Black Francis

If you think seeing a Black Francis show is essentially the same as seeing a Frank Black show, and that both are at least roughly analogous to seeing a Pixies show, you're wrong. When Charles Thompson launched his new stage persona, Frank Black, after breaking up the Pixies in 1993, it was not just to symbolically separate himself from his former bandmates. The switch also saw Thompson reinvent himself as a musician. Most of the sturm and drang of the Pixies was replaced with a more straightforward — albeit more personal — narrative approach. Black Francis wouldn't mount the stage again until the Pixies re-formed in 2004, and only released one album specifically credited to that persona, 2007's Bluefinger, which actually has less in common with the Pixies than with Black's solo output. All this is just a way to say that you never really know what you'll get from a Black Francis show — or a Frank Black one, for that matter.