The Kills
WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 2008
LAST DAY OF MAGIC - VIDEO
have you seen it yet????
if not here it is...
vv xx
FRIDAY, MAY 16, 2008
LAST DAY OF MAGIC...
heya
thanks for all the pictures on our album site (www.midnightboom.com), some really cool ones up there that made us smile.
there were lots up there for Last Day of Magic and we wanna see more for that track!! it's going to be our next single.
get them up before 16th June, when the single comes out, and we're gonna pick our favourite.
lucky winner gets special one off framed Last Day of Magic artwork, personalised for you, from us.
hows that???
get to it.
the kills x
TUESDAY, MAY 13, 2008
AMERICA... THE SECOND ENCORE
I should keep up with this better but sometimes i think, i have no mind for it and i just rather write in notebooks nobody opens.
truck stop. sitting here... somewhere between madison and minneapolis. looking forward to the morning now and getting there and getting on the ground and walking on it.
where did i stop then? i think i left you in montreal with a strange look on your face. we got to toronto after that and it was real cool but a couple of things first off.
i finished reading trout fishing in america by richard brautigan. it ended in mayonaise. i didn't expect that. richard brautigan ended his life with a gun to himself, sometime after he ended in mayonaise, and i didn't expect that either. he was a good dresser and a man full of surprises. another 'dead man to love'. i collect them like people do exotic dead butterflies and insects. i stick a pin in them (like
voodoo) and bring them back to life, a kind gesture if i do say so.
and i can only hope that one day someone comes along and sticks a pin in my dead ribcage and admires me for something or other.
more things you don't need to know:
i killed a spider for no good reason with my foot around ten pm that night in toronto. and after i'd done it, i got down on the ground and talked to it, said 'i'm sorry i'm crazy i don't know why i did that'
and i felt real bad and kept on talking getting sick to my stomach looking at it's guts so terribly sad brown mess on the sidewalk and i bet it was just walking by thinking hello bugs for lunch headed home to some web way up somewhere and i had some jealously about this or nervous system blackout terror in me and man i feel really bad about it.
but i had to get to detroit then and there wasn't much more i could say just wished the rain would come and give it a drink or at least the satisfaction of disappearing.
detroit michigan, place where they invented the wheel. the big giant rubber bolder on the side of the highway that's sitting there, sad trophy of better times, since the day i was born and before but when i was a kid it looked bigger and a lot cleaner. since then it's rolled through many soiled minds along interstate 94. and it's grotesque. it needs a bath. well i wave to it, cos i always do, ever since i was small coming up i-94.
NAPKIN MAN
as for the napkin man who did his napkin rounds at the opera, placing neat square stacks of 20-25 on the little round tables dotted around before he turned into trash can man some super hero switch-er-oo next i knew he was emptying bins and carrying out great clear bags of things, mostly bottles and used napkins. and not only this but i seen him sweep the floor with great attention to detail and the floor turned from dark to light. after, i seen him sit down on a broken chair in the basement and adjust his cap and cross his skinny legs and light a marlboro red like it was the sweetest life saving necter of the most singularly wonderful peach fallen from the only peach tree on the moon, and he sighed hard. then a boy come up who'd missed all i'd seen and said, "hey sir can i get a cigarette?"
well, napkintrashcansweeperman, with no humor or happiness on his long drawn now sadder face, reached into his levi's and produced a cigarette sure thing thinking 'boy you don't have a clue where i been or what i do or did all day cleaning your slop, moving such dirt, supplying your fingers with soft paper to clean them and if i had any voice left, energy that is, i'd say NO, sure as the sun's coming up sooner than i wish it would.' but he couldn't, so he didn't and the boy smoked the naplintrashcansweeperman's cigarette and the only solace n.t.c.s.m got was that, that particular cigarette didn't come from the last peach tree on the moon. It came from just an ordinary gas station.
in detroit i met jackson smith, and i had a few drinks and i said 'one time i met your mom and i was nervous and i introduced myself and she looked right passed me or through me or something along those lines and i sat across the table and i wanted to crawl right under it'. well he went home and told his mom what i said and called me up the next day and told me he told her so, and that she wanted to call and apologize. well my heart just stopped on what ever road we were going down and i thought to myself, i shall shut my mouth more often.
when i got my beat back and my lungs and my legs i got to thinking how cool that was and how silly i am, and maybe in the future i should just pack a portable table to carry around and crawl under.
.... off to benton harbor to see bill and jessica and fern and rose at the studio. could be, most definitely, my favorite place on earth and it's nothing i can ever explain properly to anyone. but you know how it is, a place where your brain kind of opens up like an old dam and you feel kinda magic and long and tall and strong and bizarre and your vocabulary changes and your mind bends over backwards and you become something better than you normally are... and you think, the world is good and people are good, much better than they normally are... and you feel young and new and not so twisted or worried or scattered on the lawn in front of a bunch of idiots who step on you walking out on the way to their cars... i just don't know if i can explain it, probably shouldn't try. but it was a good night and i laughed so hard i had tears in my eyes and stomach knives and i slept good that night too because i felt home and my dreams were rich like oil paintings, unlike the photocopied ones i get in the hotel chains.
i like chicago because it's got spots and cracks and blood shot eyes, real honesty. we played the metro and loitered in its alley and saw cats. bob and elizabeth turned up from new york and bob was wearing great shoes. earlier in the day we did a radio show and spun records.
we played captain beefheart, moondog, townes van zandt, fugazi, the staple singers, bad brains and the sniveling shits. and then we got connected via the jungle from bogota columbia, to andrew loog oldham in his condo... which he claims is in a the middle of a safer sort of jungle...Do such jungles exist? well he certainly is a misfit soul, and a brilliant and wonderful mind. what grace that man has... his recollections and story telling are better than any dream i might of fished up, or any clairvoyant encyclopedic persona i might of met.
the details he delivers come most impressively, in painterly strokes.
but most moving are the emotions he remembers of a time i missed having been then unborn, but always felt i was some how connected to, conceived from, part of, in heart at least. and we were charmed and honored to hear his voice coming down the line and to speak with him for a wonderful hour. i could have sat there talking and listening for days on end. he put me in a trance i liked him so much.
madison wisconsin isn't just a college town. there's a costume shop there too. i bought a hat and a fist full of feathers and made that hat some kind of art on the head and walked down to petes book shop or pauls and bought a couple of books i was looking for, but couldn't for the life of me find a bowling trophy in the right size.
so i changed GEMINI'S horoscope in the coffee shop over the road and it went like this:
GEMINI: it's an excellent time to make yourself magnetic. experiment with good luck charms or magic. attract your life. the potion is popular, cooked up from vulture bones. or jewelry advertised in the tabloids. a necklace made of chunks? always keep a diamond in your mind. (second best to a bowling trophy, when and where you can't find
one.)
but i like what don van vliet said best. STARS ARE MATTER, WE'RE MATTER. IT DOESN'T MATTER.
well madison, you were sweet as pie and we ate one meal and half during our stay and it rained a little bit on the pages of our books.
the next morning i noticed a small amount of rust on the scissors but i scratched it off. and we headed west to minneapolis and arrived early in the afternoon. it wasn't far on the map or in reality. took a taxi to another radio station and played venus in furs on an acoustic guitar too early in the day for it to take much shape and i was incredibly thirsty and had to cough. later we played at the triple rock to a full house and it was hot and we were sweating and i messed up a song, just stopped right in the middle of it and said sorry, haven't played this one in 3 years, maybe i should wait 3 more. tonight was our last night with telepathe. they packed their car so full of stuff. i hope it doesn't sink in the pavement. they're headed back to new york then on to england. we're headed to vancouver. we miss you.
and i miss sleeping. haven't done much of it lately. we're gonna be on this bus for the next 48 hours... so maybe i got time.
bye, alison
xx
TUESDAY, MAY 06, 2008
AMERICA, THE FIRST ENCORE...
so we arrive at newark airport and our driver greats with a sense of humor, tries to break jamie's finger. accident of course. manhattan is beautiful, my face stuck to the window, suctioned, beaming, i love this city like nothing else... the way the buildings loom, the traffic noise, the gut wrenching smell of the crazies the freaks and all the perfection that marches along, carelessly, cooly... i love new york city. im never here long but i could stay.
our first night, at the chelsea hotel, my mother, my aunt, and my brother all in town and i dine with them and find a roach in my salad at a little spot in the east villiage. still love new york. i almost throw up, run to have a cigarette, have no lighter, no american money for one, no one in the street can help me, run into a restaurant steal a candle off a table, back outside, light cigarette, heaven. i still love new york.
next day we play conan o'brien. best part is watching conan rehearse all day, playing a guitar, reading thru cards, cool and collected, in a suede jacket, current events, cartoons of acid pools, little songs... i drink coffee and get more nervous, get make-up and find a feather vest, get my shit together, family in audience, ahhhhh... and then we play for 3 minutes, after being there 6 hours... and it's fun, really fun, and conan does that thing at the end where he comes up and introduces himself and talks talks talks... and he said to me, "my two and half year old steals all my guitar picks," and out of strange nerves i stick the pick i'm holding in my mouth and then offer it to him. what? yeah, i know... but i felt weird and the guy is like 7 1/2 feet tall and has a lot of tv make-up on and i felt a little out of sorts.... and we talked about bob dylan and don't look back, the film, and hofner guitars and germany and way too many topics in the span of a minute in a half.
want a pick covered in saliva? who doesn't.
anyhow, the next night we were in boston. and we loved it. at least they fixed that stage at the paradise, cos the last time we were there the thing was like an ice skating rink and i was sliding around like a crazy woman, chasing my mic stand all over the stage. it was a bit more... um... grippy this time. and the crowd were lovely... a happy bunch... and had fun... and then drove straight back to new york and checked back into the chelsea hotel. victor at the chelsea told me an interesting thing... about the tar on the roads all over manhattan and how ... when it's hot, you breathe in that tar and it's a million times worse than smoking cigarettes... and everyone knows this... well... the road people know this... but no one does anything about it... and we're all dying, slowly... from standing in the streets of manhattan. but i still love new york.
that day we did a photo shoot on our tour bus with annie leibovitz, the goddess of photography. ive rarely enjoyed a photo shoot so much. yeah it was american vogue and it got a bit... uh, serious at times, but she didn't... she just made us laugh and chain-smoke and lounge around on the bus like touring corpses ( true to life ) and chatted to us... yes we asked endless questions about her mind-blowing career and she was ultimately happy to share. she's certainly one in a million. i can't wait to see the pictures.
that night we played our new york gig at webster hall... which all appeared to be in order, till sound-check when i noticed bits of plaster board were falling from the ceiling every time the low end got going. then stuart lupton walked in the door. someone had told us he'd disappeared off the face of the earth. he had a guitar and a little mexican poncho and a stack of lyrics in his hand. so we put him on the bill that night. The spirit kid.
i went back to the chelsea after that and had hideous day dreams of the ceiling crashing down on a full house and did all the voodoo wishing imaginable in my little room to stop that from happening. it didn't happen thankfully. but 5 songs into the set, the building caught fire. you can not imagine my surprise, or lack there of, as i'd had the death destruction chaos feeling rattling through my bones all day... so when i turned around to get my guitar for alphabet pony and nearly ran into the very large fireman in reflective over-alls with helmet and extinguisher and all that, i shrieked... and then laughed. jamie reckoned the guy was up there for a strip tease. we were out of it, lost in what we were doing... we hadn't smelled the smoke or seen the flames in the ceiling above our heads. we had to stop. fire trucks lined the street, shoots and ladders all over the place, fire men were up in the rafters, crawling around the venue. the audience stood and waited. jamie and i went backstage for 20 minutes... feeling a little bit mental. and then the fire department made an announcement over the mic. i heard a fireman scream something about rock and roll! the fire is out! guess that was our cue. we went back out and finished the set. easily my favorite show of the year.
we had a little after party that night and chatted to friends and all that. i sloped off back to the chelsea with my brother and soon after fell asleep. i didn't want to be wrecked for dc... i was already nervous about it.
it took half a day to leave the chelsea hotel. the bus got stuck in traffic so i stood on the sidewalk all morning with victor and we talked about new york, about the ever changing state of the hotel, about the residents, the gossip, street tar and gasoline. he's like my cnn. he sees and hears all... we stand there giving directions to lost people, wish happy weddings, comment on the passers by, and this passes time. victor's a real star. the bus is stalled out in new jersey...
and we're late to dc. but everything in dc runs late so this is fine. and i spend most of the evening sitting in the back lot smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and writing. everyone at the black cat is awesome. i love this venue. i love this town. it's been forever since we've been here. and all was good until i met john who said everyone thought i used to be on heroin cos i was too thin... and he was drunk, sure, but i wasn't, and you don't go up to a woman you don't know, and say she used to be on heroin and that it's good to see she's put on weight.... because it's just rude and weird... and i'm only recounting this story so that if you, john, ever read this... this is like a tip ok, if you're trying to chat up a woman, best find a new angle, cos you made me want to run. sure you meant well and all that... but seriously... not good.
on the up side, and there were many that night... the gig was fun, the sound was good, and my teenage hero of all time... biggest inspiration in my musical career, man that made me want to play music in the first place.... guy picciotto from fugazi turned up and of course, it made my evening, erased all evils and upsets, all johns out there... the world was good again. Guy is a genius and if i could tap into even an ounce of the kool that he's got... sure as hell i could flap my arms and fly.
so i left dc... happy and couldn't sleep as we made our way to philadelphia... johnny brendas... and a radio show where we spent most of the afternoon. i suddenly started getting sick. sore throat. flu.... fever... not how i'd planned things. the gig that night was tres difficile. i couldn't really sing, sounded like some jumbled rock n roll tune, sounded like dead tongues. nick was feeding me tea from the sidelines. my head was on fire. my throat was all but closed. whatever voodoo horse i'd been riding, sat down to nap and left me losing.
and then we had a long long drive to montreal and a canadian border to get through. i had a special outfit for this journey, which i wore for the entirety of the trip... my poncho and flannel, red silk pajamas, black moccasins and good luck charms... a little something to woo the cops and dogs...
my imagination was all desperate and twisted by now, my fever so high, got the chills, got the shakes, my eyes felt like they were going to pop out of my skull... and i've been waiting for this montreal gig for ages. i love montreal. when i was a kid... well i wasn't much of a kid, i was 18, but still.... i was in montreal the summer of 98 and i went walking down the street... day one, out the hotel, down the block, came upon a marquee, FUGAZI 21 JULY, sat square down in front of the ticket office till it opened, bought tickets, and the next night i saw the gig that totally changed my life. like perched on the top of a pyramid i could see for miles, i could go on forever, but i hold that night so dear it hurts.... and i have never been quite the same since.
well we did the montreal show in all it's glory last night and i made it through on some cold and flu meds which made me rather chatty... and anyone who's ever seen us play knows i don't say much at all when i'm stage... aside from hello, thank you and goodbye. last night i couldn't shut up, nor could i feel my legs... and i had a real good time.
and today, we have off... so i go walking and i think to myself, i'm gonna track down that venue i went to in 1998 and im gonna stand outside the ticket office for a second just for kicks... so i look it up on the map and i make my way downtown, pick up a black felt hat from a costume shop on my way, nice lady, wasn't supposed to sell it to me cos it was one of those rental places but "what the fuck," she said, so yeah, i'm walking got my hat on and i get to the cross streets i'm looking for and i look around and it takes about half a minute till i realize the venue's been demolished. so much for my pilgrimage.
in other news, i went down to the underground city to see how the underground people were doing... and they're still selling crack in the metro so it's nice nothing's changed. but my big mission today was to find one of montreal's old photobooths. in 98 they were in almost every metro station... now there's only a few. but there's a haunted one at McGill. and i don't lie. i took a photo of myself and a picture of a man came out in an indian head-dress... my pic was stuck to the back of his but my face had been obliterated. i will scan these in and show you when i get somewhere i can do that. until then, let your imagination run wild. and hey im sorry these stories are coming to you sans picture... but i tried using a digital camera for about a month for this reason alone, and sorry, i hate it... so be patient cos i'd rather show you real photos that look good and feel good and all that.
au revoir, from Montreal.
- 15 Aug 09 - 20:00 - Route du Rock Festival - Saint Malo, France
