Interview: Patton Oswalt on his love of the Pixies' DOOLITLE and how hosting THE 1% CLUB lets him hone his crowd work

This was one of those interview opportunities that I was surprised I was able to pull off, since it’s a relative rarity that you can talk a network into letting you have a conversation that isn’t specifically centered around the topic at hand, which in this case was Patton Oswalt’s new gig as the host of the game show The 1% Club. It’s kind of a uniquely-positioned show, since it debuted today on Prime Video but will be having a secondary debut on Fox on June 3. Wherever you watch it, though, it’s a lot of fun, and as you’ll see from my comments during my conversation with Patton, it’s easy to get sucked in and find yourself staying to the very end just to see how things turn out.

Ah, but to get back to where I was going a moment ago, the predominant topic of the conversation with Patton actually wasn’t his new show but, rather, his love of the Pixies’ Doolittle. As readers of this newsletter know, a lot has gone down between when I did this interview and when it’s making its debut, but that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying a slightly different sort of conversation with Patton, one that gives him a chance to flex his muscles as a diehard music geek.

Enjoy!

How did you find your way into the Pixies in the first place?

I was at college, and they opened for Love and Rockets at a show at our college, and they just were so loose and amazing. I'd never heard anything like them. They were all over the stage, all over the place, so much fun...in comparison to Love and Rockets, who I was a fan of, but Love and Rockets just kind of came out and planted their feet and did their album in order and kind of didn't talk to one another. And the Pixies were just this, like, wonderful mess onstage. You just couldn't take your eyes off them. So then I went out and bought Doolittle, and that led me backwards to Surfer Rosa and Come on Pilgrim. Their music just opened this whole other world for me of ways to construct songs and lyrics and...it was one of those "oh, things go forward from this point on" moments. 

Just as a sidebar, I was at that show.

At William and Mary?!

Yeah!

You were there? Were you a student at William and Mary?

No, I lived in Chesapeake, so I drove up with a friend to see the show. I still have the poster.

You do? I bought the Pixies shirt with the crab on it. Which has long ago been tattered. [Laughs.] Remember how Black Francis broke a string at one point? And he had to run off, and he was kind of joking... Well, here's a weird side story: I saw that show, and the Pixies come out and they're just loose and crazy and great, and then Love and Rockets came out, and you remember: the fog machine went on, they planted their feet, they did the album in order except for ending with "So Alive," marched off. No banter, didn't speak to the audience, didn't talk to each other. Came back, did "No New Tale to Tell," marched off, show's over. And then a few months later, they broke up. They were kind of at the end of their tether as a group. 

When Trompe Le Monde came out, I went to see the Pixies at the Citadel in DC, and Pere Ubu was opening. And Pere Ubu came out, and they were insane, and Dave Thomas was whipping his jacket off and putting it over his guitar's head and jumping all over the place like a friggin' loon. And it was so much fun. And then the Pixies marched out, planted their feet, basically did Trompe Le Monde in order, no banter, didn't talk to each other, didn't talk to the crowd, went back off. Came back on, did "Head On," marched off. And then, like, a month later, they broke up. It was like I saw two bands get divorced!

What I specifically remember about that William and Mary show is that the Pixies pointedly did not play "Here Comes Your Man."

Yeah, I... Well, no, I didn't notice that, because I didn't know the album yet! [Laughs.] But I feel like... It's such a catchy tune, but sometimes edgy punk rock bands write crazy-catchy tunes. I mean, that's the story of the Buzzcocks and Wire! Those guys wanted to be these dark, angry punk bands, and they wrote catchy tunes! Hey, boo-hoo, enjoy it!

Once you actually picked up a copy of Doolittle, do you remember which songs grabbed you immediately?

Yeah, well, "Here Comes Your Man," obviously. But "Debaser," right off the friggin' bat. "Debaser" is amazing. "Wave of Mutilation," but I actually like the slowed-down BBC version, the "surf" version of that. "Hey" is incredible. I mean, every single song on that album - "Crackity Jones," "No. 13 Baby" - they all... Each one was its own little universe. Each one was its own little genre of music, and I love every single one of 'em.

I actually went back and listened to it for the umpteenth time right before hopping on with you, and I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the song "Dead."

Yep! [Singing.] "Uriah hit the crapper, the crapper..." That's a song about abortion, if I'm not mistaken. 

[Per Black Francis, it's taken straight from the story of David and Bathsheba, but it's a story that's often been used by biblical scholars in discussions of abortion, so...close enough!]

After you got into it, was it a case where you immediately found yourself wanting to go to everyone you knew and say, "You've got to listen to this album"?

You know what? No. Because I knew my friends well enough... And I'm not saying this in a judgmental way, but I just knew that most people I knew would not like that album. The kind of stuff that I was listening to with my friends - because this was still the late '80s - was, like, INXS' Kick and a lot of that kind of stuff. They would not like the loud / quiet / loud, jangly, near-atonal Pixies stuff. There was no point in playing it for them. It wasn't gonna land.

Have you ever had an opportunity to meet the Pixies over the course of your career?

There's this great podcast that Josh Adam Meyers does, where it's a countdown of the top 500 albums, so I'm doing all the Pixies albums. And he had on Joey Santiago as a surprise, to surprise me. So I got to talk to him over Zoom. But I've never met Black Francis, I've never met Kim Deal or Dave Lovering. I've never gotten to meet them. But I'm happy just to be a distant adoring fan. Because apparently... I also love the fact that they don't hide the fact that they, as a group and kind of as individuals, are kind of a mess. And that mess is what gives you this amazing music, and they don't hide any of that. So I don't judge them for it, and I don't want to bother their lives. 

That's fair. All right, now for the obligatory question about The 1% Club. Do you consider yourself in the 1% when it comes to music trivia knowledge?

I don't consider myself... [Hesitates.] I mean, I know a lot of useless trivia about music. But I happen to be friends with people like Tom Scharpling and Edgar Wright, who know everything about music, so... I mean, I'm okay, but I'm not flying at their altitude.

Is this kind of a dream gig for you? Having watched the episode that they sent over, it not only gives you the fun of being a game show host but also gives you a chance to exercise your comedic muscles.

Yeah, I mean, I'm getting paid to do crowd work, basically, and talk to different people. And some of their stories are fascinating! Like, there's times when I was worried, "Am I gumming up the pace and tempo of the game by wanting to stop and talk to these people?" That was so much more fascinating to me. But they say it cut together well, so...we'll see!

Yeah, it does. It has a very fun flow to it.

Oh, cool! How many episodes have you seen?

Just the one. The pilot, I guess. But I literally couldn't stop watching it. I had to make it to the end.

Really? So it hooked you?

It did! I think it was predominantly my desire to find out what the 1% question was, ultimately.

Yeah! And isn't it weird how some of the episodes... And you'll experience this if you watch them all, but some of those, you'll get to a 60% question, and you'll be, like, "Oh, I would never get that." And then you get to the 1% question, and you go, "I know this immediately!" Because it's all based on how your brain works rather than trivia that happens to be in and out of your skull. And that makes it so unique. 

I know we have to wrap, but to bring it back to Doolittle to close, what would you pick as your gateway track into the album? 

I mean, for the non-Pixies album, yeah, it's gonna be "Here Comes Your Man." For the people that had listened to Surfer Rosa and Come on Pilgrim, "Debaser," it's such a great first song, because it announces, "We know the kind of fan you are, we know what you expect, so we're gonna give it to you, and everything that you liked about our earlier stuff, we're here and we're giving it to you." It's a very reassuring opening: "No, if anything, we're pushing the pedal down even harder now!"