Frank Black is jazzed to jumpstart a 2025 tour, spotlighting the 1994 masterpiece Teenager of the Year, from start to finish. The Teenager of the Year Tour kicks off on January 15th at San Francisco’s famed Fillmore, rolling through eleven US and Canadian cities before hopping the pond to hit Paris and the iconic London Palladium.
Dropped in May 1994, Teenager of the Year stands as the crown jewel of his solo stint and hailed by critics as the finest album the Pixies never penned. But…have you ever wondered about the album title’s cheeky origin?
“Sometime in the early 80s, I’d have to look up the date, I matriculated high school,” Frank Black recalls. “This school held an awards banquet for some of the departing students at the school. I received an award called the TEENAGER OF THE YEAR award; my brother received the same award the following year. Our award was a 50 dollar credit for textbooks, a TEENAGER OF THE YEAR medallion (my mother still has this), and also the banquet hall dinner, soup to nuts. My brother and I had no complaint about the award (it was given for being all-around-good-guy as best as we could determine). But for such a grand title to be given as TEENAGER OF THE YEAR, I felt the glory had not been amplified enough.
In 1993, I was doing “solo recording” sessions with Eric Drew Feldman in Los Angeles.We had settled on a core band with Nick Vincent and Lyle Workman, occasionally augmented by Joey Santiago and Moris Tepper. Though we had to change studios numerous times for actual forest fires and earthquakes, the whole process was such an addictive musical buffet that Eric and I couldn’t stop. We did some vocals at a studio rumored to be owned by Sergio Mendes; in the control room was a wall of television screens broadcasting the brush fire which crept toward us. We eventually evacuated to someplace else. We never met Sergio but we saw him perform a few weeks later when we vacated to Las Vegas after the Northridge earthquake, which had trapped the TEENAGER OF THE YEAR tapes in a studio vault for some time.
Our zeal plus empathy from our financiers, they safely observing our travails from London, was enough to keep the money flowing until Eric and I relented and declared “Consummatum est”.We tried to make it grand. 22 in 62. I called it TEENAGER OF THE YEAR.”
Frank Black continues: “The principal musicians and Al met up in the greater San Fernando Valley. Sweating craniums…Charlie writing chord changes on a dry erase board; Nick, Lyle, myself writing them on scraps of paper. Lyle was segregated into an iso room because he was new and I just wanted to hear what Nick, Charles, and I were playing. When I eventually heard what he was doing, I was very grateful he had been invited. Al always had tape (perhaps DATs) running for reference in case we did something especially good or bad.
Empty gyoza boxes were abound in the room. Initially 14 basics recorded in three days. At that point, Charles was often sitting in a corner, staring off into space composing lyrics, looking anxious. Joey and Moris were invited to do what they do. Initially it was a 14-song album. It was mixed. Eric Idle was staying nearby. He kept telling me to change the songs around. Al had to run off and go to his next project. We weren’t completely happy with what we had. The solution: record more songs. Eight more were born. Whole she bang was remixed by David Bianco.
The day before we were to start the remix, the 1994 Northridge earthquake occurred. Charles, Jean (Charles’ first wife) and I escaped to Las Vegas, ate many shrimp cocktails, and we saw Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and Sergio Mendes and Brazil ’99 perform. Sergio was especially good. After about five days we returned to the mixing studio and the deed was done.”
With that said, mark your calendars for a new re-mastered version of Teenager Of The Year, which will be released by 4AD later this year.
Tickets are on sale now You can get them here.
2025 Tour Dates:
January
February
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