Boston Tea Parties

From: Melody Maker, May 7, 1988

By the time you read this, Throwing Muses and the Pixies will be
back in Boston, recovering from the exertions of their
European tour. Determined to see them off in style, the
Stud brothers joined them last week in Birmingham to bid them
farewell and congratulate them on the success of 'House
Tornado' and 'Surfer Rosa' and ended up in a parking lot with
Black Francis and Kristin Hersh discussing God and the
Brownies...

It's Tuesday, 7:15 in the evening. We're sitting in a
stationary white van (a Renault we think) and talking to The
Pixies. The van sits sullenly between a parking-lot and
Burberries Birmingham's smaller but equally lurid version of
Cinderella's. Inside, Throwing Muses are soundchecking. At
7:18, Kim (Mrs John Murphy) offers us a beer, holding out two
yellow, distinctly teutonic cans they'd accidentally imported
from Germany. By 7.25 we're talking about God. That's what
we're like. We don't fuck about.

Charles, otherwise known as Black Francis, became a Born Again
Christian so soon after being "birthed" he wasn't actually
granted the luxury of testing his resolve in the wilderness
the rest of us call Life. Consequently, at the tender age of
17, he Died Again. Now he's just "your usual college dropout
agnostic". David Lovering, who drums, thinks he should at
least say he believes in God, and does. "I should say I
believe in God because I don't wanna go to Hell for saying
no." Charles reminds him that God, as is usual with the omnipotent,
doesn't see it that way and will doubtless damn him to Hell
for lying anyway. Joey, whose placid smile disguises all
manner of hideous things, says that he ought to say yes; it's
bad to say no. . . "but I have to say no for the moment." Kim,
who's finished her beer, tells us she does believe in God.
"But, um, I don't think God believes in me."

Later, onstage, Kim is so thoroughly and marvellously lost,
she appears to have given herself up to something higher. Or
lower. Whatever it is, it's certainly not God. She's entrusted
her body to something that twists her into odd shapes, some
thing that sets her feet together, then pulls her up to
tiptoe, extends her neck, shoves her head sideways in a
blasphemous imitation of Princess Di and has her spine
behaving like some giant wayward centipede. Her face is graced
with a wan and beatific smile; it's almost as if she were
swinging merrily from some invisible gallows.
Charles, soaked in sweat, occasionally approaches her to
whisper some private joke. More often, though, he stares
hungrily out over the crowd, howling a howl that reverberates
through the plastic foliage, that breaks out of his gaping
mouth as an explosion that threatens to crack the cocktail
glasses and distort his face into a shapeless mass of
trembling, reddened flesh.

"I like to think it's possible to be in touch with old
things, ancient things, where you can say to yourself, 'I am
experiencing the same feeling as somebody who didn't even have
a language felt way back then.' It would be nice to have some
physical unknown place to go" -Black Francis

Charles, whose first time this is in Europe, manages to
articulate some English provincial grudge generally held by
Birmingham's Pixie People against establishments like
Burberries (smart dress essential). If ever there was a band
unsuited to playing this multi-mirrored cattle market it's ...
Throwing Muses. Not The Pixies, not quite The Pixies.

We can still succumb to The Pixies in a way faintly comparable
to our submission to white dance and lager. We can feel them
viscerally, enjoy them vicariously. There's a part of The
Pixies that invites the hooligan element. But, if there's a
faith there, it's certainly not one that'll make sense of the
Cosmos. The Muses instead appeal to a more ascetic
sensibility. They also believe in God.

"Yeah, I do," Kristin had told us at 4.30 that same
Tuesday, "though it's hard to say the word. I feel this
spirituality floating around my body, just because the only
books I had to bring with me were these New Age spirituality
books, or books that've been republished under the title 'New
Age'. They have these goonie covers and stuff, they're really
neat. All I can think about is reincarnation and Zen and
feminine psychology." We found this unsurprising only because
we'd yet to meet an American who didn't believe in God.
Remember, it was 4.30 and we hadn't met The Pixies yet.

Leslie Langston, who'd just bought a yellow beret in London,
agreed with Kristin, though she was more insistent and very
much more specific. "I believe in God. I believe in God
because, if I didn't, I'm almost positive at this moment I'd be
dead. Whether he truly exists or not doesn't matter, just my
belief in him has allowed me to come out of a lot of weird
things. It's not necessarily a Christian god." Kristen nodded.
"I can't believe how anyone could embrace every aspect of a
doctrine. I prefer the idea of myth. It's fascinating how a
myth is just a conglomeration of things, stories that have
been purified in the retelling until they speak for everybody.
Religion would be great if it did that."

Purified, not sanitised. The Pixies do that and so, too, do
Throwing Muses. While pop dies from its sense of fair play,
rock thrives on its savage sense of self, a selfishness that
lends it both enigma and, paradoxically, poignancy, a
selfishness that, taken to its logical conclusion, has
rejected even the identity of glamour and rendered both the
Muses and The Pixies literally imageless. They're now as naked
as rock could ever possibly be. What we see though, what we
hear, what we ultimately understand, are the fragments of a
whole comprehended in a block unconscious communion where the
images we take (they're not so much given) are
embroidered by our own fears and anxieties

Close your eyes tonight and Throwing Muses' laced darkness
creeps into you, its patterns pulsing, a cluster of welcome and
unwelcome sensations swarming over you, inviting misery then
intruding upon it. What's left afterwards is a heap of broken
images - a father's hands pressed against eyes that refuse to
see so much pain, screaming mouths and chests convulsed by
weeping, the torpor of a child with an old man's face.
Throwing Muses say their humour's blacker than that of the
Pixies. We think it's so black it's almost undetectable.
But, somewhere in the maelstrom, you can dance.
Certainly it's no surefooted stomp, more an arhythmic hop or,
like in Birmingham, a heaving pogo.

'I write my songs mostly in front of a mirror. I don't
know why, I've always done it like that. When l get tired of
the mirror, I stand in the bathtub and draw the shower
curtain' - Black Francis

The Pixies are no "nicer", but they are (probably because of
what Simon Reynolds called "their surrealist phonetic poetry")
funnier. Funny, that is, if you find a bloated stomach
suspended from a skeletal frame funny (which, by the way, we
do - it's so hugely, horrendously absurd). The Pixies lyrics
are often so introspective they seem to believe only in their
own perverse logic. They're blacked-out humour. The Muses, to
their credit, still preserve undiplomatic relations with some
Outside. The Pixies are simply way, way out. "Absolutely,
absolutely," says Charles, "there you go. But at the same time
I want to command some faith in the audience, I want them to
be intrigued, absolutely curious about my music and who I am.
That's what makes other music attractive to me, it's the hole
you get sucked into when you really get into a song. When you
play 'Gimme Shelter' all the analyses about whether rock 'n'
roll is legitimate, all the stuff we talk about every day,
when you play the song, none of that matters. All that matters
is the song. That's it. 'Gimme Shelter'." "It's an
entirely physical thing," Kim continues. "There's a little
thing in the middle of your head that starts to buzz. I call
it an eargasm. It releases a sort of chemical and then you get
chillbumps or a swoosh feeling. It's physical." Charles has an
especially physical way of writing songs. "I write my songs
mostly in front of a mirror. I don't know why, I've always
done it like that. When I get tired of the mirror, I stand in
the bathtub and draw the shower curtain. Or sometimes I stand
very, very close to a wall and I write them like that. I don't
even write my lyrics down, I don't pick up a pen, hardly ever.
Seventy per cent is just in my head. I don't know why, maybe
it's because I like mirrors. I like my face." We look at
Charles, smiling over the Renault's passenger seat like a
Californian Billy Bunter and, now remembering, try to reconcile
that face with the scarlet-faced ape glaring glassy-eyed from
the stage "I like to think it's possible to be in touch with
old things, ancient things, where you can say to yourself, 'I am
experiencing the same feeling as somebody who didn't even have
a language felt way back when.' It would be nice to have some
physical unknown place to go."

It's five past eight and The Pixies have just discovered they
won't be able to soundcheck. Burberries is beginning to fill
up with a healthily mismatched cross-section of young
Brummies. If we hadn't been sitting in the van, we might have
toasted this easy exhibition of fragmented times. Kim is
remembering the first time she heard Throwing Muses. "I
remember the way I felt when I first heard the Muses on the
radio. I couldn't believe someone was making that kind of
original music. I thought they were great. It was so much more
interesting, so much more different to anything I'd heard
before."

Sunday at the Town And Country Club would be the last time The
Pixies and Muses shared the same stage commercially, they've
outgrown each other. We wonder, Kim, will you miss them? "God,
yeah, Kristin and Tanya crack me up. They've had the weirdest
lives, they are so weird. Tanya told me a story about how they
did segments of the 'Captain Kangaroo Show'. And 'Sesame
Street', too. She talked about the 'Captain Kangaroo Show' and
how perverse the people were there. She was just 12 years old.
She said something was going on there: one guy was an
alcoholic, another guy was a child molester, somebody killed
themselves - it was just weird, okay? She was told in
one scene she had to peel back a banana in front of the
camera. She had to look up - you should see her do it. she
looks about 12 anyway - and she had to peel and eat the
banana. It was perverse." "That's where I can see their music coming
from", David explains. "It's very neurotic. They may
seem relaxed but it's coming from the inside. It seems like
when you're watching them you're watching their insides come
out in the sound."

Earlier the Muses had returned the compliment. Or pre-empted
it. "I worship them." Tanya had said. It had occurred to us
then that Tanya looks like an apprentice Bangle. Only much, much younger. "I always tend to worship people that I know which is probably a really sick thing to do. I worship Kim right now. Kim is my goddess. But I do tend to worship people that I meet. It's probably misplaced, I should try to put it where it belongs."

"But they are way the coolest," enthused Kristin, and, in spite of the press and because of the songs, we're still surprised about just how much she does
enthuse. "There's not a single person in the van we don't love
. . . in most ways. It's been hard playing after them because
I feel they get so much done when they play. It's like 'Oh,
what else do you need to say now?' I get kinda lax about going
up there. I have to kind of get into our set while I
remember why we're there too. Then again, if you have a bad
band go on before you, you just can't remember what music is
supposed to be. I love having that spark there already when
we go on. I never get bored with them, although they will
often do 'Gigantic' in the set, and then do it as an encore
and then the club will play it afterwards. We're going to
learn to play it too so we can do it as an encore and hum it
between songs." Dave Narcizo, the Muses' drummer and,
incidentally, one of only three intelligent drummers in music,
will talk about almost anything and was apoplectic when it
came to The Pixies. "Dave," patronised Kristin," says they
take a standard of rock and twist it into something obscene.
Say that Dave, that's good." Well, Dave? "Talk about dark
sexuality, Dave, dark sexuality from the heartland of
America." Dave? "Say 'Cement-ridden angst from Beantown',
Dave, say that we influenced them. Say that." Come on, Dave.
"The Pixies? Jerks." Jerks? No. Dave, wacky, that's what
they are. At least that's what we've been assured. We remain
unconvinced. They are funny, there is always that belly laugh
but . . . back to the present.

"Yeah, I think our songs are pretty funny," says Charles. "I
don't think so, Charlie", Kim disagrees. "It bothers me when
people go 'All this is a big joke'. I don't think it is." Dave
compromises by saying it's a "distasteful kind of humour". But
Kim's determined not to be seen as a clown. "But that's not
what controls it. Is that the first thing that stands out?
Because it's not for me. I don't want it to be. I don't mind
people thinking we're funny but that's not where it's coming
from." So, if The Pixies aren't funny, what are they? David
thinks they're confused and serious. Kim says they're boring.
Charles reckons they're bored, confused and unhappy. And Joey,
who will spend a good deal of the set laughing, says they're
horny. "I am fucking horny. Jesus, seeing the countryside
makes me horny. It doesn't make me funny".

This has us wondering whether Joey spent as much time enjoying
the services offered on those stickers so fashionable now in
West London phone boxes, as Kristin has done memorising them.
What, we'd asked her, had she liked about them. "The hookers'
messages in the phone boxes? They were great. 'Madame Pain,
pain for three hours'. That was great. 'Mizz Agony, I hurt
you, I hurt you, I hurt you till you die'. Yeah, I'll give her
a call. She sounds cute." Joey would never go in for that sort
of thing. He is, after all, Mister Pain. "I'd really like to
tie somebody up, tie her up and tickle her to the point of
death. Or until she begs, begs for it, starts crying 'Oh God,
I want it. Give it to me now!' That'd be fucking great, I'd
love to see that. You guys would too, if you'd admit it." We
admit it, but only under duress, only really to proffer Joey a
brief moment of company in what we hope is a desperately
lonely obsession. He's right. He's horny and it doesn't make
him funny.

It was 5:15pm and the Muses were reminiscing about schooldays.
"Me and Kristen both got kicked out of Brownies after a year,"
said Tanya. "Isn't that awful? I embezzled Brownie funds, I
stole cookie money. It was pure pressure though, it wasn't my
idea." "I wasn't thrown out for stealing," confessed Kristin,
"I was just a jerk. I had a bad attitude, I didn't have a
Brownie attitude." Tanya then regaled us with the sad tale of
a Brownie in exile wandering the streets after school,
searching in vain for a welcoming camp-fire. "I didn't want my
parents to find out I'd been kicked out of Brownies. I'd wear
my uniform to school and then walk around for two hours
afterwards. I was the Lone Brownie." Leslie's tale was sadder
still. "I could've been a Brownie, but I couldn't fit into any
of the Brownie dresses. I was so fat, I had six rolls of fat
so I couldn't be a Brownie. Later, when I slimmed down, I was
a pom-pom girl." Dave intervened. "I used to wear those little
socks with the tassles on them. And that little tie." It
seemed terribly unfair that Dave was allowed to join the
Brownies while Leslie had been . . . "That's the Boy Scouts,
assholes. I hated it. I hated everything about it. I hated
having to go camping, I hated having to earn merit badges. But
I didn't have the guts to quit, I just couldn't do it. Oh God,
the miserable, miserable camping trips where it'd be freezing
cold and raining and they'd stick you in a pup-tent with two
other people and it'd always be someone you hated. I had to
stay with one of those scout-masters' sons and he brought all
this junk food. And we were in this tiny tent and he threw all
this junk food out the door and we had 13 raccoons circling
our tent having these vicious fights. And this kid's screaming
for his father, screaming and screaming. It was cold and
raining and you smelled of smoke and you had to cook your own
food and wash up and walk all day and when you got back,
they'd call you a lazy bum and say you'd only joined the
Scouts for the trips. And I used to think 'If only you'd let
me not do this I would kiss you. I was a really wimpy kid,"
One look at Dave tells you he's cerebrally inclined. He's
really not built to be a Scout or, as we suggested rather
playfully, a burgeoning running-back in the High School
football team singlehandedly steamrolling the opposition.
"Nope. I was a pom-pom girl as well."

Seems reasonable. Throwing Muses aren't really a "jock" band.
They have a wonderful ability to frighten off dunderheads.
Leslie giggled: "We scared off a bunch of jocks once, at a
club called The Pelham in Newport." "Yeah, that's right,"
remembered Tanya, "as soon as we got on stage about six people
went 'Girls! The Go-Go's! The Bangles!' They got real close to
the stage and tried to look up our dresses. Then we started
playing and they went. Three songs into our set and everybody
had backed off. There was a big space in front of the stage
except for a few of our friends who hadn't noticed." What were
they afraid of - three giggling girls and a pom-pom boy? No. we
think they showed the sensitivity only dunderheads can - they
recognised the lunatic giant the Muses keep battened down so
well in interviews. And what they heard as they lumbered back
to their Buds were the knockings and batterings giants make
when they're let loose. The Muses are a very, very hard group.
In every sense of the word. . .

Kristen agreed, but couldn't really see the difficulty. "I
read about this woman who believed she had a hook in her head
that her husband used to use to drag her around. Now, he
thought she was crazy but that was her perception, and our
perception is our reality. That woman perceived a hook in her
head so she really had one. You have to go with the assumption
that there's a hook inside her head that needs to be treated
and I feel our songs are like that, they need to be treated,
they call for themselves to be seen in their own peculiar
light."

Like Charles says: "There you go, there you go right there.
The best rock music in the world is the stuff that's
introverted, it all has to do with the personality making it.
As soon as you start taking into account other personalities
you pan out, you're bland." And the most introverted music is
the noise that deals with pain, pain being the only thing that
really senses nothing but itself. Pleasure cannot enjoy itself
in the same way pain can because what it enjoys is something
beside itself.

It's 8:45pm, a quarter of an hour before the best gig of the
year, and Kim's handing us another Germanic lager. "What are
you guys talking about over there?" Charles looks up laughing.
"Heavy, heavy shit."

NOTE from Mark: I'd like to thank John Greene for forwarding this article to me...

Return to MarkWarehouse  |  Return to Muses Index