Background
In March 1987, the Pixies (Black Francis, guitar/lead vocals; Kim Deal, bass/vocals; Joey Santiago, guitar; David Lovering, drums), entered Boston's Fort Apache Studios with Fort Apache owner/record producer Gary Smith to record a demo tape. The resulting 17-song cassette, later dubbed "The Purple Tape" eventually found its way to Ivo Watts-Russell, president and co-founder of the influential British record label 4AD. The Pixies' manager, Ken Goes, was also the manager of Throwing Muses, who had become the first American band to sign to 4AD a year earlier. Despite being initially unimpressed by the demo, Watts-Russell was urged to sign the band by his girlfriend, a secretary for 4AD. After her insistence, he walked the streets of New York listening to The Purple Tape on his Walkman and, in his words, finally "got it."
Watts-Russell hand-picked eight of The Purple Tape's 17 songs to make up a debut "mini album." Expressing regret that some previous 4AD debuts failed to live up the power of their demo versions, he decided to slightly re-mix eight of The Purple Tape's 17 songs for release, rather than have the band re-record the songs. The Pixies later re-recorded and included eight of the nine remaining Purple Tape tracks over the course of their albums and EP releases. The only song not to be re-recorded and released was "Rock A My Soul." This, along with the rest of the nine "missing" Purple Tape tracks were released as Pixies by the Canadian label Sonic Unyon in 2002.
The title of the album derives from Christian rock singer Larry Norman, whose catchphrase was "Come on pilgrim, you know He loves you", which was used as a lyric in the song "Levitate Me".
Read more about this topic: Come On Pilgrim
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)