Your Head Will Collapse

The song ‘Where Is My Mind’ was written by the principal songwriter for the Pixies, Charles Thompson, who used the stage name Black Francis.  He used Frank Black as a solo artist, then Frank Black and the Catholics, and then he went back to using Black Francis.  This song was released on their 1988 debut studio album Surfer Rosa.  This song was never released as a single, even though it is one of the band’s signature songs, however in 2021 it made it on to Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, ranked at #493.  The Pixies are an American indie / alternative rock band that formed in 1986 in Boston, Massachusetts and they played punk rock and surf rock.  Guitarist Joey Santiago and songwriter Black Francis met when they were students at UMass Amherst.  They recruited Kim Deal on bass and backing vocals, after she answered an advertisement in the Boston Phoenix that read, “Band seeks bassist into Hüsker Dü and Peter, Paul and Mary.  Please – no chops.”  Deal was the only person to call them, even though her main instrument was guitar.  She borrowed her sister Kelley’s bass guitar to use in the band.  Chops is a catch-all phrase for how well you can play, how fast you can play, and how many different things you can do.  Hüsker Dü is a hardcore punk band from Saint Paul, Minnesota and they played faster, louder, and more emphatically than any of their peers.  Peter, Paul and Mary were known for playing Folk music that sparked the imagination and the passion of a generation intent on social change.  Deal suggested they hire David Lovering as their drummer, who was a friend of her husband, however he had given up drums for several years, and he didn’t pick them back up until the Pixies offered him an audition.

Black Francis wrote twisted lyrics about incest, eyeball slicing and tawdry Biblical themes, which sometimes came across as being beautiful slow and serious, but mostly screamed like an angry lunatic, and this made the Pixies popular.  It certainly didn’t hurt that Kim Deal owned of one of indie rock’s most beautiful female voices, so she was able to offset the angry masculinity with her alluring femininity.  The band soon found a huge cult audience playing dive bars around Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1986 and a mystique grew about them.  They laid a part of the foundation for Grunge music, but they didn’t last and ended up being a disappointment.

This disorientation anthem ‘Where Is My Mind’, was inspired when Black Francis went on a snorkeling adventure during a high-school trip to the Bahamas.  When you are snorkeling under water, you can get confused and sometimes the only way to know which way is up is by looking at the air bubbles.  Black was in the Caribbean when this very small fish started chasing him.  He said that it was about four inches, and not dangerous at all, but he couldn’t understand why it was aggressively following him and it kept poking him while he was swimming in this clear water.  It kept doing it, and that freaked him out, making him feel like he had to get away from this f**king crazy fish.  Most fish don’t normally engage with snorkelers as they usually mind their business, but if a fish gets fed by a person, it is likely to start following them.

Black Francis used to write songs in his apartment’s bathroom for privacy.  One day his ex-wife was in there doing her makeup, so he had to move to the bedroom, and he started playing this song and she stuck her head out and said, “That’s a good one, finish it.”  Black said that half the songs he wrote, he had no idea what he was talking about.  Deal left the Pixies in 1993 and then again in 2013, and she went on to become the guitarist and singer for The Breeders, a band she formed with her twin sister, Kelley Deal.

Ooh, stop

With your feet on the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there’s nothing in it
And you’ll ask yourself

Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
Way out in the water
See it swimmin’

I was swimmin’ in the Caribbean
Animals were hiding behind the rock
Except the little fish
But they told me, he swears
Tryin’ to talk to me koi koy

Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
Way out in the water
See it swimmin’

With your feet on the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
If there’s nothing in it
And you’ll ask yourself

Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
Way out in the water
See it swimmin’

Ooh
With your feet on the air and your head on the ground
Ooh
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Ooh
Ooh
Ooh
Ooh
Ooh

Written for Song Lyric Sunday where the theme is Beach, Surf, Swimming suggested by Amy Braun.