Dispatches From Vaudeville
The Vaudeville Tour comes full circle.
Seattle. Arospace is the best club of the tour. Great flier, and a fabulous backstage, like some sort of Warhol basement. Steven Zeeland comes down and talks about the joys of sexual confusion.
Momus and Toog do their very best to put Steven's theories into practice. Does a kilt count as a military uniform?
Minneapolis. Gilles knows the Walker Art Gallery curator Philippe Vergne from his days in Marseilles, so we head there. I'm delighted to find a caravan by one of my favourite architects, Joep Van Lieshout, parked in the grounds.
Momus impersonates David Byrne impersonating Whistler's Mother in the Walker Center. God, art is complicated.
As we wait to perform a couple of songs on the college radio station, the frisky Toog lies on his back, invites Kahimi to sit on his upturned feet, then launches her into the air. On landing, she breaks the heel off her new boots. She will perform for the rest of the tour with one heel missing.
KK doesn't seem to like the word FAKE on Momus's guitar. Whenever she plays it she mixes up the letters so it says EKAF or KAFE. Momus promptly puts them back so they spell FAKE again.
Stalwart of alt.fan.momus, this is the Victorian Squid.
And this is Dymaxia. When Momus sings the line (from the Sean Krueger marriage song) 'I'd do it all again with anyone', he reaches out for the hand of an audience member. He is rather thrown when this girl in a bright jacket doesn't take his hand. 'Except you!' he snaps. Later he discovers it was Dymaxia. The mock battle continues: Dymaxia sticks her tongue out at Momus when he takes her picture. He forgets to thank her for the Turned On Joplin tape she sent him and the Bruce Haack recommendation (Bruce Haack has been the soundtrack to this tour, in the van and before each show). Thanks, Ms D!
Kahimi Karie (later described by Time Out New York as 'something of a schlump in neutral coloured turtlenecks') lives up to the false image of her as a fashion conscious 'burriko' (a fake child-woman, Lolita or ingenue) by dressing up as a Cutie girl in clothes borrowed from Momus (a true burriko).
Detroit. Matt Magistery's home town. He takes us to art school Cranbrook College, where the ghosts of the Eames still roam.
Magical Matt Jacobson. When we visit his house his dad (also a magician) embarrasses him by showing us videos of Matt doing magic acts on TV aged 12.
Later Magical Matt saws Kahimi clean into three. She doesn't seem to mind.
We go pedal boating behind Matt's very loungecore house (light, white and easy).
We go roller skating. Play Crazy Taxi with the skates still on our feet. Mario and Rose from Shoestrings are rather good at it. Toog meanwhile is brandishing a pink pistol.
Waiting for work visas at the Canadian Embassy in Detroit. Brecht once said 'A human being is more easily made than a passport'.
We play at a cute little club in Waterloo, Canada. It's all rough-hewn stones and bohos, and an artist sketches at the front. Kahimi signs her portrait.
Toronto. Despite living in Montreal as a teen, Momus has never been here before. He approves of the hipsters on Queen Street and checks out the City TV car lot on the way to an interview at Virtually Canadian.
And speaking of Canadian teens, here's Liane Balaban, 19, actress, journalist and radio presenter extraordinaire, on the way to Montreal to sing a duet with Momus on the new Bran Van 3000 album. To while away the five hour train trip they write a silly story about a sex-crazed octopus and sign an even sillier marriage oath. (If you're reading, Liane, I meant every word.)
James from Bran Van, whose studio is on Montreal's Boulevard St Laurent. The street is kind of like Bran Van's music: very mixed, very funky, very cosmopolitan. And very long! By the time Momus and Liane have added their singing to Eek A Mouse's rap, the track's up to eight minutes! James promises to sculpt it down for the album, due in spring 2000.
'Purse my lips, touch me there with a feather
Better take an umbrella, what terrible weather...'
Nick, what is this song about?
Momus buys an iBook and an iBeetle.
Kahimi takes the wheel for the drive from Montreal to New York, but her manager intervenes saying 'I don't want to die!'
New York. The Fez Club feels even more like home with Kiki and Herb performing a Christmas Show. They even do their version of 'I Was A Maoist Intellectual'!
Momus in the Lotus Club Cafe, Clinton Street. Anyone hear of any cheap sublets around here?
Kahimi, exhausted. Now she has to record with Arto Lindsay before heading for Athens Georgia and a collaboration with Olivia Tremor Control.
Momus, exhausted, back in Paris, crashing at Toog's place. In just three days they're due in Berlin for the Sterne Fur Immer Tour.
Part One was here.
Part Two was here.
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