- Sugar's A Good Idea is a Bob Mould's homage to the Pixies, and more especially to Debaser.
- Though not a direct homage, Smell Like Teen Spirit was described by Kurt Cobain
as a desperate attempt to write a song in a Pixies style. It seems that live, the song was
sometimes played with a Pixies intro (for instance in Seattle, in October 1992).
- The Obscure have a song called Jealousy, which says:
Don't know what's come over me
I wish I sang like Charles T.
(reported by Vincent Whitacre)
- Pony have a song called Fortune Cookie, which says:
I saw Black Francis in a dream
and he said that I could have
anything
and I said, and I said
and I said Black Francis
turkeys in my garage
with fantastic tattooed recipes...
(reported by Cameron Frazier)
- Ben Lee has a song called Pop Queen, in which he describes the ideal girl:
She loves the Pixies
She's the ultimate pop queen you know what I mean
Yeah my girl is a true dream..
He also has a song called Away With The Pixies
(reported by Hannah)
- Larry Norman has a song at the end of which he yells:
Come on pilgrim, you know he loves you!
...but this is on a 1977 album !
(reported by J. Landis)
Actually, the Pixies paid homage to this Christian folk singer, and not the
contrary! See Come On Pilgrim entry in the Titles section for more details.
- The group The Bloodhound Gang has a song
( Named Fire, Water, Burn) in which the following Pixies references are found:
I'm not black like Barry White,
I am white like Frank Black is.
It then goes on to:
So if man is five and the devil is six then that must make me seven,
This honkey's gone to heaven."
....A parody of Monkey Gone to Heaven
(reported by Velouria10)
-
British humorist Chris Morris made a wonderful parody of the Pixies, called Motherbanger, which was released on a flexi-disk given away with Select magazine. (reported by Robert Cooper)
- Nirvana during their '91 tour played (over the speakers, not live as covers)
Motorway to Roswell after they finished the show.
I've also heard Head On and Gigantic
played after a Nirvana show too.
When I saw the Foo Fighters on March 28, 1996 in Milwaukee, WI, Dave Grohl
began Good Grief by singing "This is a song about a super hero named Tony!
It's called Tony's Theme!" (reported by Michael)
-
In January 1998 issue of Guitar World, Dave Grohl was asked to
make a 60 minutes tape of his favorite music, and to comment about it. In his
selection could be found Motorway To Roswell ("a really beautiful piece
of music") and Frank Black's Fu Manchu, with this comment: "Frank's
my favorite, so I've got to mention him twice". In a recent interview to The
Guitar Magazine, he also mentioned Trompe Le Monde as his favorite album of
all time.
-
There is a musical reference to Stormy Weather by Chicago band
Veruca Salt in their song Number One Blind, which is a
song about window blinds and superficially sounds a bit like Velouria.
Towards the end of the song they sing
It is time, it is time, it is time for stormy weather...
They also sound very much like the Breeders, which prompted the twisting of a
line from their first single, "Seether" as follows: "Can't fight the seether" changed to... "Sound like the Breeders." (reported by John Walkey)
-
Michael Stipe of REM listed Doolittle as one of his 10
favorite albums from the 80's, together with Viva Hate (Morrissey) or
Psychocandy (Jesus and Mary Chain).
-
The Dandy Warhols have a song on their 1997 album (...The Dandy Warhols
Come Down) called Cool As Kim Deal.
(reported by Raj Kale)
-
In Chile, Pixies are very popular.
A few years ago, a band called Pixiemania used to play Pixies covers exclusively.
(submitted by Ernesto Miranda)
-
A band called Giant Ant Farm did a "cover" of Dead.
The song is called The Clapper, and contains excerpts of Dead,
done in Klezmer style. The song also covers a traditional Klezmer song and
Rock-n-roll star by AC/DC. (reported by Michael Sumner)
-
There was a band in Melbourne Australia called Tlot Tlot.
On their 1992 CD Pistolbuttsa' Twinkle, they had a song called
Sunny Delirious which featured a sample from the start of
Gigantic. (reported by Geoff Prince)
-
"I thought you might be interested to know that Pavement 'covered'
Gigantic. Their song Kentucky Cocktail as it goes to hell he starts
singing
Gigantic, gigantic, gigantic, our big big dog
It's available
to download as an MP3 from their
official site." (submitted by
Tom Nugent)
-
Eboman is a Dutch artist who makes dance music. He had a
hit with his song Donuts with Buddah quite some time ago, in 1996. In the booklet of his
Donuts with Buddah album it says "Ebo respect: ..." and then he names a
number of artists that you would expect like Chemical Brothers, Bomb the
Bass, but also a few you would not expect like Herbie Hancock and... Pixies! (submitted by
Patrick Asselman)
-
Eddie Vedder invited Frank Black to open for Pearl Jam in 1998 as an homage. During this
tour, Vedder often sang lines from Pixies songs, including I've Been Tired and Monkey Gone To Heaven.
"I went to see Frank Black in Portland opening for Pearl Jam a couple
weeks ago. In the middle of one of Pearl Jam's songs, Eddie Vedder
started singing
...loosing my penis to a whore with disease, just
kidding I said, losing my life to a...
I started looking around at the
die-hard Pearl Jam fans all around me who had been singing (screaming,
really) along the entire time, and they were standing confused looking
at each other like 'What the hell is he singing?' It was great." (submitted by Matt Hamel)
- Simon Gallup from The Cure lists the Pixies as one of his favorite bands.
- The Pixies are also one of the favorite bands of Jimmy Chamberlin, former member of the Smashing Pumpkins, whose new band, The Last Hard Men, has Kelley Deal in the lineup.
- The Smashing Pumpkins have also a song called Spaceboy which opens with:
Feel it
Break your bones
Mr. Jones
Taste me
As I bleed
Taste my need
This may be a reference to the Pixies (Break My Body, I Bleed, Crackity Jones?)
- Thom Yorke from Radiohead has already introduced Stop Whispering as being a tribute to the Pixies.
On MTV Europe, the band also presented their album OK Computer as a cross between Pink Floyd,
the Pixies, and Elvis Costello.
- Radiohead played a DJ session at BBC Studios in
2001. The opening track was Pixies' Bone Machine.
(reported by Antti)
- An article from Spin (June 2003) mentions that the Pixies are one of the main two influences of Radiohead
(the other one being The Smiths) and that Jonny Greenwood learned how to play guitar by listening to their records.
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-
In their song Misdirected Hostility, the band 311 sings
You should take a tip from the one Frank Black
Playsome pachinko play some parcheesi
Cause all the angst shit is just cheesy
-
The song Shame On You by the Indigo Girls has the line:
I say let's put on some tunes
Sing a long and dolittle all day
In an interview on World Cafe, in May 1997, Amy Ray explained it was
referring to the Pixies album Doolittle, she was listening to the day
she wrote this song about "the importance of the beauty of, like,
ethnic things in our life."
-
Pixies albums are included several times amongst the favorite albums of some alternative
rockers, as featured in
SPIN Alternative Record Guide" (Vintage Books, 1995):
Courtney Love (Hole):
4. Pixies, Surfer Rosa
Josephine Wiggs (The Breeders):
7. Pixies, Doolittle
Kristin Hersh (Throwing Muses):
7. Pixies, Come on Pilgrim
- On his album Fake Songs (2003), Lyam Lynch has a song called Fake Pixies Song.
- There is an homage to the Pixies on the
Weezer Deluxe Album. If you listen to the demo version of Undone - the
sweater song, you can hear during the intro one of the weezer guys saying,
And though i am a whore...I am a whore...i am a whore... i wish i sang like
Black Francis.
(reported by Piecar)
- In King Adora's song Bionic, which couldn't sound more like the Pixies during the verses, it says
Got the wind on my back like the good Frank Black
(submitted by FiFi Fontagne)
- The Japanese band The Pillows named a song after the Pixies
bassist Kim Deal (on their 1999 album Happy Bivouac), and occasionally their lyrics refer
to Kim Deal such as "Breeder you can't scold me" or
something.
(reported by Chris Dye)
- Outkast's smash it Hey Ya was reportedly inspired by Andre 3000's discovery of bands like
The Pixies and The Ramones. You might guess the reference to the Pixies by reading
the lyrics.
- There is a French band called Eiffel, which was named after the Pixies song.
Please take a look at the cover of their first album's advance promo...
In case you wonder, it was designed by v23!
- There is an independent online record shop created by
very big fans of the pixies obviously from the name of the store.
What's the name?
A Planet of Sound!
- Last, but not least...
On Sol 98, which ended at 10:36 p.m. PST on April 12, Mars exploration rover Spirit woke up to the song Where Is My Mind?
by The Pixies in honor of its software transplant. The good news is that Spirit's "mind" is updated and operating as expected.
(official notice issued by NASA on 04-12-2004).
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