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Black Francis - Inspired by UFOs
Identifier
028919
Type of Spiritual Experience
None
Background
Charles Thompson IV (born April 6, 1965) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He is best known as the frontman of the influential alternative rock band Pixies, with whom he performs under the stage name Black Francis. Following the band's breakup in 1993, he embarked on a solo career under the name Frank Black. After releasing two albums with record label 4AD and one with American Recordings, he left the label and formed a new band, Frank Black and the Catholics. He re-adopted the name Black Francis in 2007.
We are only going to do a brief biography, as the sighting was ‘physical’ and is not therefore a spiritual experience, however, it did have quite a profound effect on his music.
Charles Thompson was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His father was a bar owner, and Thompson lived in Los Angeles, California, as a baby because his father wanted to "learn more about the restaurant and bar business."
Right: The Pixies in 2019
Thompson's family moved around, first with his father, and then his stepfather, a religious man who "pursued real estate on both coasts". When Thompson was 12, his mother and stepfather joined an evangelical church that was tied to the Pentecostal denomination Assemblies of God, a move that influenced many of his songs written with the Pixies, which often refer to the Bible.
He discovered the music of Christian rock singer-songwriter Larry Norman at 13 when Norman played at a religious summer camp that Thompson attended. Norman's music influenced Thompson to the extent that he named the Pixies' first EP and a lyric in the band's song "Levitate Me" .
Thompson lived in an apartment in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Just before his senior year, his family moved to Westport, Massachusetts, where he received a Teenager of the Year award. After graduating from high school in 1983, Thompson studied at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, majoring in anthropology. Thompson left his studies and started his rock band – the Pixies with his friend Joe Santiago. In January 1986, Thompson formed the Pixies with Santiago, bassist Kim Deal and drummer David Lovering........ there is obviously more please go to Wikipedia.
A description of the experience
from BBC article: 11 pop stars who claim to have seen UFOs By Jeremy Allen
Wednesday 29th March 2017
Arguably no other musician has done more for extraterrestrial awareness than Black Francis, whose oeuvre is permeated with songs about silver, cigar-shaped saucers - from Pixies' 1990 album Bossanova to The Cult of Ray, his 1996 solo album as Frank Black. "We've tried to elevate the sci-fi thing, make it more opera-ish, more of a serious rock thing," Francis told Sounds when Bossanova was released. "We want UFOs to be an acceptable topic. They're romantic."
His obsession stemmed from a UFO sighting in 1965 (the year he was born) witnessed by his mother and several cousins.
In Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies, compiled by Josh Frank and Caryn Ganz, he said: "I think there's a small percentage of people who have seen them, and I'm one of them."
Regarding the incident, he added: "There was a flying saucer floating above the house for half an hour and everyone just stood there and watched it... it was just hovering. Then the state police came and chased it but they couldn't catch up with it. My mother's weird but she's not that weird. She's got no reason to make this stuff up."