32 Songs - Track 5

Where is My Mind - The Pixies

Your head will collapse if there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind?


I came very late to The Pixies. It was a fascination with the song Cannonball by The Breeders (off the album Last Splash) that set me on the path. The Breeders bass player was Kim Deal and the terrific bass line that opens up Cannonball, and then runs underneath it, is one of the beautiful things of the universe. So I wandered into Impact Records here in Canberra and said "Have you got anything else where Kim Deal plays bass?" Mick looked at me and said "Do you know The Pixies?". After my negative reply he wandered off and came back with an album called Surfer Rosa. I was also just starting to surf at the time and was intrigued by the name of the album. I took it home, whacked it on and then had to scrape the grey matter off the wall and find out some way to get it back in through my ears.

I was back for Doolittle, the following album, fairly promptly. It was one of those strange things where I discovered a band just after they had called it quits and so had an entire back catalogue to explore and did so extensively. I've been a massive fan ever since and have gone through two copies of Surfer Rosa in that time. The possibility that they may tour Australia makes me giddy as a schoolgirl. But I haven't explained about Where is my mind.

Where is my mind is one of two songs that are tightly bound to a period in my life. The slow start winds up into crunching guitars, thudding bass, beaten drums and the plaintive cries of Frank Black. The lyrics talk about fish and oceans and feet in the air and heads on the ground. It all seems like a massive acid trip now, but for me in 1992 it was all about dissociation and not knowing what the hell was going on in my life. Screaming out “Where is my mind” at the top of my lungs allowed me to get all the emotion and confusion that was built up inside me over many months out of my chest where it was crushing me. Other people exercise, eat chocolate, punch walls or drink to cure what ails them. I turn to music and singing. . I’ve never been very good at displaying my emotions let alone dealing with them and finding something as simple as a song as an aid is fairly astounding to me and perhaps hints at the power that music and even a song can have.

I still love the track and play it at such a volume that the walls shake and my knees tremble and my throat almost gets ripped out as I help out Frank, and just like it did all those years ago it always gives me that sense of emotional release.