Pretention, Thy Name is Frank

Went and saw former Pixies frontman Frank Black perform at the WOW Hall on Friday. His band goes by the name Black Francis. Yep. He lives in Eugene now. A fact that I was supposed to wet my pants about.

I swear to the Lord that he said that he had just flown in from Helsinki and he was burnt from the trip. His voice was fried. I gave him a lot of slack for this, although I wondered about scheduling a gig right after such a trip, but actually admired the "fuck it, I'll do it for the new hometown" ethos he was laying down. 'Course some of the shine was knocked off this when it was mentioned that he's lived here for three years. All shine is gone after visiting his website and seeing that he's had gigs in Portland and their Couve in the week before he played Eugene. What the fuck was that about Helsinki?

He played a few Pixies songs solo. Nice touch. Then the band came out and the "rocking" began.

You know, I have a kind of "dancing" style that involves me standing still. If the song is really rocking, you might see my head nod back and forth with some modified front to back body rocking. Too old and fat for the pit, this is all you will get out of me. I honestly cannot understand people who are going nuts bouncing up and down, side to side, and generally freaking out to a soft rock song. And soft rocking was all we were doing, save one song.

So Frank informs us that his new album is based on the life of Dutch artist...well I didn't catch the name. Internet research shows that he was referring to Herman Brood. Now it is obvious that Frank dwells in the 12th Realm of Hipsterdom where Brood is practically a saint (I guess). I dwell in the level where references to "Dutch artists" transport me to the 17th-century world of Rembrandt and Vermeer. My mind touched briefly on Van Gogh and then, naturally, on Don McLean's awesome "Starry Night" and then on NOFX's kick-ass cover. No such ass-kicking was to follow.

Between songs would tell us which parts of Brood's life inspired the next song. Of course, Frank was operating under the impression that we already had a firm grasp of the details and his mere references would allow us to follow along. It was during one of these interludes that I/we learned that Brood was not a 17th-century painter, but rather an 1970's rocker. While the lyrics to the songs were unintelligible, it was slightly disturbing to find that my canal-laden visions of lower-class painters living in an upper-class world needed to be replaced with the glory that was 1970s Holland. Of course my pop-culture addled mind immediately raced to Austin Power's Goldmember and jokes about the freaky-deeky Dutch.

Anyway, the place was hotter than hell and I really didn't care about Herman Brood. When Black tried to tell us that Brood had "redeemed" the Amsterdam Hilton by jumping off it's roof to his death, I was completely done with him. Suicide was cool and the hotel needed to be redeemed because it was the site of John and Yoko's "Bed in." Ironically, it was about this time that his wife joined him on stage for some Onoesque background singing.

He got a little schtick from the audience for going on about how cool it was that Brood had jumped off the Hilton to commit suicide. Frank was taken aback. For just a moment I could tell he was thinking of walking off the stage in one of those "how dare they" moments. He stuck with the show, but as the room grew hotter and people starting shouting more "who the fuck cares about this"-type comments during his interludes, he grew more pissy.

My ability to go with the flow was ended with the anecdote about Brood's lover Nina Hagen. I still haven't figured out why her name drew a cheer from the audience. A case of mistaken identity? Anyway the song Black was about to play was inspired by her, or as Black put it, "This next song is inspired by Nina Hagen, Brood's lover. It's not about her. I thought about writing a song about her, but just couldn't. But I certainly thought a lot about her while writing this album." Or something to that effect. That was about all I could take.

Black ended the show by playing one of Brood's songs, "You Can't Break a Heart and Have It." Wouldn't you know it, it was the most rocking song of the whole freaking show. I wasn't the only one who thought this, as the whole crowd was into it. I couldn't help but wonder if the whole thing might not have gone off better if Black had just chosen to play some of Brood's songs and leave it at that.

No encore for us. We certainly had not earned it.