I know it doesn't fit in with what's happening in the charts, on the radio, in the typical, well-produced scene, but we love this whole live recording thing. And it seems appropriate for a band like us so stuck on the guitar, which by the way is a Spanish instrument that has been around since the early 1600's for those naysayers who are so quick to damn the guitar every time there is an innovation in automated music (hey, the metronome has been with us since the early 1800's). Personally, I think pop music grown out of a computer is a great advancement that brings more people to music, both artists and patrons. But is rock dead? Such a negative place from which to ask such a pointless question. Who knows how long music has been with us? That is a true mystery. -Frank Black
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Depending
on how you count, Pistolero is my 10th record (counting Pixies),
my 5th record (just counting solos), or my 2nd record as El Jefe
for the Catholics. It is the 2nd record that I have recorded live
to 2-track, which I am very proud of, perhaps too proud. I mean,
who cares how I recorded it? Either it's good or it stinks. For
those of you who want to write the bad, brief review, there you
are - you can say something like "Frank writes in his own bio
'either it's good or it stinks'. It stinks." I don't mean to
start off on such a seemingly defensive note; it was just a thought
that popped into my head. Of course, I'm very appreciative of most
reviews, even the bad ones, publicity being what it is. All right,
for those who think Pistolero merits a word or two let me
see what I can tell you about it.
It
was meant to be a larger production, but still recorded live to
2-track; we were going to bring in additional musicians to play
the parts that normally would have been overdubbed, and my old drummer
Nick Vincent (on Frank Black and Teenager Of The Year)
would be producing and acting as a kind of musical director for
all the different musicians, writing charts and arranging, and basically
being our Phil Spector; The Catholics would be the band at the core.
Well, I kind of fucked up that concept. It ended up just being the
core. I finished a batch of songs and got all excited. I called
up the band, who all live on the East Coast, and asked if they could
come out to L.A. in a few days. I overnighted them a hastily recorded
demo of all the songs, some of which they had never heard, and I
called Nick Vincent, who lives here in L.A. and begged him to get
together with me the very next morning to hear all my precious,
pretty little numbers that we were going to record the following
week sans orchestra.
The recording went smoothly, done during two sessions totalling
10 days, longer than Frank Black And The Catholics which
was a four-day session. The longer session allowed us to play the
new material over and over while the tape ran. About half the songs
were grown out of riffs and chord progressions that we'd been playing
around with for months or even years, so it wasn't all new material,
except to our new guitarist, Rich Gilbert (Ex-Human Sexual
Response, Ex-Zulus, Ex-Concussion Ensemble), who had only just started
playing with us. But the situation suited Rich just fine. He is
a wild, spontaneous player, who Scott Boutier (drums), Dave
McCaffrey (bass) and I had been admiring for years. Nick Vincent
managed to squeeze in some great intuitive thought and extremely
subtle direction and knew instantly which of the many takes we did
should be on the record; so the sessions simply consisted of us
playing, Billy Bowers recording, and Nick Vincent cracking the whip
- no video gaming going on at a Catholics session
