If you can believe it, I went all the way to New York and didn’t even visit ground zero. You would think that my generally morbid fascination with such things would draw me to it almost immediately, not to mention my many friends who asked me to take pictures of the site where the double phallus landmark symbol of capitalist superiority used to stand, but I didn’t go there. I actually got pretty close to it, which I could tell by an increasing police presence on every corner but more obviously by the smell in the air. It was nothing putrid or totally unbearable, just the scent of smoke, like a house fire after it has been put out, only stronger and unmoved by the blustery wind whipping around Manhattan on this unusually warm winter day. For some reason I decided against getting a closer view, some unexplainable feeling deterred me. I probably just didn’t want to look like a ghoulish tourist or seem insensitive to the tragedy by snapping photos and gawking or worse yet, emoting gratuitously. You know, often I am given the opportunity to meet a famous person like a musician or a television personality and I usually decline because I get nervous and tongue-tied and likely because deep down I think I like to keep the distance, so as not to spoil the mystique surrounding the celebrity In a way I felt like that about ground zero. It’s not like I’m a fan of total terrorist destruction and massive loss of human lives, but I bet we’ve seen more of ground zero on television than syndicated reruns of I Love Lucy this fall and winter season. Airtime somehow equated to star-power, making the WTC site one giant television star I ultimately declined meeting face to face, and I Hate Lucy. I still find it curious that I was really close but didn’t do it. Something just said don’t. As for the rest of New York, it was one gigantic, incredibly charged open invitation of a city to just dive into and explore as much of as I could fit into four short days. I quickly saw what they mean when people call New York “The city that never sleeps.” Corner stores and some restaurants just never shut down and there seems to be some degree of life on the streets at all hours. I found the fast-paced energy level combined with the coast to coast flight jet-lag more than adequately exhausting to deliver me to my bed….but just that one time.
The main reason for this trip was of course to catch Kiki and Herb’s Xmas show A Stranger in The Manger, running through the rest of the year, 5 nights a week and it was already sold out completely, save for the new years eve show which is going to be a special theme where the duo turns back the hands of time to 1967, just before Kiki lost her darling daughter Coco, left unattended on the deck of a yacht in the french riviera. Coco will actually be joining her mother onstage that night for a duet of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for Kiki and Herb’s New Years Eve at The Blood Red Casino. Coco will be played by the inimitable Kathleen Hanna of the incredibly popular synth-pop trio Le Tigre and formerly the magnificent voice behind the legendary band Bikini Kill—who recorded quite possibly one of the greatest punk rock releases of all time in 1993, a seven inch single with the songs “New Radio”, “Rebel Girl”, and “Demi-Rep.” Hanna is a long time fan of Kiki and Herb’s and they’ve opened for Le Tigre a few times over the past two years. Sounds like it could be quite a closing night and New Year’s Eve celebration, perhaps as exciting as New Year’s Eve on the SS Poseidon. No matter how you look at it, someone drowns before its over. As Kiki says, “Ladies and Gentlemen…people die, that’s all you need to know.”
The two nights that I caught their show while in New York were quite astonishing and in some ways very different than past shows; not a departure from form so much as an extremely deep mining into the depths of the souls and booze drenched philosophies of these two characters created by Justin Bond and Kenny Mellman almost a decade ago. Many of the song choices were a bit on the more sensitive and obscure side, including an old Dan Fogelberg song, “Another Auld Lang Syne” that with a bit of re-working was seemingly autobiographical for Kiki, dealing with her reunion with her daughter Miss D who was taken away from her by Childrens Services Division. It was actually one of the more oddly moving songs of the show. Another great but more somber song was an original by Stephen Merrit of the Magnetic Fields written especially for Kiki and Herb about how beautiful New York is when it snows. Considering the fact that they haven’t had any snow to speak of this winter, the song had a sort of melancholy feel to it but it’s a beautiful song and then right near the end comes a menacing line about “if someone were to flatten all of manhattan” and then the resounding line of the chorus, “Have you seen it when it snows?” I noticed a few people in tears at that point but don’t get the wrong idea. This wasn’t simply a sentimental journey. Kiki’s meandering between song anecdotes were more pointedly rabidly political than I’ve ever noticed before. She left almost no stone unturned, riffing on our “moron for a president”, foreshadowing the sublime way the administration is steadily whitling away at our civil rights while everyone is all caught up in the grief or worry or patriotism of retalitory military actions leading towards victory. Victory? What victory? “Now the women of afghanistan can bare their face publicly so the men of afghanistan can see who they’re raping!”
Among a small variety of props on stage was a little ornamental white dove, or the Dove of Peace, a symbol of diplomacy and unity that had internalized so much of the worlds woes it had developed a brain tumor, not to mention the voice of a crow, and when kiki took a seat on the small wet bar center stage it appeared that something was iritating her in that princess and the pea way. She couldn’t get comfortable but finally pulled the object that was causing the discomfort out from under her. “Look ladies and gentlemen, it’s baby Jesus!” She eventually put the tiny savior face down behind her saying, “I don’t want to hear a peep out of you, I don’t care if you are the saviour there’s only one star in this manger and that’s Kiki.” A bit later she picked up baby jesus and said, “You better stay away from bethlehem this year, Jesus.”
The outrageous and shocking comments were far too many to list and ultimately kept the crowd in stitches but then I began to realize something about the appeal of Kiki and Herb in general. Performers can shock audiences pretty easily and many have for years, that is not uncommon or difficult. But Kiki and Herb seem to have accomplished a rare combination of both shocking the crowd as well as moving them to tears or a genuine emotional response with their melodramatic yet intensely human life experiences. This was especially compounded by kiki’s astute political views, expressed through a very stream-of-consciousness process like a journey unfolding in a skewed uniquely Kiki way yet resounding with an ultimate clarity and truthfullness that was undeniable. Freak that she is, Kiki knows the score and she tells it when others are afraid to. It’s emotionally liberating. It prompted a suggestion from Kenny Mellman’s mother that Kiki and Herb should be performing this act out on the street corner to the people who could use a dose of clarity in this odd miasma of Christmas, war time, and creeping insidious fascism of our second Bush administration.
One of the best musical moments in their show came with a firey brilliant interpretation of the current Mary J. Blige hit “No More Drama,” in which the vocal interplay between the duo was never more brilliantly arranged and performed, gradually building up to a screaming, gravelly crescendo of soulful fervor that I’m certain Mary J. would have approved of, Kiki down on her knees throwing her entire being into a great song that they so completely inhabited it could have been written for this show. It was breathtaking. It should also not go unsaid that Herb (Kenny Mellman) has become insanely skillful over the years but how does one improve upon what I’ve always felt was one of the most instinctual and pure examples of musical genius I’ve ever known? Steady live performance has built upon an already enormous talent, it always does. He continually proves himself as an original, handling varietal styles in his own way from subtle additions as faint as a whisper to manic bombastic and thunderous attacks that one night sent a piano wire flying from the white baby grand. Kenny also has naturally grown into a more vocal performer as well, singing a solo intro and an entire song during a costume change. His proud and wonderful parents, whom I had the pleasure of sitting with at the show one night, excitedly informed me that next month Kenny will be playing a solo show for a change of pace.
On the one day that I set out on foot to see some of New York I just by chance happened upon a record store that I occasionally order things from by mail. It’s called Other Music and they specialize in rarites, reissues, and a huge selection of international esoterica, trance, electronic, prog rock, soundtracks and on and on. Oh yeah, they are also the only record store where Kiki and Herb’s album from last year, Do You Hear What We Hear, a delightful christmas record is available for sale. As a matter of fact it was the number one selling CD in the store for the past two months. Judging by the amount of folks in and out of there while I dug through the whole store I sense that might be a significant number.
I’ve left myself barely any room to say much more about New York but actually it was a very short visit and the high lights were simple. I tried Krispy Kreme donuts at long last, I smoked in bars just like the old days, I went to a bath house just like the even more old days, I returned from the baths to the quaint gay owned and operated hotel I stayed at in Chelsea to learn that my chosen place of lodging actually functioned in a fashion quite similar to the baths, I proceeded to meet many fascinating people staying there, I took a walk around Times Square, happened upon a fourth anniversary party at a bar called The Cock where Lady Bunny did an absolutely fithy little number followed by the sexiest go go dancers I’ve ever seen which made me ask myself, “Do we even have go go dancers in SF anymore?”, I saw huge rats scurrying across streets late at night, I never once got pan handled or felt in the presence of danger, I saw Robyn Byrd’s late night smutty homo show, caught all the big depasrtment store christmas windows, ran into real live christmas carrolers outside my hotel and at JFK airport I was forced to remove my shoes at security then run like crazy tripping on my laces to catch my flight home. I had a great trip and will visit again soon.