Trivia / Pixies

• Black Sheep Hit: "Here Comes Your Man", possibly also "Where Is My Mind?"
• Breakup Breakout: Francis went on to an acclaimed solo career, and Kim founded The Breeders.
• Channel Hop: For Doolittle, the band switched from Rough Trade to Elektra Records for U.S. distribution, where they would remain until their breakup. Elektra would also reissue Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa after Rough Trade's collapse. 4AD's American arm would later acquire the band's US rights to the classic era in the early 2000s. The reunited band would create their own vanity label, Pixiesmusic, distributed by PIAS, for later albums.
• Chart Displacement: Out of their three highest charting singles, two are among their best known songs, "Here Comes Your Man" and "Monkey Gone to Heaven". But given "Where Is My Mind?" wasn't a single and "Debaser" didn't chart, the third was the much less remembered "Velouria".
• Colbert Bump: The band's British and European popularity seemed to benefit from having David Bowie as their number one fan.
• Creator Backlash: Surfer Rosa carries an interesting example, as the backlash comes not from any particular member of the band, but rather, producer Steve Albini, who called the album "A patchwork pinch loaf from a band who at their top dollar best are blandly entertaining college rock" in an interview around the time of the recording of Trompe le Monde. He later apologized for these remarks, however.
• Cut Song: The band's first single since 1991, "Bam Thwok" was originally recorded for Shrek 2 before Dreamworks Animation opted to go with Counting Crows' "Accidentally in Love" for the opening sequence instead.
• Late Export for You: Come On Pilgrim was only released in the U.S. with Rough Trade's first CD issue of Surfer Rosa as well as separately on vinyl and cassette.
• No Budget: "Velouria"'s infamous music video. To have the song play on the UK's Top of the Pops to promote it while it was charting, it either needed a music video, or for them to fly to London and mime to a backing track in the studio. Not actually having money or time on hand to make a full video, the band just decided "screw it" and filmed 23 seconds of footage of them running towards a camera from across a quarry and stretched it out to the full length of the song.
• The Other Darrin: Female bassist Kim Deal was replaced by female bassist Kim Shattuck for a few months in 2013, though this is obviously averted with permanent replacement Paz Lechantin.
• Playing Against Type: The band was unusually loud compared to the other acts 4AD was known for, such as Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance. The Pixies were also one of 4AD's first American acts.
• Referenced by...:
  • Grace from The State of Grace owns an old Pixies T-shirt her mom had when she was seventeen.
  • Bloodhound Gang's "Fire Water Burn", after saying "I'm not Black like Barry White, I'm White like Frank Black is", Jimmy Pop makes sure to reference "Monkey Gone to Heaven": "So if man is five and the Devil is six, than that must make me seven\This honky's gone to heaven".
• Short Run in Peru: Their debut E.P. Come On Pilgrim, excerpted from a demo session, was only released in the U.K. by 4AD Records despite being an American band. After its rapturous reception by the British music press, it was finally released stateside concurrently with the band's first full-length album, Surfer Rosa, appended to the CD version as well as separately on vinyl and cassette by fellow indie label Rough Trade.
• Throw It In!: Steve Albini immortalised two sequences of Studio Chatter on Surfer Rosa: Francis' "You fuckin' DIE, I said!" between "Oh My Golly!" and "Vamos", and Deal's recounting of a teacher who was rumoured to be "into field hockey players" at the start of "I'm Amazed".
  • The video for "Velouria" was one of these. According to The Other Wiki, the band was offered a spot on Top Of The Pops, but a BBC rule stated that only singles with videos could be performed on the show. So the band went to a quarry and filmed 23 seconds of them running through it… and stretched those 23 seconds to cover the entire length of the song.

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