Product Description

When college rock darlings the Pixies broke up in 1992, their fans were shocked and dismayed. When they reunited in 2004, those same fans and legions of new listeners were ecstatic and filled with high hopes. loudQUIETloud follows the rehearsals and the

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27932 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-11-07
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 85 minutes

Amazon.com
The Pixies' 2004 reunion was the biggest thing that's happened in alternative rock since Nirvana, and filmmakers Steven Cantor and Matthew Galkin were there with their cameras, trailing the genre's progenitors across North America and Europe as they reclaimed their legacy. Besides beautifully shot concert footage featuring all or part of 15 songs, we get a view inside the Pixies' heads. All four were managing complex personal issues when they reunited. We see frontman Frank Black (a.k.a. Black Francis) dealing with a bump in his solo career, bassist Kim Deal juggling sobriety and creating new Breeders songs, guitarist Joey Santiago grappling with parenthood and financial issues, and drummer David Lovering rescued from his post-Pixes life as a struggling magician. They make no secret that they're doing it for the money, but learn along this tour of the world's stages and their psyches that there's a magic in their knotty, raw music that has the power to sustain their audiences and--for a time, at least--themselves. There's bonus footage of the movie's leftovers, but little of it's interesting except for the band's visit to modern psychedelicists Sigur Ros's Iceland studio. Über-producer/guitarist Daniel Lanois provides the film's beautiful, glacially paced incidental music. --Ted Drozdowski

Customer Reviews

A Beautiful Wreck
This documentary follows the Pixies 2004 reunion tour. The band members admit the motive for the reunion was money -- all four were having a hard time financially. It pulls no punches or makes any attempts at sugarcoating their faults or problems. We see all four as they are.

Charles Thompson(aka Black Francis, Frank Black) is now morbidly obese. His post-Pixies solo career fizzled out quickly. After being divorced and remarrying, he needs the cash to support a new wife and kids.

Kim Deal's solo career started out quite promising, but soon sputtered out in a haze of drug and alcohol abuse. After a divorce and rehab, she ends up living back at home with her mother and father. Stunningly beautiful as a young woman, she is now prematurely aged after years of abusing drugs/alcohol/tobacco.

David Lovering doesn't seem to have had any success with a solo career at all. Never married, he receives news of the Pixies reunion just after he loses his house through foreclosure. During the tour he struggles emotionally with the death of his father.

Joe Santiago also struggled with his post-Pixies career. Newly married, and with young children, he needs the cash to raise his family. Joe also seems to be the most emotionally stable and humble of the group. He also seems to be the glue that holds the rest of the band together.

So what's the music like after 12 years? It's still magical. Thompson's voice is no longer what it was, and he seems to have slowed down a bit. Deal has lost much of the angelic quality her voice had in younger years, and many times she sounds out of breath. Despite the faults, they still manage to generate the same electricity on stage that they did years ago. The audiences loved it, as did I.

Back stage, the old rivalries and animosity that split them apart years ago are still present. They seem to just barely tolerate each other. A true reconciliation eludes them.

This is a fantastic documentary for Pixies fans, but will probably not hold the interest of people who are not familiar with their music. If you are not familiar with this band, I recommend that you listen to some of their CDs first. Surfer Rosa and Doolittle are their best. If you like what you hear, come back to the documentary.

All in all, it was quite honest and candid, fascinating and sad in equal measures. Vastly different personalities who can create hauntingly beautiful music on stage, yet fail to make any meaningful connections with one another in real life.

The Pixies: A Beautiful Wreck.

get to know the pixies
a candid documentary following the greatest band to ever rock. more concerned with honest footage than just looking cool, see the pixies for the people they are, flaws and all, and love them all the more for overcoming all that to reunite and rock the world all over again. hail to the PIXIES!

Wow. If You Didn't Know the Pixies You Will After This
First it should be made clear that this is NOT the concert movie. The concert shots are short and more "inserts" than full-blown songs.

I figured that I'd get a look at what the Pixies were really like personally watching this movie but I was blown away by how much you learn about them: about Frank's new family, Joey's current family, Kim's realtionship with her sister and the fans that worship her and David's near brush with substance absuse which captures one of the most bizarre moments in the whole film--their Chicago appearance where he's lost.

Other fascinating things about this film are the way fans (old AND new, which is amazing) worship them, about how they can all sit in a room and not speak, the Chicago fan who starts her own Pixies cover band. The first warmup gig is a gas to watch too.

If you're a Pixies fan this is a MUST HAVE and essential viewing. Absolutely no two ways about it. Even if you're a casual fan (I am), I was riveted to the film the whole time--it stands on its own whether you like their music or not. It's vaguely reminiscent of the Radiohead film following them around on tour.

The other fascinating aspect to it is to see what had become of the lives of former indie-rock superstars in the years since. While that is kind of depressing, the most uplifting thing about the film is how many TEENAGE fans the Pixies have currently, which is nothing short of astounding. Their music has jumped a generation, which is rare.

Best band documentary I've seen since the Radiohead one, and overall. This is how to do them. Five stars.