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Monday, December 19, 2005

The Immortal Kiki & Herb

Posted by on December 19 at 10:12 AM

For anyone who missed Kiki & Herb on Saturday night at the Moore, here’s the latest: they are immortal. Kiki broke the news early on in the first act that a certain cow of theirs (on tour with them now) was in the manger and ate the after-birth of Jesus, and then they, two peasant locals, drank the cow’s milk, and, well, they’ve been living ever since. In one new addition to her life story, Kiki talked about getting cancer in the 80s and forcing herself to sweat it out with an electric blanket and a bottle of vodka — she had to get rid of it because, as she put it, “Ladies and gentlemen, imagine living forever with a terminal disease.” Brilliant.

This development also makes their cover of the Mountain Goats’s “No Children” all the funnier (Herb: “I hope you die”; Kiki: “I hope we both die”). Also in the current Resurrection tour they do a lot from their hard-to-find Christmas album Do You Hear What We Hear?, a couple highlights from their Carnegie Hall concert (which you can get here), a new Peaches cover, and lots of new ranting, including monologues about Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami, the war on Christmas, suicide bombers, and the President. It’s illegal to say you’re going to kill him, Kiki points out in a quiet moment, but it’s not illegal to wish he would kill himself.

Kiki and Herb were supposed to play Portland tonight, but at the last minute they jaunted off to England to play at an Elton John party. So now, according to their website, they’ll be in Portland December 29.