I saw the one and only Frank Black (aka Black Francis aka Charles Thompson) tonight at the Catalyst at a 'sit-down show'. I really had no expectations for who would be up on stage (people from the new 'solo' group, or some of the Catholics, or...Joey?), or what set he would play (old solo work, Catholics, new solo work, Pixies?). But I was still surprised when he came out alone, with his acoustic guitar, and amped up.
This was, for me, the 'dream' concert... where I could sit up close, kick up my feet (literally), and listen to the man casually play whatever struck his fancy. And it was positively amazing.
It reminded me of one of his live sets recorded in London at the end of the Pixies phase and on the cusp of his solo career, back in '94 I believe. He had played through a huge portion of the Pixies songs with no accompaniment besides his acoustic guitar and shouted requests from fans. I think the only one he didn't play on that recording, regretfully, was 'Hey'. So it felt appropriate that he would be putting on similar performances on the verge of his new post-Catholics solo phase.
When he opened the set with 'Los Angeles', closed it a bit goofily, blaming the wine he was sipping (possibly Châteauneuf-du-Pape?) for his brother's 40th birthday, and moved on to 'Brackish Boy', then 'Holiday Song', I knew I was in for a ride.
No album or song was off-limits, although he did refuse to play 'St. Francis' on the grounds that it had "too many words". It was hard to gauge whether he was being theatrical, casually lazy and intimate, cool & distant, half-drunk, or some mishmash of all of these... but I didn't care. He was Frank (or, um, Charles).
He joked a few songs into the set that nearly every one of his songs ends in a minor chord, and warned any who "might be sensitive" to this. It became a running gag throughout the performance, and he would occasionally play alternate ending chords to 'prove' his assertion, then switch back. He also made an rather obscure joke about his adaptation of the 'Shrimp Song' from the Elvis Presley movie Girls! Girls! Girls!, before playing it.
He went on for a good 45-50 minutes with next to no pauses between songs, phasing from something like 'I Will Be Blue' into 'Wave of Mutilation' without missing a beat. He did throw out a few more Pixies crowd-pleasers, including 'Where Is My Mind', 'Nimrod Song', and 'Cactus, but mostly stuck to his semi-recent Catholics and solo work. I didn't recognize a few of his fresher songs since I don't own Honeycomb or Fast Man Raider Man yet... but probably will in the next month or so.
Highlights for me:
- a disturbing a capella of 'Six-Sixty-Six' (forcing people to really swallow those bizarre apocalyptic Larry Norman lyrics and STFU). I always loved Charles for covering this since I shared a rather similar musical "upbrigning" to his and actually heard quite a bit of Larry's stuff when I was a kid.
- 'Bullet' (my absolute favorite FB & the Catholics song)...
- All My Ghosts', the first track from his first Catholics album, which brought back all the memories of playing this for the first time after the long hiatus between Cult of Ray and this new incarnation... back when I was moving from NYC back to California, but flying back to NY on occasion to work in Brooklyn. The song carries a lot of idiosyncratic heft for me.
- a solo acoustic rendition of 'Two Reelers'; something I never thought he'd play with such a setup
- a chilling screamed chorus on the aforementioned 'Wave of Mutilation'
- jaw-dropping falsettos on 'Massif Central' (better than the ones on the album)
- a weird, slowed version of 'Headache' in a different key
He played two closing songs after the standing ovation:
'Cactus', which was a favorite in my college days, especially when Zak was away in NYC.
His final closing was 'Manitoba', the "oh dear god, give us more of this, Frank" closing track from Show Me Your Tears. I think this blew the pre-Catholics and Pixies fans away as the crowd was much quieter than with the first set closer. People were still milling around the stage in disbelief after he left... a few begging for the guitar pick he left on the floor.
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Full set list (glad someone wrote this down and posted it at FB.net):
Los Angeles
Brackish Boy
Holiday Song
Raider Man
California Bound
Humboldt County Massacre
Bullet
The Shrimp Song
Fitzgerald
The Swimmer
Headache
Where Is My Mind?
Sing For Joy
Six Sixty-Six
Horrible Day
I Burn Today
Massif Centrale
Living on Soul
All My Ghosts
Dead Man's Curve
Nimrod's Son
The Water Song
Two Reelers
I'll Be blue
Wave of Mutilation
encore:
Cactus
Manitoba
