Frank Black — aka Pixies frontman Black Francis — has announced two shows commemorating the 30th anniversary of his second solo album Teenager Of The Year. He’ll be reuniting the record’s original personnel for one Paris gig and one London gig in February 2025 to play the full album, which is also getting a new remaster from 4AD sometime later this year.

Here’s what Black said in the announcement:

Sometime in the early 80s, I’d have to look up the date, I matriculated high school. 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. It is 30 years old now, and the original band will perform the record at various venues in early 2025.

And here’s what Feldman had to say:

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 (Clay) 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 shebang 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.

The band comprises Black on guitar and vocals, Feldman on bass and keys, Lyle Workman on guitar, Nick Vincent on drums, and Rob Laufer on keys, bass, and guitar. See Black’s announcement and the show dates below.

 

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TOUR DATES:
2/4 – Paris, France @ Le Trianon
2/6 – London, UK @ The Palladium