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Armed with a bottle of wine and a little chien andalusia, Black Francis — in an extremely candid 7,000 word interview with yours truly — bares his soul and sets MAGNET straight on Kim Deal, Kim Shattuck, dope, daddyhood, new songs, old wounds, and how, after 26 years, he finally found his mind. Here’s an excerpt of our in-depth discussion of The Kim Deal Situation. Enjoy. – JONATHAN VALANIA

MAGNET: I’m not going to make this whole thing about Kim Deal, but I would like to give you the opportunity for you to respond to this narrative that’s emerged that you were doing the lion’s share of the heavy lifting. Writing all the songs. Singing them. And yet Kim was the one that got all the adulation. People really liked her — she smiled, she had a dreamy voice…

BLACK FRANCIS: …she’s got charisma.

MAGNET: Right, she’s got charisma…and you somehow resented that. Is there any truth in that? Or is that just kind of people projecting.

BLACK FRANCIS: Well, there’s truth in it in the sense that the narrative that you referred to, those kind of narratives can be hurtful if they’re not factual. So I’m resentful of the narrative. That resentment can start to effect your interpersonal band situation. The fact of the matter was that I was the writer, we had a band, we had a little thing going. One time, Kim walked into rehearsal we were not psychologically prepared. She just showed up to practice one day, probably because she had to get her nerve up and say, “oh, I have a bunch of songs, also.” We had never heard about these other songs before, it was out of the blue. So the way she did it was a little like, “Woah!” But we went along with it. But the thing is, we’re rehearsing with shitty amps in a really loud rehearsal space. We’re probably bonked out of our mind on marijuana and we’re trying to make some sense out of a din. So she brings in all these new songs or chord structures or whatever and of course it didn’t click. So the rest of the band and I talked about it and went, “Yeah the new stuff she brought in today seemed kind of different. It didn’t seem to really work.” Now whether it was really good or not, who knows? It was a fucking cacophony [when we tried it.] So we just went, like, “Kim…” And she was very bashful and said, “Oh that’s okay, don’t worry about it.” So, that was put aside.

MAGNET: When was this, roughly? What album?

BLACK FRANCIS: This was around Surfer Rosa or maybe after Surfer Rosa.  Somewhere in there. I remember a couple years after we were touring around in England. We were doing something at the BBC and she was listening to mixes in another room in the studio complex of her new record for her new band. She invited us down to hear them. So we went down and we listened to them. So really, the fact of the matter is that she was putting together the first Breeders record while The Pixies were going and nobody had a problem with it. She didn’t have a problem with it; we didn’t have a problem with it. That’s the way it was going on. She didn’t really find a receptive space for her material within the band until she started her own thing, and we were all like, “Cool.” So that’s really all that happened. So people that are writing about it trying to figure out…Again, it’s a narrative. “oh, that’s Charles, the guy who screams TAAAAAAAAAAMMMME!!! He’s not letting her write the songs.” And that’s not exactly right. That’s not exactly how it went down. So, you know, who knows what would have happened if we were able to get some vacation time in.

MAGNET: It seemed early earlier on that you guys sang a lot more than you did on the last two records. Was there a conscious decision to stop doing that?

BLACK FRANCIS: I think that there was probably iciness between us two and then there was probably Gil was trying to always force it or something. He’s trying to force these two people to sing together…

MAGNET: You didn’t really want to?

BLACK FRANCIS: I don’t think I was against it, I think…you know, people were barely showing up at the sessions and the whole thing starts to turn into the Charles Thompson Show.

MAGNET: When you were deciding you were going to break up The Pixies, had you thought it through, did you tell yourself “I’m not going to be able to operate at the same level I’m currently operating at. I’m going to have to start over again, back to playing bars.”

BLACK FRANCIS: Probably not. I must have been way too cocky to have that kind of thought process. Yeah, I probably thought it was all going to just continue and I was going to become great or something. I had a good time doing what I did. You know what I mean? I got to earn my dues so I could play my blues. But yeah, I didn’t have any kind of vision. I just continued. I learned pretty quickly. I became humble pretty fast. MORE

Vice News continues to kick ass on its Ukraine coverage. Turns out Vice isn’t just for Brooklyn hipster assholes — and those who aspire to become Brooklyn hipster assholes — anymore.

PREVIOUSLY: Russian Roulette 2

PREVIOUSLY: Ukraine Burning

The Philadelphia Flower Show, yesterday, by PETE TROSHAK

Illustration by ALEX FINE,/font>

BY JONATHAN VALANIA Famed criminal defense lawyer, retired Harvard Law School professor and cable news gadfly Alan Dershowitz will be  at the National Constitution Center tomorrow to debate the legality and ethics of drone strikes on American citizens. In advance of tomorrow’s debate, we got Mr. Dershowitz on the horn. DISCUSSED: When it’s OK for the President of the United States to order the assassination of an American citizen; his theory of a “Continuum Of Civilianality; why he is advocating for the court-supervised use of torture in so-called ticking time bomb situations; Zionism and how to resolved the Israeli-Palestinian crisis; is Edward Snowden a hero or villain; is mass surveillance of all American citizens constitutional under the Fourth Amendment; is O.J. Simpson innocent or guilty?

PHAWKER: Tomorrow, you’ll be at the National Constitution Center for the Intelligence Squared Debate. You’ll be arguing that President Obama was within the legal limits of executive power when he ordered the fatal drone strike on New Mexico-born Jihadist rabble-rouser Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. You will argue that the President can order the assassination of an American citizen absent any due process if he’s suspected of aiding and abetting the terrorists abroad in the killing of Americans. Can you summarize your argument for us?

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Yes. I think that both international law and American constitutional law simply requires that the President determine under his war-power authority that the person targeted is a legitimate combatant, not a civilian. That’s the important line – the line is between combatant and non-combatant. It’s a very difficult line to draw these days. In the old days, it was easy. Combatants wore uniforms. They’d bear arms. They were part of a hierarchical organization with insignias. Today, combatants are terrorists who work during the day in other jobs, and at night, they plant bombs – roadside bombs – or send rockets, engage in other military activities. The executive has the power to make that determination as to who’s a combatant. Once a decision that a person is a legitimate combatant he becomes a legitimate military target, and we don’t have to check to see what passport he may have in his pocket, where he was born, or what citizenship he holds. Once he’s determined to be a combatant, it’s a fair target for military activity.
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32nd & Baring, earlier today, by DAVE BROWN

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OASIS: Cigarettes & Alcohol

This is when they took a brief break from cranking out uber-catchy Beatles forgeries and had a go at ol’ T. Rex. Still, makes me want to smoke and drink and f*ck shit up, which is, of course, the highest compliment you can pay a rock song.

NEW YORK TIMES: Around the south and east of Ukraine, in vital cities in the country’s industrial heartland, ethnic Russians have staged demonstrations and stormed buildings demanding a wider invasion of their country by Moscow. But some of the people here calling for Russian intervention are themselves Russian — “protest tourists” from across the border. They have included passport-carrying Russians, like Aleksey Khudyakov, a pro-Kremlin Muscovite who said he traveled here “to watch and maybe to give some advice.” In Kharkiv, another Russian scaled a government building to dramatically plant his country’s flag — offering at least the image that President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces were being invited in. It is clear that in this part of Ukraine, many ethnic Russians distrust the fledgling government, and some would indeed welcome Russian troops. But the events unfolding in major Ukrainian cities in recent days appear to match a pattern played by the Kremlin in Crimea, where pro-Moscow forces paving the way for Russia to seize control were neither altogether spontaneous, nor entirely local. MORE

RELATED: In the early morning hours of March 4, a group of unarmed Ukrainian soldiers marched from their barracks on the territory off Belbek military airfield near Sevastopol to confront heavily armed Russian troops who have besieged their base. The group, comprised of about 100 men, carrying a Ukrainian flag and the red flag of their unit, walked onto the airfield about a half-kilometer away from the runway and directly toward four Russian military vehicles and several officers, some of whom fired warning shots in the air in an attempt to stop the Ukrainians from advancing. Only when the Russian soldiers aimed their automatic rifles at the uniform group of Ukrainian troops did they halt. There, on a grassy bluff overlooking the Black Sea, they remained steadfast, even as camouflaged Russian troops encircled them, taking strategic positions atop small bluffs, behind concrete barricades and in surrounding shrubs, all the while training their sniper rifles and machine guns on the group. “They (Russian soldiers) told us: ‘Stop. Do not come closer. We have orders to shoot,’” Andriy Matchenko, deputy head of logistics for the Belbek unit told the Kyiv Post. “They said they would shoot at our legs if they needed to stop us.” MORE

KYIVPOST: Ukraine’s new Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk says ministers from his country and their Russian counterparts have started holding talks as both sides are wrestling for control of the disputed Crimean Peninsula. Among other developments: Ukraine’s border guard service says two Russian navy ships have blocked off both ends of a strait that separates Russia and the Crimea region. Ukrainian border guards say Russian armored vehicles were spotted on the Russian side of the Kerch Strait, but the Russian military has not confirmed the sightings, Reuters reports. MORE

Vice has been doing great reporting on the events in Ukraine.

All that Jay Laughlin (Turning Point, Godspeed, 1200, Lenola, Grand Fabric, Like A Fox and now JJL) now has to show for 20-plus years of writing, recording and performing music.

RELATED: Early morning on February 22nd, our studio/practice space of the last 12 years or more burned to the ground and nothing was salvaged. We lost everything we’ve all worked on for our whole musical careers. We’ve all been playing music since we were kids with multiple bands along the way (Turning Point, Godspeed, 1200, Lenola, Grand Fabric, Like A Fox and now JJL). The list of gear that we lost is way too long to even list, but they include three guitars that burned, a ’75 Les Paul Custom, an American Fender Strat (pictured above), and an American Deluxe Precision bass that, combined, were worth thousands alone. Three drum sets, multiple guitar/bass amps, and a huge effects pedal collection…. all gone. Not to mention studio gear, our PA system, and tons of other personal items. JJL has been in the studio working on our first EP for the past year and we’re only a few sessions away from finally having the tracks done and ready to press. So, to say this is a setback is a huge understatement. From the first pictures shared on Facebook/Instagram that day, the overwhelming support and concern have made a horrible situation a little easier to swallow. We’ve had some people ask where they can send donations to help us get back on our feet so we figured this would be the best way to get it started. MORE

Illustration by MULTIMAGE

Today, the legendary Roots crew announced their annual ROOTS PICNIC is returning to Philadelphia’s Festival Pier at Penn’s Landing on Saturday, May 31st. The festival is celebrating its seventh year with an eclectic lineup over two stages that Roots Picnic fans have come to expect – boasting performances by: Janelle Monáe, Action Bronson, araabMUZIK, The War On Drugs and a show-stopping set with Snoop Dogg backed by The Roots.

Named one of the greatest live bands around by Rolling Stone Magazine, the legendary Roots Crew have become one of the best known and most respected hip-hop acts in the business, winning four Grammys over the course of their career. The ensemble most recently received a “Best Rap Album” nomination for their last studio release undun, which brings their GRAMMY nomination count to twelve. The Philly natives can also be seen as the official house band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon where ?uestlove serves as the show’s Musical Director. The Roots will releasing a new album this spring.

Snoop Dogg is a man of many talents. He is one of the most successful rappers in the game, a socially conscious songwriter, actor, production company founder and a cultural voice for an entire generation. Having sold over 30 million records worldwide, beginning with his 1993 debut and iconic album Doggystyle, Snoop has remained woven in the fabric of pop culture for the past 20+ years. Janelle Monáe is an inimitable, award-winning, songwriter, performer, producer, CoverGirl and avant-garde funktress. Her second studio album, The Electric Lady, came out in September 2013 to fanatical and critical acclaim, and demonstrated Monáe’s ability to experiment with genres beyond conventional funk and soul such as jazz, pop-punk, gospel and vocal ballads. Tickets go on sale this Friday, March 7 at Noon and will be available at Ticketmaster.com, Live Nation Box Office (111 Presidential Blvd, Bala Cynwyd), TLA (334 South St., Philadelphia/ Service-charge-free) or by-phone at 800-745-3000.

Just announced: Kurt Vile & The Violators will open for Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds at the Mann July 25th. Stay tuned for a Nick Cave/Kurt Vile @ The Mann giveaway contest!

PREVIOUSLY: If you heard a distant rumble or saw a flash of light on the Northwest horizon last night around 9 p.m., that was Nick Cave, like a bat out of hell, smiting Glenside to a crisp as per his satanic majesty’s request. And it was good. Very good. How could it not be? Everyone knows Heaven has better weather but Hell has all the best bands. Cave looked and sounded in peak form (good hair, great suit, whipped himself about the stage like an electrocuted Elvis), and his voice contained multitudes. Deep, dulcet, and strong like bull. Part angel-headed hipster, part Pentecostal preacherman, part medicine show barker, part lounge singer lothario. All pomade and sweat and jive and Old Testament gravitas. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: Kurt Vile & Sore Eros

PREVIOUSLY: KV Krimes

PREVIOUSLY: BEING THERE: Kurt Vile @ Union Transfer

Photo via FREAKINGNEWS

THE GUARDIAN: After several days of Russian stealth, the move to deploy forces came suddenly and decisively. The Kremlin said Putin wanted troops in Ukraine “until the sociopolitical situation is normalised”. Less than an hour later, in a hastily convened extraordinary sitting of Russia’s Federation Council that was laced with cold war rhetoric, senators voted unanimously to support Putin’s plan, and proposed withdrawing Russia’s ambassador to the US. MORE

BBC: The lightness, the hint of a Kiev spring, the sudden smiles of a week before were already waning. Now the mood is much darker; there is defiance and rage against Moscow and Putin. Just seven days earlier some had dared to speak of “victory”; now the talk is of war. Speaking of Russia’s actions in Crimea, the new Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said “this is the red alert, this is not a threat, this is actually a declaration of war”. All weekend the drumbeat of alarm has grown stronger; the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War. The secretary general of Nato says “peace and security in Europe” is threatened.

The biggest fear is of an accidental war. A miscalculation at a road block or outside a military post could rapidly escalate into conflict. It will be much longer and much bloodier than the five-day war I covered in Georgia in 2008. This time President Putin has moved quickly in Crimea. There is already a new reality on the ground. Pro-Moscow demonstrators in other places are making the same pitch, that they would like Russia’s help. In this moment Putin will be calculating the West’s response and its determination to act. He is not alone. So are the leaders of the protestors, many of whom now sit in government. They are urging states “who guaranteed Ukraine’s integrity to fulfil their obligations” – in particular they are looking to the EU.

The first test of the West’s intention will be Germany. Will Berlin with its special economic relationship with Moscow and its energy dependency be prepared to make a sacrifice to hold Putin’s hand?” To a remarkable degree EU officials championed their cause. They stood shoulder to shoulder with the protestors. They chose to ignore the fact that -tolerate or loathe him – Viktor Yanukovich was an elected leader. They glossed over the significant role played by nationalist groups in the defence of Independence Square. And they were clear with their intentions – “the future of Ukraine belongs with the EU,” said President Van Rompuy. It infuriated Moscow who saw it as a power grab in its own zone of influence. MORE

Click HERE to enlarge

RELATED: Over the course of the past 200 years, a new modern Ukrainian national identity was being forged. At the same time, the dominant Russian ideological narrative has been that Ukrainians are but a (lesser) branch of the Russian nation, that there is no such thing as a distinct Ukrainian language (with Russia nevertheless acting to restrict and ban the use of this language), that Ukraine and Ukrainians as a separate entity are an aberration on Russian territory. For all the absurdity of this view, quite many people in Russia still subscribe to it. Alternatively, others follow the Soviet practice of recognizing ethnic difference but rejecting the possibility of a distinct and uniting Ukrainian civic national identity. This makes Russian colonialist attitude to Ukraine different from the colonialist attitude towards the Caucasus or Central Asia. Their otherness is not disputed when they are treated with racist prejudice. In the case of Ukraine and Ukrainians, there is both condescension from Russia and a refusal to recognize Ukraine as something truly distinct. MORE

FACEBOOOK: There are two historical elements to understand. The first is “Holodomor” which means “death by starvation.” Holodomor was a man-made (Stalin) famine in 1932-33 which targeted Eastern Ukraine. It is estimated that 7-10 million ethnic Ukrainians died from forced starvation. It is one of the greatest tragedies in Ukrainian history. Now, once that part of Ukraine was “cleansed” of ethnic Ukrainians those abandoned homes, farms, villages were re-settled by ethnic Russians (not necessarily willingly – but this was Soviet assimilation). Russification intensified. That means that people in Ukraine, Belarus and other countries were pushed into intense Russian culturization (language, customs, housing, occupations, even clothing and art), all at the expense of their own cultures. Feel free to read this on your own, but its one thing the news hasn’t touched upon and sheds some light on the history of Eastern Ukraine.

Photo by PETE TROSHAK

Zsuzsanna Eva Ward was born in Abington, PA, in the late eighties and spent her youth absorbing her dad’s blues records as well as her brother’s hip-hop albums. Fast forward to 2014 and that little girl has become ZZ Ward, a rising music star with a sound that combines the lyrical and sonic tropes of blues and soul as well as the rhythms of hip hop. Friday night Ward and her tight three-piece band packed the Theatre of Living Arts and thrilled a winter-weary hometown crowd on the opening night of her Last Love Tour. Ward took the stage wearing her trademark low-slung Fedora and a black fuzzy jacket, packing a harmonica, looking part gangster and part blue eyed soul princess. Her voice is a versatile weapon in a live setting, alternately sultry come hither croon and soul-baring blues at the drop of a hat. Ward’s band matched the intensity of her vocals, with extra props going to her bass player who laid down a river of rubbery baselines all set long.

The 15-song set list drew from both her major label debut Til The Casket Drops and Eleven Roses, the online-only demo/mixtape that preceded it. Highlights from the latter included the raw and haunting opening song “OVERdUe” and the thundering “Cinnamon Stix. But it was tracks from Til The Casket Drops that were the most persuaive and convincing. Early in the set, Ward and her band delivered a searing one two punch of piano and guitar fueled stompers “Til The Casket Drops” and “Put The Gun Down.” Later, Ward sounded like she was drowning in a sea of heartache during the rarely played bluesy piano ballad “Lil Darlin.” The highlight of the set was a stunning version of “Last Love Song” that showed why the tour is named after this song. Ward sat on a stool in the middle of the stage with an acoustic guitar on her lap. Her eyes were closed for part of the song as she delicately picked out the spectral guitar notes. Ward’s guitarist manned a keyboard and played the emotive piano notes while the drummer gently played shimmering flourishes on the cymbals with mallets. On top of that wall of sound Ward delivered the vocals –a last goodbye and gentle exorcism of a bad love. The song swelled to a beautiful bridge then rolled to an emotional finish and faded out, leaving the crowd drained but roaring their support. Ward might have had to extinguish that love, but her star is clearly shining bright. – PETE TROSHAK

Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ

Before St. Vincent could take the stage at Union Transfer last night, an announcement was made over the loudspeaker by Microsoft Sam, the voice of Windows text-to-voice app, asking the jam-packed crowd to refrain from the use of any digital recording devices, audibly disappointing the smart phone-wielding hordes, most of whom, we can safely presume, had already figured out what vintage filter they were gonna put on their Annie Clark snaps. The irony of a phone telling humans to put away their funs may or may not have been lost on the crowd. Despite my photo pass, I felt a little guilty watching the opening numbers of the set through a camera lens, especially during “Digital Witness,” which is an indictment of the 21st century mankind’s incurable addiction to technology and social media. When she finally took the stage, Clark looked like a cross between a mad scientist and a baby doll from Hell. Her frizzy haystack of white hair complemented her frilly little ivory dress which was covered in tangles of red fabric — it looked like an adorable display of torn-out intestines on a white tablecloth. Somehow Clark made it work, not unlike the way she makes the combination of sweeping orchestral maneuvers and shrieking, nightmarish art-rock work. Time and again over the course of St. Vincent’s set the audience was reminded just how effortlessly she can shred on guitar while singing like an angelic choir girl. At a few points during the show, Clark moved around the stage like a wind-up toy, and occasionally paused in place to do what seemed to be a graceful interpretive version of The Robot. Her between song banter was charmingly anecdotal and poetic. After tearing it up with her band for 16 songs she exited the stage, only to return for a solo version of Strange Mercy, and then rejoined by her band for an enthralling run through “Your Lips Are Red.” She ended the show with silent gestures of gratitude in the face of loud applause. – MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ

[Set list after the jump]

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Generation X has always seemed the embodiment of Groucho Marx’s dictum about not wanting to join of any club that would have him as a member. That goes double for Stephen Malkmus, Gen X’s aging slacker princeling, son of a Coca Cola middle man, the man Courtney Love called the Grace Kelly of Indie Rock. As leader of Pavement, Malkmus spent the better part of the 90s zigging whenever his fanbase zagged, and the better part of the past decade cranking out the kind of wanky, Asbergerian solo records that scare off women and try men’s souls. The pretty, wryly-observed pop songs of his last two albums, 2011′s Mirror Traffic and the new Wig Out At Jagbags, marks a welcome return to effortless likability. There are two prevailing schools of thought about Malkmus’s prowess as a songwriter. The first holds that Malkmus has a well-earned rep as indie-rock’s great wit, a wry observer of the exigencies of white upper middle class privilege, a Gen. X icon for people who still read dead tree books and blow their disposable income on obscure vinyl pressings of second- and third-tier Krautrock also rans. The second holds he’s just making it up as he goes along, that his song lyrics are nothing more than stream of consciousness babble, inside jokes and stoner logic, and that his true thoughts and emotions remain forever walled off behind a smirking ironic remove.

Back in 2011, I asked him if he thinks his songs really “mean a lot,” or are they mostly just words with the right vowel sounds to carry the melody? “To me, rock lyrics are projection, a revenge fantasy, a fantastical pose, an imagined victory,” he says. “For me, it’s what can I get over on the world, and sometimes it’s just joking around. Humor is important, really important. It’s the only inroad to the mainstream that someone like me could make. As for what songs mean, they’re just words. Nobody knows what they mean.” I asked him why, some 10 years after, Pavement can sell out several-thousand capacity amphitheaters despite a hefty ticket price while the Jicks play rooms a fraction of the size, for a fraction of the price. His response boils down to: What else did you expect? This is the standard downwardly-mobile trajectory of a golden indie-rock career in its second decade. Eventually, your audience grows up, and out of you — or at least out of buying albums and going to shows. Now they go to restaurants. They have kids and mortgages and middle-aged crises to worry about. Plus, there’s more competition these days — music scene’s crazy, bands start up each and every day.

“Young people these days are finding their own bands to identify with,” he says. “I don’t think they are necessarily looking for someone our age.” If you are at or around that Malkmus-ian age, or, contrary to what the man himself thinks, i.e. you are a young person who can identify with the Jicks tip, have we got good news for you. We have a couple pairs of tickets to see Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks at the TLA tomorrow night.  To qualify, all you have to do is sign up for our mailing list (see right, below the masthead). Trust us, this is something you want to do. In addition to breaking news alerts and Phawker updates, you also get advanced warning about groovy concert ticket giveaways and other free swag opportunities like this one! After signing up, send us an email at FEED@PHAWKER.COM telling us a much, with the words JENNY & THE ESS DOG in the subject line. If you are already on our mailing list, just send us an email saying as much. Either way, please include your full name and a mobile number for confirmation. Good luck and godspeed! – JONATHAN VALANIA

STEPHEN MALKMUS & THE JICKS PLAY THE TLA SATURDAY MARCH 1st