Doing a lot of Doolittle

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This article was published 21/04/2011 (5594 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

44The Pixies drummer has been performing the entire 1989 album front to back regularly since the Boston alt-rock group launched its Doolittle 20th anniversary tour two years ago.

“People say you must be sick of the album, doing it over and over, but I’m not sick of it at all; in fact what I like about Doolittle, for a drummer, it’s probably the easiest Pixies album for me to play,” he says during a recent phone interview prior to the start of the band’s eight-province, 18-show tour that stops at the Centennial Concert Hall for two nights on Tuesday and Wednesday. “There’s nothing, just crazy bang, bang, bang and nuts, nuts, nuts. We’re trying to do a bit of everything on there.”

The show — the band’s first since playing Winnipeg in April 2004 as its second reunion gig — features the entire Doolittle album, along with B-sides from the era and an encore featuring songs from the band’s other three full-lengths and EP. The evening will also feature a screening of the 1929 Salvador Dali/Luis Buñuel 16-minute film Un Chien Andalou, which served as the inspiration for Doolittle’s opening number, Debaser.

“With Doolittle I get comments saying it’s a classic album, that it’s kind of timeless in a way, but it’s hard for me to have a good reference point or to give criticism. From all I hear, it still stands up,” Lovering says. “You can play it today and it’s fresh. I’m proud of it, along with other Pixies songs. Back in the day I loved it and love it now.”

Two nights in the city would allow the group to perform two complete albums, but even though that idea has been tossed around, there are no concrete plans to do a night of Surfer Rosa, Bossanova or Trompe Le Monde, Lovering says.

“I think Surfer Rosa would be a good album to do. It would be one of our favourite albums to do,” he says.

The Steve Albini-produced Surfer Rosa was the Boston group’s first full-length, released in 1988 a year after their debut EP, Come on Pilgrim.

Doolittle is arguably the band’s most accessible album, but still showed off its extreme aggressive side and documented its oft-imitated “loud-quiet-loud” formula. There is the straight-up pop whimsy of songs like Here Comes Your Man, La Love You and Wave of Mutilation, alongside more abrasive tracks like Debaser, Tame and Crackity Jones.

The recording sessions with British producer Gil Norton have been described as tumultuous with infighting between frontman Frank Black — known as Black Francis back then (but born Charles Thompson) — and bassist Kim Deal (who both declined interview requests for the Canadian portion of the tour) but Lovering doesn’t remember it that way. What sticks out for him is mixing it in Stamford, Conn., with the band living in the same house and working together.

“Our living accommodations were in the middle of this suburban town and it was Thanksgiving time during the mixing,” he recalls, waxing nostalgic.

“I was proud of it. I was also a little scared: La Love You was the first song I sang on. I was happy to see what it was going to do.

“I remember there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken close by and they had these sandwiches called Chicken Littles,” Lovering says, clarifying that they didn’t eat Thanksgiving dinner there.

“Gil Norton was a cook and he brought in a turkey on Thanksgiving.”

Doolittle was the band’s most successful release, despite not making much of an impact at the time. Unsurprisingly, college radio was a huge champion of the band — which also features lead guitarist Joey Santiago — and the album continued to sell steadily even after the group broke up in 1993, achieving gold status in 1995 with sales of over 500,000.

It was the first Pixies album to receive widespread international distribution, and while it never truly made a dent in the mainstream, the band became a hero in the underground music community and went on to influence countless bands. Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain is famously quoted as saying Smells Like Teen Spirit was his attempt to write a Pixies song.

Deal’s strained relationship with Black is cited as one of the main reasons the band broke up, but Lovering said the group dynamics since the band reunited in 2004 are healthy, despite some initial hiccups seen in the documentary loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies, which showed Lovering’s descent into Valium addiction following the death of his father and a lack of communication within the band.

Lovering doesn’t come right out and say he doesn’t like the movie, but appears to disagree with how the band was portrayed.

“They followed us around for two years. If you know the band, we are boring; nothing goes on. At the end of two years they didn’t have much to do, so they used timelines with certain things that happened with drug use and us being non-communicative, which wasn’t really the case. We all have fun. We’re older and wiser. We get along fine and have a lot of fun,” says the 49-year-old who is also a professional magician and is a member of Hollywood’s Magic Castle, a private club for magicians.

Lovering admits he didn’t think the reunion would last this long, especially since the band only released one new song in that time, the unimpressive Bam Thwok. The Pixies have officially been together for the second go round longer than the first.

He has no idea how long it will last.

“I still enjoy playing with these three on stage; there’s a chemistry, a certain thing that makes us the Pixies and I like being part of that. I just know we’re lucky enough right now to be touring so much and there’s still a demand for us. It’s amazing to be doing this for so long without any new material. I know we’ll wear out our welcome sometime,” he says.

Well, how about a new Pixies album, then?

“We’ve been talking about it for about four years, but that’s all it’s been: talk. Nothing’s come to fruition and as the four years has gone on it’s been easier just to talk about it.

“As a magician, I cannot reveal any secrets,” Lovering says.

The Pixies play the Centennial Concert Hall Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Local pop act Imaginary Cities, which has been tapped as the opening band for the entire tour, kicks off both shows. Tickets for the Tuesday show are available for $47 and $67 at Ticketmaster. Wednesday’s concert is sold out.

rob.williams@freepress.mb.ca

Nothing

up his sleeve

WHEN David Lovering’s interest in drumming disappeared, his sticks transformed into wands.

Following the Pixies’ split in 1993, Lovering played with several other artists, including Cracker and Tanya Donelly, but eventually gave up drumming altogether.

He got hooked on magic and illusions after attending a convention with singer-songwriter Grant-Lee Philllips and soon immersed himself in the craft.

“You see tricks around that your grandfather might show you, but this is the first time I saw a trick by a real magician, and from that point I bought every book and joined the Magic Castle and took classes,” Lovering says.

Calling himself the Scientific Phenomenalist, he developed his own show, combining science, physics and his “mental powers” using machines he invented. He toured as the opening act for rock bands, including Frank Black and the Catholics, the Breeders and Camper Van Beethoven.

He still performs as the Scientific Phenomenalist occasionally, but has mostly had his magic act on the shelf due to the success of the Pixies reunion, he says.

“If you would have told me I would have been a magician later in life I would have rolled around on the floor laughing,” he says.