Well, the tour is lucrative, for one reason. Your band changed music. You changed music.

I don't know about that. [Mockingly] Kurt Cobain liked us. Nothing against him -- that's great that he liked us -- but we're a quirky band and a bunch of people liked us. I don't know that we really changed anything. I was telling my friend about this. The Pixies came out at a time when heavy metal was pretty big, and that was just at the more banal end of the spectrum. And then there were all these Eastern Seaboard-based college rock bands, which we were part of, I guess. So we were in contrast to the mainstream, and now people are saying, "Frank, you spawned a whole new generation of alternative rock music." And I'm thinking, what alternative rock music? You mean that masculine new heavy metal -- and I got nothing against heavy metal, mind you -- that's just a more macho upgrade of the glossy, hairspray, effeminate heavy metal that was in the mainstream when we were coming out? I don't know, man. Maybe I'm just getting old, but mainstream music now seems so much more soulless than it was back in the '80s.

It's almost cyclical. Metal became nu-metal, the boy bands became Britney Spears, and now that you guys are reappearing at this déjà vu period in time, it seems you're helping -- along with other bands -- push that cycle hopefully forward again.

[Total silence]

OK, you're not accepting that. Let's change gears.

No, I do accept it, but how could I have a response to that? "Yes I am?" What am I supposed to say? What's there to say? There isn't anything to say. If that's what we did, then so be it. It's out of my hands. We just go into a room, plug in a bunch of amps and come up with a repertoire. That's how it is. In the arena of entertainment, we are trying to have fun and be entertaining via this thing called rock music, popular music or whatever. And that's it.

I think there are probably not enough people making music that allows their personalities to be what they are, to be there as part of the art. Which is necessary, I think, for cool music. It doesn't matter what kind of music it is; it has nothing do to with that. It's really about saying, "Hey, I have a personality and I'm not going to keep it hidden." Too many people are trying too hard to be something that they're not, and no one really believes it. And that's always the problem with something that's very good: People are usually like, "I don't buy this. They think they know what I want, but I don't even know what I want." No one knows what he or she wants. You like. That's what it is. You don't know. The reason you know what you want is because something struck a chord in you and you go, "Oh, I like this." But no one knows what they want, they don't have any preconceived notions. We're human beings. We were born without language; we don't know what we want. We get exposed to things and decide we like them. The problem with the people who aren't very good is that they are trying so hard -- to have a hit, have a career -- that they're not being themselves.

A lot of people have pointed to the compositional nature of the Pixies songs as a major reason the band has had such staying power.

Well, it would be far too simple to say that's the only reason people like us. Because we have plenty of songs that are plenty square. Well, not square per se, but ... well, you know. The quirkier the song is, the less it was thought about. I don't know. People are just too aware of those things.

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