![]() Where Black Francis sounded like a man repulsed by himself, a man who wished he could steal someone else’s skin and shroud himself in it (the chemistry of the Pixies was in part the shambling lead male singer secretly wishing he could be his bassist, who stood to his left on stage, coolly oblivious to him, having a whale of a time), Bowie made the character delight in his depravity-it’s the nastiest old man he ever played, making his work on the revived “Liza Jane” look like a pencil sketch. He bumped the song up to A major and did his usual octave-doubled backing vocals (he was playing both Kim Deal and Black Francis-very Bowie) with the EMS Synthi AKS “briefcase” synthesizer as choir. Bowie’s versions, studio and live, kicked off with a guitar itching to tear into the “Get It On” riff. Rex’s “ The Groover” for the chanted “P! I! X! I! E! S!”, naturally amended here to “D! A! V! I! D!”**. It was especially galling around the end of the century, when the hushed-verse/power-refrain Pixies formula was everywhere you looked on the “modern rock” charts.Ĭovering “Cactus” was an inspired choice, as it was one of the Pixies songs to most disclose their debt to the Stooges, from the chord progression (tonic chord (E5) to flatted III chord (G5), a standard Ron Asheton move (see “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “1970,” “Real Cool Time”)) to the Asheton-esque guitar by Joey Santiago (the great little coda solo that shrugs off after a few notes) to Black Francis’ vocal and lyric, which was Iggy Pop’s lust and dominance games projected inward.Īnd Bowie also knew a glam song when he saw it, despite the austerity of Albini’s “Cactus” mix. He’d often described them as the great American band that America didn’t recognize. I mean, they were so important but they never meant a thing outside New York and Los Angeles.īy the time he recorded Heathen, Bowie had been talking up the Pixies for nearly 15 years-he’d performed “ Debaser” live with Tin Machine back in ’91, when the Pixies were still a going concern (if barely). ![]() I thought it was a hell of a shame that America didn’t recognize its own with the Pixies. “Cactus” was just a thudding shift between two power chords,* a bassline in lockstep with the guitar and a drum pattern that sounded like a man pounding on a wooden door for two minutes. The Pixies recorded “Cactus” in 1988 for Surfer Rosa, working with Steve Albini, who miked the room and recorded some band conversations, a few of which were used as between-song segues, and had them bring amps and gear down to the cement bathroom for better reverb (“ we were in a factory building and it was a giant urinal for, like 100 guys,” recalled John Lupner, the studio assistant). It’s a desire for contact, for evidence of any physical act, sung by man caged like an ape. He wants her to send him her soiled dresses, to go outside (or to another state) and rub her hand against a cactus. He wants her flesh, her scents-the salty tang of her blood. He’s got a letter from her, he says, but it’s just words. A man is locked up somewhere-a prison cell, an asylum-writing a letter to a woman he’s obsessed with (does she even know him?). “Cactus” had its roots there as well, with its isolation, sexual deprivation, longing and revulsion. “ I just wasn’t getting any love, man! Puerto Rico!” During his stay he wrote a postcard to Joey Santiago, his friend back at UMASS, saying they should start a band.Ī lot of Pixies songs came out of Puerto Rico, Thompson said, like “ Crackity Jones,” about a strange roommate. “ The one person who seemed to want to fuck me was this 65-year-old man, an expat Brit, an antique bookseller.” The girl Thompson had a crush on was in love with a local guy, and he was too broke and scared to do anything at the portside brothel. Sex was everywhere he looked in Puerto Rico, except his bedroom. They’d circle the room like vultures, seeing who was ready to fuck in the back room…It was like it had been that way for a hundred years and nothing had changed,” he told Mojo. ![]() “ I got real skinny-went to the beach, to movies and hung out in weird places,” one of which was a sailor’s brothel, where he’d “ watch this massive barroom, full of these sailors and these slithering whores. When he was 20, Charles “Black Francis” Thompson went to Puerto Rico for a semester abroad. Cactus ( The Tonight Show (Bowie with Moby), 2002).Ĭactus (TV5, (interview w/live performance, 2003).
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