives. I can tell you that Francis and Santiago returned to Boston and worked during 1984. Could you give a citation for your statement? I can read French and Spanish to an acceptable level. CloudNine (talk) 19:55, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I'm Ben Sisario, the author of Doolittle in the 33 1/3 series. I've never posted anything here before, so I'm not sure if this is the way it's usually done, but I'd like to make a formal request to the Wiki community to fix the error, repeated on every Pixies-related entry, that the band was founded in 1985. That is not correct; the band was founded in 1986. I wrote a blog post about it (http://charmicarmicat.blogspot.com/2008/10/please-correct-pixies-entries-on.html), which I will copy here:

Two weeks ago Wikipedia ran an Article of the Day on David Lovering, which alerted me to a big error that appears to have reproduced itself across every Pixies-related page on Wikipedia (and therefore all over the Internet). I would like to request that these pages be corrected to reflect the following:

The Pixies began in 1986, not 1985.

How do we know this?

• It’s a long-established fact, documented in hundreds of articles written while the band was active. To research my book, and because I have been an avid Pixies fan since 1989, I have collected a significant archive of press clippings and other paperwork; some of this was provided to me by the band. The record overwhelmingly shows that the band was founded in early 1986, when Charles Thompson (a.k.a. Black Francis, a.k.a. Frank Black) and Joey Santiago dropped out of UMass Amherst and moved to Boston.
• The band members confirm it. After seeing the error on Wikipedia, I wrote to Charles and Joey, and both told me that the band was indeed founded in 1986, not 1985. The band's former manager, who had been with them from before Come On Pilgrim up to the reunion tour, also confirmed it to me. Here is what Joey wrote in an email:

  Hey Ben,

  We started in 1986. We both graduated High School in 83. Charles and I dropped out after our first semester as juniors from UMass.

  I know it was winter because I remember pissing in the snow when we drove into Boston very late at night. So we most likely moved to Boston in January of 86.

• It lines up with historical events. One of the best known stories of the early days is that Charles started the band with money his father gave him to see Halley’s Comet in New Zealand. Halley’s Comet, which passes near Earth every 75 to 76 years, was last visible in early 1986. Also, it is well established that in March 1987, when the Pixies recorded “The Purple Tape” — a set of 17 songs, which would be edited down to 8 for their first record, Come On Pilgrim — the full band had not been together terribly long. Early articles put it at roughly six months, suggesting an origin of mid-’86. Let’s look again at Charles and Joey’s time in school: Both graduated high school in 1983, and completed their freshman (fall ’83-spring ’84) and sophomore (fall ’84-spring ’85) years at UMass, then dropped out after the first semester of their junior year (fall ’85). That brings us to early 1986.
• There’s no reliable source for 1985. The Pixies-related pages on Wikipedia cite the same source for calling 1985 their origin: Josh Frank and Caryn Ganz’s oral history, Fool the World. (In fact, even other sources cited to support the this claim actually say 1986, such as the Allmusic biography.) But that book has many errors and contradictions. Part of this may be due to the fact that, as an oral history, it relies on people’s memories, which can be faulty; people also lie. Regardless, there’s no excuse for not checking basic facts. In Fool the World, Deal says she got married at age 24 and then moved to Boston, and at one point states: “I got to Boston in January ’85.” But she also says: “So what year did I get married? Eighty-fuckin’ four, ’85 maybe?” Deal was born on June 10, 1961, so in January 1985 she was only 23. Most likely she got married in 1985 and moved to Boston in early 1986. Other interviews in the Fool the World contradict Deal about the 1985 claim. For example, John Murphy, her ex-husband (on early Pixies releases, Deal was credited as “Mrs. John Murphy”), remembers that early rehearsals took place the year the Red Sox lost the world series. That was 1986. (They played the Mets, of course.)

Why am I asking someone else to make the correction? Two reasons. First, as the author of a book on the Pixies, I do not want my motives to be misunderstood. I have nothing against Fool the World, which is a very interesting read; it’s just not a reliable source of facts. Second, I want to make sure this is all on the record for anyone to question or dispute, because I fear that — Wikipedia being what it is — if I simply correct the entries without explanation someone would just change them back 10 seconds later.

The Pixies are one of the most important bands of the last 25 years, and a fact as critical as the year they began must be correct. If entries on the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin had such a detail wrong, it would be fixed faster than you can say “catalog sales.”

Oh, and one more thing. Joey had a special request:

Btw, if you are going to correct that can you also add that my birthday is June 10 not the 11th?

(Yup, same birthday as Kim and Kelley.)

Fixed where I've found the mistake. I honestly thought I could trust Fool the World on such a critical date (even if it is a oral history); it seems I was wrong. How embarrassing. Anyhow, thanks for taking the effort to write this, even though I don't edit this page much anymore, I hope I still fixed your concern within an acceptable amount of time. I've also fixed Santiago's birthday. Looking over it, are there any other statements that might be wrong/questionable? Thanks. CloudNine (talk) 09:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Finally, I was right! Who said justice was dead? CloudNine, next time I think you should be a little bit less disdainful with me, even if I'm a French Pixies fan... Apologize! Red-E (talk) 12:09, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Final Split

In an interview with Colin Murray on BBC Radio 1 in 2007 Charles stated that he thought the pixies were finally over and they would not be recording any new material or playing live again. Although this isn't an official confirmation that the band has split up again, it should probably be mentioned in the "new album" section of the article, or better yet, just have that section removed now seeing as it's pretty irrelevent, unless all it says is "There was discussion of them recording a new album in blah blah blah but later nothing happened" etc. 217.44.103.85 (talk) 06:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I took out the new album section, culled a few of those references to refer to it as an abortive attempt, and clarified that Black is now stating that the reunion is over. Changed years active as well. Does anyone really disagree? Anazgnos (talk) 23:32, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. Has there been official confirmation? For now, I think we should mark the band as inactive. I think the verb tenses need changing as well. CloudNine (talk) 01:08, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Hüsker Dü

I know Hüsker Dü is mentioned as an influence at least twice, but they aren't mentioned at all in the "Influences" section. Shouldn't it be included in there? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jowerkatz (talk • contribs) 01:50, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Attack Site?

The removal and re-insertion of the link to the "official unofficial" band site as an "attack site" caught my eye due to all my involvement in the BADSITES wars, and I tried the link myself, only to find that my browser (Firefox 3.0, with the Google toolbar) blocked the site as an "attack site", linking for explanation to a Google-maintained page saying that the site was found to be attempting to infect computers with malware. In other words, "attack site" isn't being used with the internal Wikipedia-politics sense that has been so controversial, but in a more mainstream way of referring to a malware (virus/trojan/etc.) site. Since my access to the site was blocked (I guess by the Google toolbar), I couldn't see whether the site actually did have malware in it (which I doubt would affect Firefox anyway); it could be that this was the result of a temporary hacking and will be reversed. But is that site an official or an unofficial band site, anyway? (What's an "official unofficial" site?) That affects its standing in the external links policy assuming the badware goes away. *Dan T.* (talk) 12:27, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm using Firefox too and this site does in fact show up as an attack site, which means instead of going to the site a warning page appears. The linked Google diagnostic page reports that out of the 108 pages tested, only one contained malicious software. I don't think that is enough to warrant its removal. I agreed that the phrase "official unofficial" should not be used as it doesn't sound very good and I couldn't see the phrase used anywhere on the site itself. - kollision (talk) 13:16, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

The attack site issue was resolved a while back... the host company had an issue and all sites hosted were affected. This has since been resolved. --Madtempest (talk) 14:14, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

News about a new Pixies record

Hey, CloudNine, Have you see this? http://www.nme.com/news/pixies/39327

Don't forget to edit the "Reunion" section. According to Frank Black, Pixies reunion isn't over at all, and the band could return to studio soon. Red-E (talk) 15:16, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Covers

I believe the "Covers" section requires more research. For example, it lists "Hang On to Your Ego" as a cover. This song was not covored by the Pixies, it was covored by Frank Black as a solo artist. It is from his album "Frank Black." The section lists a number of songs that were not covored by the Pixies. Pajaeslick (talk) 18:23, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering about that too just now when I re-read the article for the first time in a while and saw that "Hang on to Your Ego" had been added. OK, just now I did a little Internet search and it seems there is a bootleg Pixies version of the song in existence, but shouldn't that be mentioned in the article, rather than treating it the same as all the other covers listed, all of which have been officially released? Since this is a FA whose documentation standards are required to be very high, ideally there should also be a citation from a reputable source mentioning this cover. I'm going to add a request there for the time being. Moisejp (talk) 01:36, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Also, the covers seem to listed in random order. Would it be an idea to put them in chronological or alphabetical order? Moisejp (talk) 01:44, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism 4/27/09

On the "television appearances and videos" section there is a screen cap of the Velouria music video with the following under it; "IMAGE COPYRIGHT THE PIXIES. THERE FUCKING HAPPY NOW?" obviously someone REALLY wants to have the Velouria screen cap on there and skip any copyright/fair use procedures. I would change it, but I'm sure since this was a featured article there is a team of people who will fix this. Just thought I'd point it out. Michael Betancourt (talk) 21:33, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I have deleted this, before reading the note. You can do it yourself as there is no team of people looking after featured articles in particular just users who watch articles they are interested in. Keith D (talk) 22:22, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Hurricane Festival

They are playing at Hurricane Festival in Germany in about 4 weeks, I just noticed that some other festivals were mentioned, wondering if this is include-worthy? Aaadddaaammm (talk) 17:52, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Pixies vs The Pixies

I hate to open up this can of worms again, but here goes anyway....

A user recently went through the article and added "The" to every single mention of the word Pixies, in response to which someone else removed them all. The truth is more complicated - although Pixies is the official name of the band, the band members themselves are not particularly precious about this and usually refer to the group in interviews etc as "The Pixies". There's even a compilation album that uses this form of the group's name (Death to the Pixies).

I think they should be referred to as "Pixies" in the introductory sentence, infobox etc but then as "the Pixies" with no capital on "the" (except at the start of sentences, obviously) after that. What do other people think? MFlet1 (talk) 12:52, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. It's not as complicated as everyone's making it out to be. You can use "the" even if it's not part of the name. Look at United States of America:

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic...

Look through some recent featured articles and you'll find a dozen articles that do exactly the same thing. The word "the" isn't part of the name but it's still added to make the sentence more natural. Like you said, the band members do it this way, as does the record label (Death to the Pixies). Normal people say "the Pixies", professional writers say "the Pixies" ([3]). There are a few sources that write "he was a member of Pixies" but they're outnumbered, trying to enforce a weird brand of English that will never catch on. Wikipedia reflects common usage, not the whims of a few pedants. —Noisalt (talk) 15:48, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

True. Having said that I've noticed that the articles about Editors and Doves refrain from using "the", but then that's different since no one ever refers to them as The Editors or The Doves, whereas "The Pixies" is in general use to refer to the band, as you say. This reminds me a bit of the debate on the Beatles article a while ago where people were in all seriousness arguing that band names should be treated as singular, e.g. "The Beatles was a group..." !!

I agree that Wikipedia should not be the preserve of pedants, but there's a fair few people who would take the opposite view! MFlet1 (talk) 16:07, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

New album?

In the last paragraph, someone paraphrased a news story from NME from June '09 talking about the possibility of a new Pixies album. The source link is dead, and I cannot find a story like that anywhere on NME. Can anyone confirm this story, or should it be removed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.234.192.10 (talk) 15:42, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Grunge

I think the word grunge in the opening statement is wrong. Grunge is a specific style of sludgey guitars more akin to the likes of Melvins and Nirvana. Pixies were far more experimental in style with short snappy songs, mexican/surf influence and surreal lyrics. Also "Angst" isn't a defining characteristic of Pixies as it is in grunge. The only traits of grunge that can be found in Pixies are their eschewing of the rock star persona, the loud/quiet dynamic and their eventual influence on grunge bands like Nirvana. I think the term alternative rock (or even art rock) would be more appropriate.