Breeders – "Cannonball" (1993)

Crash!

I'm the last splash

I have two wonderful daughters who just happen to be identical twins, so I’m always interested in reading stories involving twins.

My twins were married seven weeks apart.  One of them had a baby boy – my first grandchild – last July, while the other is due to deliver a boy in January.  That’s an 18-month age difference, which is pretty close.

But not as close as two 34-year-old identical twins from Cape Cod, whose first babies were born only 20 hours apart last month.

Rebecca Pistone and Rachael McGeoch have always loved being twins.  They wanted their children to be close to the same age, which they thought would be the next best thing to having a twin.

Pistone and McGeoch – or
maybe it's McGeoch and Pistone.

From the Cape Cod Times:

Pistone and her husband, William “Todd” Pistone, were married in 2016 and began trying to conceive their first child soon after, McGeoch said.

After several months with no success, Pistone suggested that McGeoch stop her birth control as well, in case it would also take her sister some time to become pregnant.

(It sounds like McGeogh just consulted with her sister – not the prospective father – before deciding to go off birth control and become pregnant.  That was my wife’s approach as well.)

Within a few weeks, McGeoch learned she was pregnant and immediately called her sister.

“You’re supposed to be pregnant first, I’m just supposed to be waiting,” McGeoch said.  “You have to take a test.”

To their surprise, Pistone learned she, too, was pregnant, and the sisters’ due dates were just 13 days apart.

But McGeoch ended up delivering her son William at 10:41 pm on August 15, while her twin – who was assigned a hospital room that was next door to her sister’s – gave birth to her daughter Andi at 6:54 pm the following evening.

William and Andi – or
maybe it's Andi and William

Pistone’s husband is named William, as is McGeoch’s fiancé.  (I’m so old that I remember when women got married before they had babies.) 

The twins’ father is also named William.  (Cue the Twilight Zone theme music.)  But his nickname was “Andy.”

So the names of both babies honor their grandfather, which is exactly as it should be.

Shortly after little William and Andi were born, McGeoch and her fiancé bought a house on the same Cape Cod lake where the Pistones live.  So the two cousins will grow up as neighbors – which is also exactly as it should be.

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“Cannonball” may be the best song ever recorded by a group whose members included identical twins.

Kim Deal was the original bass guitarist for the Pixies.  (Kim had never played the bass before joining the Pixies, but she was the only person who responded to the band’s classified ad seeking a bass player who was a fan of both Peter, Paul and Mary and Hüsker Dü.)  

Her identical twin Kelley was asked to be the drummer for the Pixies, but she chose to move to California and pursue a career as a computer programmer instead.

Kim and Kelley Deal – or
maybe it's Kelley and Kim Deal

A few years after Kim left the Pixies and formed the Breeders, she asked Keeley to be the band’s drummer.  Kelley wanted to be the lead guitarist, although she barely knew how to play the guitar.  I guess Kim couldn’t say no to her twin sister, so she taught Kelley how to play the lead parts.

Today’s featured song was released in 1993 on the band’s second and most successful studio album, Last Splash.  (Is it really possible that “Cannonball” is almost 25 years old?)

I can’t explain why “Cannonball” is a great record, but it is.  I have no idea what the lyrics mean – assuming they mean anything – and the musical structure of the song is elementary.  (It consists of a couple of good riffs, some feedback, and not much else, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.)

Here’s the music video for “Cannonball”) which was directed by our old friend, Spike Jonze):

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: