Black Francis

Black Francis

This article is about the contemporary musician. For the 19th century governor of New York, see Frank S. Black. For the TV series character, see Millennium (TV series).

Frank Black (born Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV on April 6, 1965) is a contemporary American singer, songwriter and guitarist. Black is most notable as the leader of the influential alternative rock band Pixies, where he performed under the stage name Black Francis. After the band's breakup in 1991, he embarked on a solo career under the name Frank Black, and after releasing several albums, he recruited a backing band, Frank Black and the Catholics. Black reformed the Pixies in 2004 and continues to release solo records whilst touring and recording with the Pixies.

Black's vocal style has varied, from a screaming, yowling vocal delivery as lead vocalist of the Pixies to a more measured melodical style in later Pixies albums and his solo career. Black's cryptic lyrics mostly explore unconventional subjects, such as surrealism, incest and violent Biblical imagery, along with dam collapses, science fiction and surf culture. His use of atypical meter signatures and distinct preference for live-to-two-track recording in his career as a solo artist give him a unique style in alternative rock.

Biography

Youth

Charles Thompson was born in Boston, Massachusetts on April 6, 1965. His father was a bar owner, and Thompson first lived in Los Angeles, California as a baby because his father wanted to "learn more about the restaurant and bar business". Thompson was introduced to music at a young age as his parents often listened to 1960s folk rock. He discovered the music of Christian rock singer-songwriter Larry Norman at age 13. Thompson later described the music he listened to during his youth:

I wasn't hanging out at all-ages shows or trying to get into clubs to see bands, and I was buying records at used records stores and borrowing them from the library. You just saw Emerson, Lake and Palmer records. So I didn't know [punk] music but I started to hear about it in high school. But it was probably a good thing that I didn't know it, that I instead listened to a lot of '60s records and this religious music.

Thompson's family moved a lot, often disrupting his high school education. Just before his senior year (in high school), the family moved to Westport, Massachusetts, where he recieved the Teenager of the Year award (the title of a later solo album) from the "Gowanus" club. He then studied in the University of Massachusetts Amherst, sharing a room with future Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago, before going to Puerto Rico as part of an exchange program.

Pixies

Main article: Pixies (band)

Thompson spent six months in Puerto Rico in an apartment with a "weird, psycho, gay roommate", who later inspired the song "Crackity Jones". Many of the Pixies' early songs refer to Thompson's experiences in Puerto Rico, most notably "Isla De Encanta," incorrectly named after the island's motto, "Isla Del Encanto". Thompson finally left his studies after debating whether he would go to New Zealand to view Halley's Comet or to start a rock band with his former roommate from Massachusetts, Joey Santiago.

Pixies were active from 1986 to 1993. They found modest success (primarily on college radio) in America and became popular in Britain and throughout Europe. They have retained a following, and have since been seen as one of the most influential rock groups of their era.

Early solo career

The Pixies split in 1993, due primarily to internal tensions between Thompson and bassist/singer Kim Deal. Black went on to record solo material with Eric Drew Feldman; a veteran of avant-rock legends Pere Ubu, Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, and The Residents. Santiago would also perform on his first solo tour. After adopting the stage name "Frank Black" (a reversal of his "Black Francis" persona), his first solo release was the self-titled Frank Black (1993), which included the song "Los Angeles", about different places named Los Angeles.

Teenager of the Year (1994)

The following year, Black released Teenager of the Year, which included the song "Headache", a moderate success on rock playlists. These two albums were critically well-received and remain fan favorites, although they enjoyed little commercial success. In 1995, Black left his longtime label 4AD (and Elektra in the US), who had released the Pixies catalog in addition to his first two solo albums.

1996 saw the release of The Cult of Ray on Rick Rubin's American Recordings; a turn away from the elaborate, sometimes lush production of his first solo works, the album was recorded primarily live with few overdubs. His band for this album featured sole "Teenager" holdover Lyle Workman on lead guitar along with David McCaffrey (bass) and Scott Boutier (drums), the former two having previously played in the jangle pop band Miracle Legion. Though the album was not a critical or commercial success, its stripped-down approach would increasingly define Black's working methods for the next several years.

Frank Black and the Catholics

Black dubbed this backing band "the Catholics", and the band's eponymous album Frank Black and the Catholics was recorded in 1997. Recorded live-to-two-track initially as merely a demo, Black was so pleased with the results that he decided to release the sessions with no further production. The album was delayed for over a year by internal conflicts at American, and was ultimately released in late 1998 by SpinArt Records in the US. The album also became the first to be posted to the eMusic service, and, according to the website, is arguably the first album ever made legally available for commercial download. Critical reception to the album was in general mixed, with some writers noting Black's seemingly deliberate turn away from the "quirkiness" of the Pixies and his early solo work for a self-consciously straightforward approach.

Since leaving American, Black has avoided long-term contracts with labels, and has maintained ownership of his album masters, licensing each album individually for release.

Black would continue to eschew multi-track recording for the live-to-two-track technique for all subsequent releases under the group name. This method precludes the use of overdubs to correct errors or add texture; all takes are recorded continuously, and mixing is done "on the fly". On later albums, Black incorporated more musicians into the sessions to allow for more varied instrumental textures. Explaining his rationale behind the method, Black said:

Well, it's real. It's a recording of a performance, of a real performance between a group of people, an entourage, a band, as opposed to a facsimile of that, which is frequently what people do with multi-track recording...I prefer it. It's a little more real. It's got a little more heart.

Dog in the Sand (2001)

Workman left the group in 1998 to pursue session and sideman work. Rich Gilbert was added to the group to replace him. The band released Pistolero in 1999 and then Dog in the Sand, which is often considered a high-point of Black's career, in 2001. This album added Athens, Georgia musician Dave Philips on pedal steel guitar and lead guitar, and Eric Drew Feldman and Joey Santiago began making occasional appearances with the group live and on record.

Two separate albums, Black Letter Days and Devil's Workshop, were released simultaneously in 2002. A sixth album with the Catholics, Show Me Your Tears, was released in 2003. Show Me Your Tears' title and many of the songs in it were inspired by Thompson's recent divorce and entrance into therapy.

Pixies reunion, Nashville and beyond

In late 2003, following long-standing rumours, an official announcement was made that Pixies were practicing for a reunion tour. They played publicly for the first time in 12 years in April 2004, and went on to tour extensively in the U.S, Canada and Europe in the same year. The Pixies also recorded a new composition "Bam Thwok", sung and co-written by Deal, which was released on the iTunes Music Store.

2004 saw Black begin a collaboration with a group of respected Nashville session men that included Steve Cropper, Spooner Oldham, Reggie Young, and Anton Fig, as well as producer Jon Tiven, to record Honeycomb, released in July 2005 to generally favorable reviews. A second volume of Nashville sessions, a double album entitled Fastman Raiderman was released in June 2006.

Black performing in concert in 2005 at the San Diego Street Scene Festival

Black appeared at a concert by Christian rock pioneer Larry Norman in June 2005 in Salem, Oregon. Norman was the writer of the song, "Six Sixty Six" which Black covered on the album Frank Black and the Catholics. Norman and Black did a duet on "Watch What You're Doing", which later appeared on Norman's album, Live at The Elsinore.

Black continued to tour with Pixies through 2005 and 2006. Though the Catholics are effectively defunct, two separate albums of Frank Black and the Catholics b-sides and rarities, Snake Oil and One More Road for the Hit, were released on iTunes in March 2006 (with an eye towards a future CD release). On top of this, Black was also working on more new solo material with Eric Drew Feldman in the first part of 2006, some of which has already been performed live with Feldman. Thought it remains unclear whether a new album will materialize, the Pixies are reported to be considering composing new material as well. Black began his first solo tour since 2003 in the fall of 2006.

He is currently living in Eugene, Oregon and married to Violet Clark, his second wife, with whom he has two children, Jack and Lucy.

Singing and songwriting style

Vocals

Black once said he modelled his performance style on two simple words: "Scream it." He adopted the mantra from a Thai neighbor, who once asked him to sing "Oh! Darling" by The Beatles (from their album Abbey Road) and to "Scream it like you hate that bitch!"

Indeed, Black's powerful screams were a signature of Pixies albums, which fit quite well with the band's typical song structure of quietly paced verses followed by thundering chorus lines and repetitive guitar staccato. In 2005 Black wrote of taking voice lessons:

"I can say that I have had no vocal damage. Although going to vocal lessons in recent years has really brought a lot of my voice back. Back from where? Just life, wear and tear, it happens to everybody. My voice feels better than it has in years (thanks, coach!)."

Songwriting and lyrics

During his stay in Puerto Rico, Black picked up a fairly fluent yet informal (at times incorrect) use of Spanish, which he has continued to use throughout his career. His earlier songs in Pixies reflected aspects of his days in San Juan and are heavily seasoned with local slang from the island. Ever since his later works with the Pixies, the use of Spanish drifted westward, reflecting places and aspects of the state of California and its culture. This evolution illustrates the constant combination of Black's sources of inspiration. Many of his songs allude to California's surf culture, although he himself has never experienced or had interest in it. His admitted interest in space and science fiction blends with his use of Spanish in references to Arecibo's observatory and the American West as it relates to New Mexico and Area 51.

His lyrics are noted for their sometimes obscure references to unusual topics like outer space, unexplained phenomena such as UFOs, and even The Three Stooges (the last of these being the subject of "Two Reelers", a song from Teenager of the Year). He has also used the Bible as a source for his stories, most notably in the incestuous tale of "Nimrod's Son" and the stories of Uriah, Bathsheba in "Dead", Samson in "Gouge Away" and The Tower of Babel in multiple songs. Lyrics with a focus on science fiction were particularly prominent on his three solo albums of the mid-1990s (Frank Black, Teenager of the Year, and The Cult of Ray).

With the Catholics, his lyrics have more often tended towards historical topics; for example, on Dog in the Sand, there is a song called "St. Francis Dam Disaster", which is about the catastrophic collapse of the St. Francis Dam near Los Angeles in March 1928 and the All My Ghosts EP featured an account of the "Humboldt County Massacre" of Wiyot Indians on February 26, 1860 near Eureka, California. This last bespeaks an elegiac impulse in Black's songcraft, one rendered most poignantly in two murder victim tributes: "The Last Stand of Shazeb Andleeb", eulogizing a Pakistani student at Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California, who was beaten to death on May 18, 1995; and "I Gotta Move", a lamentation for Eraserhead actor Jack Nance, who died from head trauma apparently sustained during an altercation in the parking lot of Winchell's Donuts in South Pasadena on December 29, 1996.

Other lyrics celebrate film, music and literature: e.g. directors Luis Buñuel in "Debaser" and Jacques Tati in "The Jacques Tati"; rockers Jonathan Richman ("The Man Who Was Too Loud"), the Ramones ("I Heard Ramona Sing") and singer Johnny Horton ("If It Takes All Night"); and writers Ray Bradbury ("The Cult of Ray") and Madeleine L'Engle ("Headache").

The lyrics to "Ana", "Speedy Marie" and "Robert Onion" respectively contain the acrostics surfer, Jean Marie Walsh (his then girlfriend and current ex-wife) and Robert "The Case For Mars" Zubrin.

Melodies

Musically, one aspect that is often overlooked is Black's frequent use of atypical meter signatures in his songs. Rock and pop themes usually rely on conventional, "square" metrics such as 2/4, 4/4 and 3/4. Black has composed many songs that stray from these conventional beats. However, themes like the Pixies' "Gouge Away" and "Isla De Encanta," as well as "Skeleton Man" from his work with The Catholics, hide similar metrics and the same unconventional approach to songwriting within rock songs. Overall, beneath the visceral simplicity of the Pixies' and Black's songs lies some eclectic attention to music theory and sources, evident by the use of Spanish rhythms, galloping marches in the style of cowboy movies, and many other traits.

Solo discography

for Pixies, see Pixies Discography

Studio albums

Year	Title	Label
1993	Frank Black (album)	4AD Records
1994	Teenager of the Year	4AD Records
1996	The Cult of Ray	American Recordings
1998	Frank Black and the Catholics*	SpinART
1999	Pistolero*	What Are Records?
2000	Dog in the Sand*	What Are Records?
2000	Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day	*Not released,
2002	Black Letter Days*	SpinART / Cooking Vinyl
2002	Devil's Workshop*	SpinART / Cooking Vinyl
2003	Show Me Your Tears*	SpinART / Cooking Vinyl
2004	Frank Black Francis	SpinART / Cooking Vinyl
2005	Honeycomb	Back Porch / Cooking Vinyl
2006	Fast Man Raider Man	Back Porch / Cooking Vinyl

* as Frank Black and the Catholics

EPs & singles

Year	Title	Label
1993	Hang On To Your Ego	4AD Records
1994	Headache	Badd
1995	Men In Black	American Recordings
1995	The Marsist/Better Things	Dragnet
1996	I Don't Want to Hurt You	Sony
1998	All My Ghosts	Play It Again Sam
2003	Nadine	Cooking Vinyl

Compilations

Year	Title	Label
2000	Oddballs	EMusic
2005	High School Reunion	American Laundromat Records / Face Down Records
2006	One More Road for the Hit	spinART
2006	Snake Oil	spinART

External links

• Approved fan site
• Frank Black's personal blog and music collection at MOG.com
• Frank Black discography
• Frank Black's Allmusic entry
• Entry on Musicbrainz
• Frank Black Lyrics