March 31st, 2009
Matt & Kim Postpone Philly Show, But Our Interview Still Goes On
Bummer news: Our pals Matt & Kim — the spiky synth-pop duo from Brooklyn — have been forced to postpone their show this coming Saturday, April 4th, at the Barbary (which was to be the final show of their current U.S. tour) after drummer Matt (Johnson), who’s known for his energetic live-gig antics, suffered a back injury over the weekend. He’s currently undergoing medical treatment, and the band plans to reschedule the show for sometime this summer.
Prior to this incident, we chatted with Matt & Kim about Philadelphia-related stuff; this’ll just have to suffice until they make it back to town. Feel better, Matt!
What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you in Philadelphia?
Matt: The best thing that’s ever happened to me in Philadelphia…well, I’d love to say that someone finally took me to this fictional pretzel place that everyone always tells me about, these midnight pretzels. After every single show it’s like, it’s the one day a week it’s closed and I don’t know how we end up there on that day, and I’ve stopped believing in it. Apparently at midnight you can get soft pretzels for a quarter. That’s my fictional best thing that’s ever happened to me there.
What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you in Philly?
Matt: The worst thing? Not finding those goddamn pretzels! Well basically, the worst thing is that every single time we would drive to Philadelphia, somewhere right outside of Philadelphia there’s a road called Black Mountain Road, and I don’t know why our GPS and Mapquest and everything always directs us to that road. It takes us off the highway and it puts us on this road and we find ourselves on it for like an hour. It’s somewhere in New Jersey, right across the river, and I don’t know how we would end up on this road every single time, but we’d get lost. I guess it was before GPS…
Kim: The GPS still gives us that…
Matt: Really? I dunno what it means, but every time I would call the venue or whatever, like, “Okay, Black Mountain Road, what does this mean to you?” It’s the Bermuda Triangle between New York and Philadelphia for us.
Kim: That road will find you!
What’s your favorite thing about Philadelphia?
Kim: Cheesesteaks!
Matt: Well, obviously. That’s too obvious.
Kim: They’re so good!
Matt: We do love to do touristy things when we come to town. I’ve been meaning to do it in New York. I found out about this thing called a “Staycation” – when you’ve lived there ten years or so you feel like you have to do all those things you never did, like you go to the Statue of Liberty, you get your matching “I Love New York” T-shirts…
Kim: Oh I know — Space 1026.
Matt: Oh yeah. They have great stuff coming out of there. A couple people from that gallery and collective came on a tour that Kim & I were a part of, just doing installations on the whole tour. It’s really cool what they have happening there.
Do you remember your first show in Philadelphia?
Kim: Was that our first traveling show? Wasn’t it that kid Alex who put it on? I think that was Philadelphia? Down in the basement?
Matt: No no, that wasn’t our first time.
Kim: Yeah it was, that was our first time driving to a show.
Matt: Even before we played Herbie’s?
Kim: Yeah that was before Herbie’s.
Matt: Our first time time driving to a show…so we were still in the Honda Civic?
Kim: Yeah.
Matt: I don’t think so.
Kim: It exactly was.
Matt: Kim thinks it was, at the Church.
Kim: No no, not the Church. That house show, they had the whole house, the three levels.
Matt: The Danger Danger House?
Kim: No, it didn’t even have a name. that kid Alex from Florida put it on.
Matt: Ohhh yeah! That was it!
Kim: That was our first time ever driving to a show.
Matt: That was our first out-of-state show. We were still traveling at the time in an ’89 Honda Civic sedan that my grandmother had given me. Was that in ’06, Kim? I don’t think we did any out-of-state the first year we started. No, it was definitely in ‘05. This kid, his name was Alex, he had somehow rented this four-story gigantic old frat house… he was calling it “Ghost House” while we were there. He was only like 16 or 17 years old, he was totally not legitimate, but he had us down and we played in the basement. That’s right, and there were all these underage kids just getting drunk in this house and grinding it to pieces and they all got kicked out. Remember, Kim, we were impressed with that one kid because he was vomiting while he was walking forward. Wow, I forgot all about that. I’m sure we were lost on Black Mountain Road.
What were your impressions of Philadelphia before you ever set foot in the city?
Matt: Well, I grew up in a small town in Vermont. When I was looking at colleges, I wasn’t so much looking at colleges as I was looking at cities. From that perspective, I just wanted to go to a big city so I was only looking at colleges in New York and Philadelphia, my parents didn’t really want me to cross the Mississippi. I was looking at Temple and Drexel, and then someone had notified me that one of those schools was in a pretty rough area, and then I remember that after someone told me that, I went and I was reading this skateboard magazine and there was this article about how all the sickest skateboard spots are in North Philadelphia, if you don’t care if your video camera, your normal camera, and all your skate gear gets stolen while you’re there, ‘cause everything they had got stolen but they said they found all the best skate spots. And I thought, oh my gosh, this might not be the best idea for me. It made going to school at Pratt, which is in Bed-Stuy, a breeze. But again, while it seemed really scary at the time, in the end when I’ve been there I’ve never found myself in any of those areas. But I’ve enjoyed Philly each time I’ve been there. We’ve gone down for gallery shows and to play music, but we’ve never had a lot of time to hang.
