Pixies: They've gone a bit Blue Peter

The word "fun". It's like a coded cry for help, isn't it?

With the late-April release of Indie Cindy, the first new Pixies studio album in more than 20 years, the band, along with legendary graphic designer Vaughan Oliver, is calling upon the Pixies’ artistic community to participate in a fun contest where art and music converge.

You have Vaughan Oliver. Why would you invite amateur input? "Hey, we've got Duke Ellington offering to do something for the new record, so we thought we'd get some people to send in cassette tapes of them playing piano and he could choose the best one, albeit one which will fall quite short of his piano playing."

Pixies - Black Francis, Joey Santiago and David Lovering - are looking for committed fans and artists to create a unique Pixies-inspired design measuring 11” X 17” (279mm x 432mm) that utilizes Pixies logos and the "Indie Cindy” album title - everything else can be a product of the artist’s creativity and ingenuity. All submissions will be personally judged by the three Pixies band members and by Vaughan Oliver, who has designed all Pixies artwork over the band’s career. The winning designer will receive a cash prize of $500 and an autographed copy of the winning design. The design itself will be used as a limited-edition, commemorative lithograph print that will be offered as a bonus item with the purchase of the band’s new album at independent music stores.

"Hello? Is that the guy whose record shop is struggling in the face of an onslaught from digital music shops? We've got a plan to offer something special to tempt customers onto your street. Yeah, does sound good, doesn't it? What? Well, you know Vaughan Oliver? Yeah, you do? Right, well, he's going to choose a fan drawing for you to give away exclusively. Hello?"

"We love the idea that people make our music their own,” said Pixies Black Francis, “that they have their own interpretation of the lyrics and the songs’ meanings. So, we’re really excited to see what the artists in our fan base come up with in terms of visuals, how they ‘SEE’ our music."

That's how the press release renders "see". I don't know why, but I'm sure it's fun.

Kim Deal issued her own press statement, saying simply "you see? Do you understand now?"

Pixies split again

What is it with bassists called Kim and the Pixies?

They've just lost the second one in a year. Kim Shattuck posted this to Facebook:

Super disappointed to learn that my time with the Pixies ended today. Amazing experience. Looking forward to focusing my attention back on the Muffs and our upcoming new album. All the best to everyone.

This shouldn't be too much of a surprise - if you had suspicions that she was being viewed as hired help, Tom Howard's Pixies piece in the NME last week would have confirmed it. The manager wouldn't let Howard talk to Shattuck; when he asked Black Francis why, he was told to ask the manager.

Black Francis: The Musical

The default approach for hearing a record is being turned into a musical is to start waving swords around wildly, screeching "die, Ben Elton, die". But this one might just work, as Black Francis' Bluefinger is getting the jazz-hands and dance-routine deal.

It has the benefit of having been a concept work in the first place, as Spinner reminds us:

the album is about Dutch musician/artist Herman Brood, who took his own life in 2001, after years battling depression, drugs and alcohol

It's not really going to be a firm family favourite. But while Little Orphan Annie might not feel the cold breath of competition breathing down the back of her city-issue blouse, Bluefinger does at least offer a prospect of an interesting night out.

Black Francis writes for you

At the end of March, Black Francis is releasing a new album - NonStopErotik. To celebrate, he's put a few thoughts down in a press release:

I finally came into possession of an old guitar someone had given me at a nightclub in San Francisco awhile back; Eric Drew Feldman had been holding it for me there on Haight Street. He convinced me that it looked cool (it was black) and had been given in the spirit of benevolence. Every time I picked it up a nice chord came out and so I lovingly cleaned it with red wine in the dressing room the following night and began to write. I told the tour manager that we would drive in my Cadillac directly to a recording studio in Los Angeles (and could he book one, oh, and a rhythm section, too?) from the gig in San Luis Obispo which would put us at the studio at about 4am. It all happened according to plan and we cut the initial tracks there in the wee hours over a few days, and then moved on to an equally haunted studio in London and Eric Drew Feldman joined us there and we finished the record in St. John's Wood. Like I said the studio was haunted and I wrote many a couplet by candlelight in the studio accommodation, slept very little, and only felt the need to get the fuck out of there fast on the last night. The spirits had not ever bothered me, other than low drama moral support, but I was informed that they had heard enough and it was time to move on; plus I had a gig in Ireland.

When I was a boy the plant we boys called a fern was code for vagina, and to this day I love fern plants. In my heart the vagina is almost everything, and almost everything else could be summed up in what cock and seed have to offer; and everything else? The love of the father, dead or alive, the pain of too much pleasure, till death do us part, the voice of another song man from the other side, with or without God, Teri and the Possibilities, where ever you may be, the smell of sex in the air, seduced, slain, on my knees in prayer, sucking at the only thing that matters, my own personal Meret Oppenheim, I am Man Ray and I want you and to be all the way inside you, the cameras whirring as we put some elbow grease into the scene, the audience watching us in the dark.

Fern was...? Whatever was Tony Britton thinking of?

Black Francis off the streets

Much as we love him, we raise a curious eyebrow that the Metropolitan Police were so scared by the prospects of Black Francis playing a gig in the streets that they feared he might bring London to a standstill.

Citing the twentyfirst century boogerman of Health & Safety, Frank was made to play his "pre-core" gig inside instead.

That's as opposed to an encore, in case you're wondering.