[dazedcola]

Pitchfork: I was just going to ask about that. What brought that on? From what I've read in other interviews, it seems like you did it because you liked the sound of the languages.

KD: Absolutely. So I'm in the four-track, and I've got this simple riff [sings riff] on my guitar, and of course, now I gotta grab the microphone. I think it sounds cool, so I've got to sing something over it. I know that I want to sing German on top of it. It's just going to sound cooler. So I figured out the words that I would like to sing, and I knew that I wanted this silly, kind of simple riff that's kind of middling. It has no high frequency or low. It's just this taut, tense thing that continues on, relentless! [Sings riff] I knew that that would be a cool place to put Wagnerian harmonies of me and Kelley, these harmonies in German that go [sings gibberish German] whatever, and I knew that I wanted to stop in the song so that I could say "und so weiter."

Pitchfork: Which means what?

KD: "And so on...and so on" in German. I knew I wanted all that, so we just had to get all the words together, and then I learned how to sing them in German.

Pitchfork: And I heard you actually sought out a German professor or expert?

KD: Well, you know, my idea was to just go on the computer, and just like, see what the translation thingermajob does. So we did that, but it doesn't really work in the lyric world of having to come up with phrases and having the pronunciation problems. So we kind of sat on this song, thinking, "Yeah, I can kind of hear the lyrics in English, but I don't even think this song will work-- I'm not going to feel cool doing it unless it's in German." So it just sat around. And then Kelley calls me and says, "Hi! We're meeting with Elka. She's a German instructor at the college nearby." So we went to her house, and she helped us with the lyrics, how to say this and that. "Ich lebe hier." "Ich lebe hier" means "I live here."

Pitchfork: Was this woman a fan of yours at all?

KD: Oh god, no.

Pitchfork: Has she heard the song?

KD: No, she hasn't yet. I wanted to play it to her, because I wanted to check on the pronunciation, but she had gone out of the country for a little bit. She's still here; she only lives a few blocks away. I want to give her a copy. But we had a German bus driver on the Pixies tour, so I played him the track. But he's German, so instead of going, "Yeah, yeah, sounds good, I think you did a good job," he said, "Um, yes. There are many mistakes." [laughs]

Pitchfork: Did you fix those mistakes, or did you figure most people wouldn't notice?

KD: Well, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm German. That's not the point, is it? That's not funny. Being so rude that I sound German is, I mean, not [just] not funny, but also not true. So there's nothing funny or even interesting about that, because it's just absolutely not true. Also, do you know when somebody's singing something, and they're foreign, so it sounds cool when they're singing English? They don't quite get it, so it sounds cool, right? So I would think that me singing in German but obviously not being very German would sound pretty cool!

But then him and his fräulein co-bus-person-- because you need two bus drivers in Europe, that's the law if you go over a certain amount of miles-- anyway, it was some woman, and they began talking in German and kind of giggling as they listened. And I'm like, "No, seriously, I'm not saying, like, 'Did I spill green Jell-O on my foot?' I'm saying it correctly." And I knew I was because a German told me how to do it, so you know they're going to be quite precise.

And then they started saying, "Licht, licht, licht...light, light, light. Now, you say 'licked', and they would probably say that maybe in Berlin, hahaha." I guess that's funny that Berlin might say that. I guess it should be more "leecht" with an "ee." Instead of a soft "e," it should have been a hard "e."

Pitchfork: So they just thought it was a total joke?

KD: And so I laughed, and laughed, and laughed! [laughs]
Pitchfork: What was performing at the Second City event like?

Kim Deal: Well they do 24-hour marathons for underprivileged children in Chicago. I guess Steve [Albini] and Heather [Whinna] run the charity thing, and Heather manages Second City. So the people who do comedy at Second City, they do improv for 24 hours straight. And they have guests! Like, Jeff Tweedy always kicks it off, and [there are] auctions throughout the 24-hour period. Like, he [Tweedy] auctioned performing at a person's house, and they can invite 10 or 12 or 14 of their friends over, and that went for a certain price, $20,000 or something like that. And they ended up raising $80,000 for the whole 24-hour period!

Pitchfork: You performed with your sister Kelley, right?

KD: Yeah, me and Kelley. We flew up there. Heather asked me two years ago when I was on tour in Japan, with the Pixies. And then last year, me and Kelley and the Breeders were up at Steve Albini's studio, and I hadn't been home to my mother's-- it was my mother's birthday so it didn't seem cool to do. So I brought it up this year, and I said to Heather, "Hey guess what, this year we can do the charity [event]!"

Pitchfork: So did you and Kelley just do an acoustic set? You didn't do any improv, did you?

KD: We did a-- okay, Albini was there. Like, Shellac played last year, but he's not very Jim Croce, so they weren't there, [but] he wanted to contribute somehow. So at 1:00 [a.m.], me and Kelley started asking him questions-- we did a question and answer period. And it's just a help so, like, the people who are doing improv can go to the bathroom, [the audience has] somebody new to talk to, there's somebody actually in the club then, that kind of thing. So we started at 1:00, and me and Steve and Kel asked questions, and then the improv people came back on, and me and Kelley did a couple of songs at 3:30, and then the improv people came back on-- well, anyway, me and Kelley ended up leaving at 7:00 in the morning.

Pitchfork: Oh, wow.

KD: Yeah. No drugs. I thought I was gonna die.