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Originally posted by Brain Stew
:I guess since Kim Deal isn't really doing anything these days she may have cooled down her prima donna attitude and decided to work with Frank Black.

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Originally posted by Gunshy
I don't hold out much hope for this, not that it won't happen but, like grunter suggested, that it would be a Good Thing. Anyone have an example of a band re-uniting many years after a break-up and haitus, touring, making a new album, and coming up all roses?

-Gunshy

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Originally posted by Gunshy
Anyone have an example of a band re-uniting many years after a break-up and haitus, touring, making a new album, and coming up all roses?

-Gunshy

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Originally posted by Hiro11
There were tons of other bands around at that time or slightly earlier that never got the amount of press the Pixies got and were just as good if not better (Husker Du springs to mind).

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Originally posted by Meatpants
I find it amazing that people bemoan the death of the Pixies, but refuse to even give Frank Black's solo career a chance. IMO, the 9 albums he's produced post-Pixies blows away the Pixies stuff.

It'd be one thing if the public/critics listened to his music and thumbed their noses at it - it's mindboggling that no one even considers it. :(

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Originally posted by cdollaz
I have heard most of his solo albums and am usually underwhelmed. Teenager Of The Year is awesome, but other than that one, I can't really get into the stuff. Black Letter Days is OK.

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Originally posted by Kaiser Soze
The Descendents got back together in 1996. That album was great, and they were great on tour too. Of course, they haven't released an album since, but that's the first one that came to my mind.

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A decade after a bitter breakup, seminal alternative rock act the Pixies may reunite next year. At deadline, rumors of a tour and a potential new studio album remain unconfirmed. The group's manager tells Billboard.com, "I have received an offer for the Pixies to perform in April. That said, over the past 10 years, I have received dozens of offers for the Pixies." A spokesperson for the group's former label, 4AD, had no comment on potential reunion plans.

The group's last major tour came while supporting U2 on a number of U.S. dates on the 1992 Zoo TV trek. Goldenvoice Promotions head Paul Tollett tells Billboard.com he has tried to book the Pixies "every year" for the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, Calif. "I still haven't made any movement," he reports. "[I'm] not sure if they are speaking to each other."

The Pixies -- vocalist/guitarist Black Francis, vocalist/bassist Kim Deal, lead guitarist Joey Santiago and drummer David Lovering -- released four albums and an EP over the course of five years in the late '80s/early '90s, providing a blueprint for the alternative rock boom that dominated the latter decade.

In 1993, two years after the release of the group's final album, "Trompe Le Monde" (4AD/Elektra), Francis (real name: Charles Thompson) sent a press release to the media announcing the breakup of the Pixies. He went on to forge a solo career, now nine albums strong, as Frank Black. Deal found post-Pixies success with the Breeders, whose 1994 album "Last Splash" (4AD/Elektra) peaked at No. 33 on The Billboard 200 in 1994 and has sold 978,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Black has been incorporating Pixies songs into live performances with his band the Catholics with increasing regularity over the past few years. Songs like "Where Is My Mind?," "Mr. Grieves," "Crackity Jones," "Nimrod's Son," "Holiday Song" and "Gouge Away" have all surfaced in recent setlists, and a version of the latter recorded in April in Regina, Saskatchewan, appears on a new Frank Black & the Catholics EP, "Nadine," licensed this week by spinART exclusively to a number of independent U.S. retailers.

In July, Black told London radio station XFM that he still fantasized about reuniting his old band. "I do dream about the Pixies reunion, I do have to say," he said. "It's like those schoolboy dreams when you don't do your homework and you don't study for the test, but I'm at the gig and we're hanging out, but it's an utter failure and I don't know the songs, and hardly anyone turns up for the gig and people walk out. That's what I'm afraid of, that it'd be a big, big failure."

He added: "We might. We do get together and have private jams together, but not for public consumption."

During the Pixies' career, the group never made a huge commercial dent (their top-selling album is 1989's "Doolitte" at 552,000 copies). But its impact on critics and fans was far reaching. A handful of collections of Pixies material have surfaced during the band's hiatus, including the 1997 Elektra double-CD set "Death to the Pixies," which featured favorites and live compilation discs. Last year, spinART Records released "Pixies," a collection of unreleased songs from the band's original 1987 demo tape.


-- Troy Carpenter and Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.

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Originally posted by ctyner
They're putting out an album on Fat Wreck next year.

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Originally posted by Kaiser Soze
Really!?!?

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Milo goes to Fat!

The Descendents? Yeah, I heard of 'em. Hopefully you have too cuz we're putting out their new record in March '04! This not only means that the Descendents are now on Fat, more importantly, there's a brand new Descendents album on the way! Seriously, we're all huge fans of this band (as they are one of THE most important punk bands of all time) and we can't even begin to express how excited we are to work with these guys. Oh, and we've heard a couple of these new songs and it is very safe to say that Descendents fans will be pleased with this upcoming record. That, folks, is our way of saying that these new songs rule! Enough of the love fest, have a look at their official site for more info on this glorious band:

http://www.allcentral.com/html/descendents_fr.html

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Originally posted by ctyner
Yup. From FatWreck.com:



An EP is coming in January, btw.

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Pixies Back After 12-Year Hiatus

Wed Aug 11, 3:09 PM ET

By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Writer

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com...s__nyet394.jpg





TOKYO - The Pixies, pioneers of alternative rock in the 1990s, are back after a 12-year hiatus and riding a whole new wave of success. But according to lead singer Charles Thompson, they'll be doing one thing differently this time around — they won't be rushing to find a label.


"Record companies, schmecord companies," Thompson said. "Who needs 'em?"


Reflecting the changes in an industry trying to keep pace with fast-evolving technologies and the fickle tastes of the fans, the Pixies' much-awaited reunion is taking place not in a studio but at small live houses and multiband extravaganzas from Winnipeg, Canada to Ljubljana, Slovenia.


And instead of working up new material, they are focusing on selling tickets, T-shirts and CDs mass-produced on site at the venues.


"The record business is really bad right now," Thompson, aka Black Francis, said in an interview with The Associated Press after performing recently at the Fuji Rock Festival. "That's not where the money is. The business is with the real customers, the fans. They're the ones who say, `OK, we'll come and see you perform. That's who we're trying to connect with."


So far, the Pixies seem to be connecting pretty well.


Their first 13 reunion shows this spring sold out quickly and their 18-country tour of the United Kingdom and Europe was well received by the fans and critics. On Sept. 4, the four-member band — Thompson, bassist Kim Deal (news), guitarist Joey Santiago and drummer David Lovering — will embark on a three-month tour of the United States and Canada.


As part of their new approach, live CD recordings have been produced at the performances, and most have been briskly snapped up by the fans.


"It's a revenue stream," Thompson said. "I'm not saying we could sell lots of records if we sold them out of our garage or the Internet, but you know what? We might. It's a crazy time."


While the band hasn't been completely averse to recording, they are doing it on their own terms.


Called "Bam Thwok," their first new song in 13 years was arranged and rehearsed at Santiago's home studio and recorded in March at Stagg Street Studios in Los Angeles. Instead of going with a more traditional label, they opted to make the song available on Apple's iTunes Music Store. Price: 99 cents a pop.


"I never really was much of a believer in the album anyway," Thompson said. "Singles are what people relate to."


But Thompson said making more studio records — singles or albums — isn't what the Pixies have in mind, at least for the time being.


"In terms of getting a relationship with a company going, we don't have any need, because we don't have anything for them to sell," he said. "If and when we do have something, we're probably going to proceed a little cautiously. They're all trying to figure out what they're next move is. Between the Internet and record stores going out of business, it just seems better to stay away until things settle down a bit."


Though the woes of the record companies — their fight against Internet piracy, plunging sales, hard-to-predict trends — are well known, Thompson says that, from the performers' perspective, the changes in the industry aren't all bad.


"At the end of the day, the record company always needs content. They need artists. Right now, they need artists more than we need them," he said. "We're in a situation where we don't have to make records anymore to be asked to go into a studio and make music. Because of all the cross-marketing that goes on these days, it's like everyone's getting called to make songs for a movie, or for a web site, or a commercial."


Thompson helped found the Pixies in 1986, when he and Santiago dropped out of college in Boston. Melding an eclectic mix of musical styles, they released their first album, "Surfer Rosa," two years later. Before breaking up in 1992, they were widely acclaimed for opening up the alternative music genre and paving the way for such bands as Nirvana and Pearl Jam.


Artistically, Thompson says the Pixies are still regenerating.

Their first round of shows were called "warm-up dates," and reserved for smaller, lower-profile venues because, Thompson said, he just wanted to make sure that they could still put on a credible tour.

"That's why we picked the far corner of the Earth to try it out — Canada," he joked.

But he said that, despite some rough spots during their live performances, closing the gap after more than a decade has been easier than he expected.

"As a band, our reunion has been remarkably uneventful," Thompson said. "There was some awkwardness in the first rehearsals. But once you're over that, we're all the same. The same personalities. Maybe now we play better."

He said he has no idea what will happen to the Pixies down the road.

"We don't have any vision or plan," he said. "We didn't have any vision or plan the first time around. You may think three, six months, maybe a year ahead. But you don't plan it all out."

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