Pixies
Complete ‘B’ Sides
2001, 4AD
I have a special respect for bands who put out good B-sides.
In fact, some days (every other Tuesday and the odd Sunday) I’d even say that the mark of a great band is the coolness of their throwaway tracks. The stuff that didn’t make the album. The stuff that they have laying around. The stuff that they cough up when the record company needs them to simply fill up some space.
B-sides are one of those fascinating aberrations of the old music industry. Ever since records started being pressed and sold, they’ve had two sides and even if one side was a surefire hit, you had to put something, anything, on the other side or you looked like an asshole. B-sides were space-fillers, but they were also sometimes a way to “share the wealth”.
For example, let’s say it’s 1961 and a group records a great song that the radio is sure to love. What about the B-side? Well, in many cases, the producer would hack out a goofy instrumental that nobody would ever care about (sometimes not even involving the A-side’s performers). The result was that if the A-side became a hit and sold a bajillion copies, the credited writer of the B-side benefited from that, too. in terms of royalties. They got a free ride into some big money. (See the likes of Phil Spector and Kazenetz-Katz, who were particularly brazen about it.)
That’s the seedy side of it all, but there are other sides. Like any good record, there’s always another side.
Over time, the B-side became embraced as a fun place where anything can happen. 12″ singles and eventually CD singles made them even cooler because bands could (and did) cram a lot more onto them. You might get original songs, covers, stand-out live tracks, goof-offs, alternate versions, remixes or whatever you can imagine that fits into the space. Record dorks love that stuff. I love that stuff. B-sides are lifeblood.
But the B-side is in danger in the digital world. It might be going away.
Take the Pixies. I write this in June 2022 and they put out a new song just a few months ago called “Human Crime“. It’s on the streaming services and YouTube. It’s NOT on their forthcoming album. It’s a standalone thing. It’s no mind-blower, but it’s decent. It’s a Frank Black song, which is all that new Pixies is to me. Not everyone is into it. Some people analyze the production and think it’s got too much high fructose corn syrup. Or they hold it up next to old Pixies and lament that it’s not 1989 anymore. I don’t relate, but all of that discussion is fine with me. Everybody needs a hobby.
My big problem with “Human Crime” is something that no one talks about and that’s NO B-SIDE. Streaming songs don’t need them. Streaming songs don’t have sides so they don’t bother, but I miss them.
I’m old is what I’m trying to say.
Also, “Human Crime” will likely get a physical release in time and they’ll slap some unreleased thing on the flip. Maybe it will come out on Record Store Day one of these years.
But it will be too little, too late for creeps like me.
I guess we’re going away, too, though.
What I’m building up to is that the Pixies B-side collection is good stuff. I think of it as Volume 3 of 4AD’s Pixies Throwback Series that started in 1997 with Death to the Pixies and continued in 1998 with Pixies at the BBC and then in 2001 this arrived.
I also think of it as a Pixies record full of songs that I didn’t overplay back in the day. It’s still weird and fun and I can still put it on and it doesn’t sound like wallpaper.
Let us count its blessings.
Live standouts
That’s how this party starts with a three-song battering ram of live stuff from the 1988 “Gigantic” single. “River Euphrates” and “Vamos” kick up a mighty squall and then the cover of “In Heaven” (also live) from Eraserhead comes in to take us to an even weirder place.
Covers
The covers here are a blast. In addition to “In Heaven”, we also get TWO Neil Young songs. The Francis-sung “Winterlong” is clearly a cover because the Pixies back then didn’t do straightforward love songs like that, but the Kim Deal-sung “I’ve Been Waiting For You” might fool someone with its swagger. “Theme From Narc” is a surf-punk take on a piece of video game music. I’ve never played the old 80s game “Narc”, but Black Francis did, I guess, and heard rock ‘n’ roll in the sounds that issued from it. Lastly, “Evil Hearted You” goes back to 1965, when the Yardbirds were hot on the British scene. The Pixies cover one of their highlights (written by Graham Gouldman), except that Francis sings the words in Spanish. Works for me. Also, it’s a great performance overall with Joey Santiago really owning the main riff.
Great originals
The best Pixies B-side ever is “Into the White”. I’m confident in that statement. Black Francis wrote it, Kim Deal sang it, and it’s a perfect artifact of what the band were about in 1989. It’s not a complicated song, but it’s got a sexy swing that sounds uniquely Pixies. There’s a reason why it became a live staple in the group’s original run. The whole gallery of Doolittle-era B-sides holds up as evidence of how hot the band were creatively at the time. My sleeper favorite: “Dancing the Manta Ray”, a mean and minimalist homage to old 60s “dance sensation” songs.
Alternate versions
The “UK Surf” take on “Wave of Mutilation” is the BEST version, but it’s too slow and dreamy to fit on Doolittle. The album needs the fast arrangement, so I’m glad this alternate take came out somewhere. Yay, B-sides!
Goof-offs
There are several songs here that could qualify for that, but I want to zero in on “Make Believe” from 1990. It’s a smirking tribute to then-huge teen pop star Debbie Gibson, written (probably in five minutes) by Francis and sung by drummer Dave Lovering. It’s silly and weightless and it rocks. It’s one of those songs that a great band can pull out of their ass when necessary. Sleeper fave: “Velvety (Instrumental Version)”. It’s called “Velvety” because it sounds like The Velvet Underground. And it’s tagged as the “instrumental version” because it’s an instrumental. However, there was no vocal version. The band titled it that way to confuse people, which I respect. Perhaps reminded of the track by this collection though, Frank Black would soon remake it with Frank Black & Catholics, with vocals this time, for their 2002 album Devil’s Workshop.
Remixes
Okay, I’m REALLY reaching with this one, but “The Thing” is at least a rearrangement of elements of “The Happening” from Bossanova, centered on its memorable bridge (“I was driving doing nothing on the shores of Great Salt Lake…”). It’s an odd thing to put out, but B-sides are the place to be odd.
In conclusion, we need to SAVE THE B-SIDE. It doesn’t deserve to go away. We need the weirdness. We need the throwaways and covers and alternate versions. Maybe digital releases don’t have a space to fill with stuff like that, but our hearts and minds do, I say!
When I run for President soon, this will be a major part of my platform.