WHAT'S The DEAL?

BLACK SABBATH - and Doris Day . . .!

"You never liked Black Sabbath?" demands Kelley Deal in shocked disbelief.

"He says he can't imagine us doing a Black Sabbath song," explains Kim Deal to bassist Josephine.

"We were doing 'Paranoid' at sound-check today," reveals Jo.

"'Paranoid' is a good song," elaborates Kim. "The lyrics are really good. They're s-o-o-o sad. But I like songs more than I like particular artists. There's a good Doris Day song that rhymes so stupid but it's done so well."

She sings a clear and perfectly beautiful ". . . now I shout it from the highest hills/even told the golden daffodils . . .". She sighs a romantic sigh. "I'm just a sucker for that shit . . .!"

Breeders tend to unstable your expectations. All bands are unique. Some are more unique than others. And while Indie hit albums are usually fast, fleeting, and over-priced, designed for the young at heart and the weak in head, the Breeders stand above and beyond the feeble flip-flop of Pop Stardom's normal half-life.

Turbo-mouthed Kim Deal - an ex-Pixie - provides the gravitational core around which Breeders revolve. She writes the kind of lyric you tend to describe as abstract or surreal - you praise the surprising element of their random invention to disguise the fact that you don't know what the hell she's going on about.

Immoral Duel

'When I Was A Painter' - the stand-out track from Breeders' debut CD POD - seems like a good place to star. At first hearing its blizzard of sound seems imminent with metaphysical possibilities. There's tempo shifts, tonal dualities, vertical inclines, bottomless pools, endless mud and vicious clusters of riffs, wrapped around lines about "too many lovers at one time," as dark and glistening as an oil-slick; then there's the memory repetition of "bad sex and bad TV" as perfect punctuation. So, what's the story Kim?

"It's just self-loathing," she smiles disarmingly. "I was, like, looking at the mirror and - hey, that's it. I kinda like wallowing in it. And I think of myself going 'yep, go-go-go - yeah yeah!" So that's sorted that out.

Now we can move onto more complex texts. 'Cannonball' - on the current album The Last Splash - is supposedly inspired by the notorious Marquis De Sade, the dude who invented Sadism. But it goes "the bong in the Reggae song/Hey now, hey now/want you Koo Koo/Cannonball/want you Koo Koo." I don't actually see the Divine Marquis in there.

"'Hey Little Libertine'," she sing-speaks at me, "'You're a real Koo-Koo'. I'm making fun of him, see? My sister Kelley was reading a biography of him. And compared to his stories, De Sade's own life seemed pretty tame. The characters he makes up are so much more real. So I'm just kind of challenging him. Oh yeah - you wanna go to Hell? Let's go to Hell together! But don't just drop in - DO A CANNONBALL. You know what a cannonball is . . .? It's a bomber into the swimming pool, right?"

She squats, pulls her knees up tight foetally to her chest, hunching herself down into a compact sphere. "A Cannonball - see? And do you know what? I'll be the Last Splash. So, I'm just challenging him to a duel," she finishes as she unravels herself.

"Challenging him to what? - A moral duel." Kelley seems to have lost the drift too.

"No," grins Kim. "An IMMORAL duel."

Hammer Horror

There are four Breeders, now. They're just finishing a video interview. A 'Girls On Film', for a Video '93 compilation. Simon and Sharon begin dismantling their sound boom and camcorder equipment as I heft my battered ITT cassette recorder onto the low table. Now we go low-tech. "That's fine. We are low-tech too," says Kim.

Before joining Pixies she worked Truck-Stops around her native Dayton Ohio, singing and playing guitar. She wears a shapeless blue top and jeans. Irrigates her lank black hair with raking fingers as she acts out her stories with dramatic phonetic sound effects and actions. You can imagine her serving coffee and burgers in a Truck-Stop in a low-budget American road movie. Cigarette rammed in mouth-corner, hands on hips - "what the fuck'll you guys have?"

Sister Kelley sang duo on those dates. They did Hank Williams, Neil Young, and Elvis Costello's 'The Angels Want To Wear My Red Shoes'. Kelley is more softly spoken, but only when you compare her with Kim. Her hair shows signs of recent perming. Her face is fuller. But in the Chart Show/MTV video for Indie chart-topper 'Cannonball' they're practically interchangeable. Is it Kim, is it Kelley, or is it the girl in the mirror?

Pacting with Black Francis in Boston, Kim played on Pixies classic 'Waves Of Mutilation' and beyond, through decade-defining albums Surfer Rosa, Dolittle and Bossanova. Then she met Josephine Wiggs. A vegan, Joe is death-pale and frail as a compulsive blood-donor. She has what looks to be henna'd hair and a candy-striped top. She's sharp and intelligent in a down-beat English way. She and Kim recorded POD with the then-Throwing Muse Tanya Donnelly as their third head. After which Kim went back to Pixies.

This phase begins with the Pixies implosion. Tanya forms Belly. Kim and Josephine call in Kelley. Then there's Jim MacPherson, drummer from Chicago. Imagine a gender photographic negative of Velvet Underground. He's the Mo Tucker of the band.

It's not necessary to interview The Breeders. Sparks flit back and forth between them like in some Hammer Horror Mad Scientist's experiment. All you need is to press record and take a stroll around the block while they get on with it. For example; the rise and rise of Breeders has coincided with the riotous rise of Grrrl bands. But again, the Breeders tend to unstable your expectations.

Let's talk current contemporaries like P.J. Harvey. "No. I usually don't like to suck my scars and lick my wounds in public," Kim avers. "I just don't like those kind of things. It's easy to be mean. It's easy to be profound and do it sweet."

How about, say, Patti Smith as an early role model? "No. She was from New York y'know? That did not exist in Dayton, Ohio. Absolutely nawt. I heard her on the radio ONE time, and that was 'Because The Night'."

Neat Counter

So let's talk gender war specifics, then. The Riot Grrrl bands are raising issues, talking-up valuably unsettling questions. My liberal pro-Feminist conscience says to listen to them and take them seriously.

But at the same time Patti Smith broke through without any special sexual pleading or positive rock 'n' roll discrimination. There's no real reason why female bands can't break through. Is there? Press record button, and stand well back.

"I don't think so either," concedes Kim. "Really, the reason is that a lot of women don't have the interest. It's not just about sitting here doing interviews. You gotta go to the Music Store, you gotta find a guitar, and then you've got to LEARN it. Only THAT's not the worst of it! Then you got to CARRY it everywhere you go. It's heavy, and it's a pain in the arse . . ."

"Then you've got to find somebody to play with you when you can't play very well," resumes Kim. "But hey - guys have to do the same thing. I just think girls don't have a lot of interest."

"No. There's more to it than that," insists Jo. "It's that you have to be able to perceive it as being something that you're able to do. Something that it's alright for you to do. And for a long time it was rare to find people who would actually put themselves on the line. 'Cos what it reminds me of is when my mother went to university, she got a degree in English and History, but at that time, when she left university the only profession that it seemed was open to her was teaching. That was the only thing that a woman with a degree could do."

"But society didn't make that bar. She - in her own mind - did it. She was limiting herself," interrupts Kim.

"No. She's not limiting herself" resumes Jo. "Because you have to remember that you define yourself and your limitations by looking at the examples around you. I'm not saying that it was impossible, but just that she was limited by the society she was in."

"I know. I know. But I didn't see anybody else doing THIS in Dayton, and THAT wasn't limiting."

"No. You went to Boston," Smart move Josephine, as keen as a Kasparov.

"But I did it in Dayton too. We played out a lot. We did all of this there too." A neat counter from Kim for the cause of empowered self-determinism versus limiting social mores.

"We played anywhere. I didn't CHANGE my career because I'd made that decision anyway. I would have made it happen in Dayton. But . . . it's just a fine point. Basically 'A' equals 'B', and 'B' equals 'C', so 'A' has GOT to equal 'C'. And 'C' equals Madonna." The debate disintegrates into ridicule.

Thick Skin

But ARE there problems specific to women in playing rock music?

"I guess immediately you've got to say 'yes'," comes in Kelley. "But Kim has a good take-off of this. Like we were playing a small little acoustic show as part of a Racism and Sexism in the Radio Industry thing . . ."

" . . . and the Host, the Lecturer, was a woman." Kim resumes the immoral duel. "And the sound guy was putting up her mike, and he was bitching as usual, as sound-guys do. And she confided to me 'if I was a man, he would be kissing my ass right now'. And I didn't have time to tell her 'wait a minute, no, that guy's a dick. He will always be a dick. He'll be a dick to you and me and to my Dad and to every man and woman that walks this planet. 'COS HE'S JUST A DICK!' She'd got it wrong.

"She was leading a seminar in Racism and Sexism, and she was mistaken about something as basic and simple as that. She was hyper-sensitive - WRONG Babe! It didn't have ANYTHING to do with you, y'know? Get some fuckin' thick skin Babe! That guy is just an ass-hole. You have to work with them all of the time. NO BIG DEAL."

Breeders tend to unstable your expectations.

But hell, I'm a sucker for that shit.