Monday, April 16, 2007

Open Letter to Frank Black

We were asked to cover The Pixies' "Break My Body" for an upcoming tribute record. It seems natural that Ivan would sing it since it's Frank singing lead on the original, but I think I should sing it! If Ivan sings "Break my body, hold my bones," it's one thing. But I think if I sing it...
The bottom line is: This is a woman's song!

Okay, open letter to Frank Black:

Frank,
Do you think it is possible that you wrote this song for a woman? "I'm a belly dancer" isn't even the only thing I'm talking about here. Frank, just let me know if you don't want me to sing it. No, don't do that. I really want to do it. Or try it at least. If it sounds horrible, I'll let Ivan sing it after all. And also, do you eat sushi? I want to take you out to dinner. Or you take me out to dinner because there's a good place called Waraji here in Raleigh. But they have other stuff too if you don't eat sushi.
Love,
Kelly

Ivan among his people


In Moscow we saw a news article in a local paper about our show and it was in Russian so I couldn't read it but I kept seeing the names "Kelly Crisp" and "John Howard" in the standard English alphabet. And I realized, they've translated Ivan's name from it's Russian form into it's English form. Funny.
After the show, a group of people were calling to Ivan to come over and one said, "What is your name!?" And Ivan said, "My name is Ivan." They all looked so baffled. Then the guy said, "Write it. Write it." He gave Ivan a piece of paper and Ivan wrote his name and showed it to them and they all laughed and said, "EEEEVONNN! It's Russian!"