On The Case

Thanks to the thoughtfulness of my friend Howard, who manages content for the SOCAN web page (SOCAN = The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canadaóthe people who license performance rights and distribute royalty payments in Canada), I interviewed the one and only Neko Case on Monday night for a short piece that will appear on the organization's web site.

Loyal readers may recall that I have at times in these pages expressed rather intensely positive and supportive views about Ms. Case. But rest assured that I was 100% professional during the interview. Pardon me for a moment...

I HAVE NEKO CASE'S HOME PHONE NUMBER!!! I HAVE NEKO CASE'S CELL PHONE NUMBER!!!

[said in dreamy voice] I'll never wash my right ear again. *sigh*

...ahem...

Where was I? Ah, yes, 100% professional.

[But seriously, of course I would never under any circumstances divulge those numbers to any third parties. Or use them for my own twisted purposes. In fact, I'm chewing up the paper and swallowing it right now. *gulp*. Oh wait, that was my grocery list...]

She was at home in Chicago doing laundry in preparation for a trip to Tuscon the next day. The interview went quite well, except for a place or two where it fell completely flat. One of the reasons SOCAN is doing the piece is because she has retained SOCAN to handle her licensing in Canada, even though she has since gotten bigger internationally, and she could have the American licensing organization ASCAP cover Canada. I asked her about that and she said it was because she was with them first (I assume originating from her days as the drummer in the Vancouver punk band Maow). I said something like "so it's a matter of staying with the one that brung ya", referring to that old saying about leaving the dance with the one "that brung ya", i.e., staying loyal. I could hear crickets chirping. She didn't get the reference at all. I sort of stumbled about a bit trying to explain what I meant, before cutting my losses and moving on to another question. Ugh.

But I think I redeemed myself later. We were discussing what she termed the "cinematic" nature of her latest album Blacklisted, and I was telling her that I likened her song "Deep Red Bells" to a cross between Johnny Cash and David Lynch, and she replied that it was nice to be compared to men for a change.

I scratched the Patsy Cline question off my list.

But it's always nice for me to do a story on an artist that I really like and admire. Better get back to transcribing the tape...