Fool the World - The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies

Josh Frank, Caryn Ganz

Summary

It's the 1980s and the rock landscape is littered with massive hair, synthesizers, and monster riffs, but there is an alternative being born in the sleepy East of America-we just don't know it yet.Before the Internet, MTV, and iPods provided far-off music fans with information and communities-and before Nirvana-kids across the world grew up in relative isolation, dependent on mix tapes and self-created art to slowly spread scenes and trends. It was under these conditions that four young musicians found one another in Boston, Massachusetts, and started a band called Pixies.During their initial seven-year career, Pixies would play some of Europe's most gigantic festivals, keep the press guessing, and cultivate a fervid international fan base hungry for more and more of their unique surf punk. The band worked fast, cranking out four albums at a breakneck pace, but ultimately pressures and personality clashes took their toll: Pixies broke up just as bands were singing their praises as the rock'n'roll innovators. For twelve years, a Pixies reunion seemed impossible, but a sudden announcement in 2004 proclaimed the unthinkable-Pixies were getting back together. Their extremely successful reunion tour finally gave the group something they'd always lacked in their homeland: proof that their bone-rattling music had left an indelible impact. Fool the World tells Pixies' story in the words of those who lived it, from the band members to studio owners, from A&R executives, producers, and visual artists who worked with them to admirers of their music, such as Bono, PJ Harvey, Beck, and Perry Farrell. With new cartoons by Trompe Le Monde illustrator Steven Appleby, Fool the World is a complete journey through the life, death, and rebirth of one of the most influential bands of all time.

Available since: 04/01/2007.

Print length: 356 pages.

Other books that might interest you

Running with Scissors - A Memoir

Augusten Burroughs

The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir from Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors, now a Major Motion Picture!Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead-ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age twelve, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in perfect squalor. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard shed completed the tableau. Here, there were no rules, there was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer, and Valium was eaten like Pez. And when things got dull, there was always the vintage electroshock therapy machine under the stairs....Running with Scissors is at turns foul and harrowing, compelling and maniacally funny. But above all, it chronicles an ordinary boy's survival under the most extraordinary circumstances.

Show book

Why I Still Believe - A Former...

Mary Jo Sharp

For anyone who feels caught in the tension between the beauty of God's story and the ugliness of human hypocrisy, Why I Still Believe offers a stirring story of hope.
Why would anyone be a Christian when there is so much hypocrisy in the church? Mary Jo Sharp shares her journey as a skeptical believer who still holds to a beautiful faith despite wounding experiences in the Christian community.
At a time when de-conversion stories have become all too common, this is an earnest response - the compelling conversion of an unlikely believer whose questions ultimately led her to irresistible hope. Sharp addresses her own struggle with the reality that God's people repeatedly give God's story a bad name and takes a careful look at how the current church often inadvertently produces atheists despite its life-giving message.
For those who feel the ever-present tension between the beauty of salvation and the dark side of human nature, Why I Still Believe is a candid and approachable case for believing in God when you really want to walk away. With fresh and thoughtful insights, this spiritual narrative presents relevant answers to haunting questions like:Isn't there too much pain and suffering to believe?Is it okay to have doubt?What if Jesus' story is a copy of another story?Is there any evidence for Jesus' resurrection?Does atheism explain the human experience better than Christianity can? How can the truth of Christianity matter when the behaviors of Christians are reprehensible?
At once logical and loving, Sharp reframes the gospel as it truly is: the good news of redemption. With firmly grounded truths, Why I Still Believe is an affirming reminder that the hypocrisy of Christians can never negate the transforming grace and truth of Christ.
Further resources and discussion questions are available in the audiobook companion PDF download.

Show book

Pope Francis Among the Wolves -...

Marco Politi

A behind-the-scenes view of the power struggles within the Vatican and “a look inside the byzantine halls of the institutional Catholic Church.”—Publishers Weekly   A journalist who has long covered the Vatican, Marco Politi takes us deep inside the struggle roiling the Roman Curia and the Catholic Church worldwide, beginning with Benedict XVI, the pope who famously resigned in 2013, and intensifying with the unexpected election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, now known as Pope Francis. Politi’s account balances the perspectives of Pope Francis’s supporters, Benedict’s sympathizers, and those disappointed members of the laity who feel alienated by the institution’s secrecy, financial corruption, and refusal to modernize. Politi dramatically recounts the sexual scandals that have rocked the church and the accusations of money laundering and other financial misdeeds swirling around the Vatican and the Italian Catholic establishment, and how Pope Francis’s attempts to address these crimes has been met with resistance from entrenched factions. He writes of the decline in church attendance and vocations to the priesthood as the church continues to prohibit divorced and remarried Catholics from receiving Communion. He visits European parishes where women perform the functions of missing male priests—and where the remaining parishioners would welcome the ordination of women, if the church would allow it. Pope Francis’s emphasis on pastoral compassion for all who struggle with the burden of family life has also provoked the ire of traditionalists. He knows from experience what life is like for the poor in South America and elsewhere, and highlights the contrast between the vital, vibrant faith of these parishioners and the disillusionment of European Catholics. As Pope Francis and his supporters are locked in battle with the defenders of the traditional hard line and with ecclesiastical corruption, the future of Catholicism is at stake—and it is far from certain Francis will succeed in saving the institution from decline.

Show book

Landing at the Top - How...

David Jackson

David Jackson is proof positive that hard work, persistence, and belief in yourself can help you fulfill your most desired goals and dreams no matter what obstacles are thrown in your way. If ever there was a testament to perseverance and hard work, Landing at the Top is it.

Show book

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs...

Mary Seacole

I should have thought that no preface would have been required to introduce Mrs. Seacole to the British public, or to recommend a book which must, from the circumstances in which the subject of it was placed, be unique in literature. If singleness of heart, true charity, and Christian works; if trials and sufferings, dangers and perils, encountered boldly by a helpless woman on her errand of mercy in the camp and in the battle-field, can excite sympathy or move curiosity, Mary Seacole will have many friends and many readers. She is no Anna Comnena, who presents us with a verbose history, but a plain truth-speaking woman, who has lived an adventurous life amid scenes which have never yet found a historian among the actors on the stage where they passed. I have witnessed her devotion and her courage; I have already borne testimony to her services to all who needed them. She is the first who has redeemed the name of “sutler” from the suspicion of worthlessness, mercenary baseness, and plunder; and I trust that England will not forget one who nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them, and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead. (Summary from the Preface by W. H. Russell)

Show book

It Calls You Back - An Odyssey...

Luis J. Rodriguez

Growing up on the streets of East L.A., Luis Rodriguez narrowly escaped a serious jail term and then struggled to overcome his powerful addiction to heroin and alcohol. Eventually, Rodriguez embarked on a career as a successful journalist and a highly regarded poet. In It Calls You Back, Rodriguez describes with heartbreaking honesty his challenges as a husband and a father and his difficulty leaving his criminal past completely behind. Most disturbing is the terrifying realization that he cannot save his own son from the deadly lure of gang life. Luis's emotional journey offers deep insight into barrio life and the embattled souls of those heroic men and women who risk everything to make it out - and return to help those left behind.

Show book