Interview by Rich Polysorbate 60 on August 19th, 2001 in Clifton's’ Café.
NORA KEYES is a singer, organist, and artist who grew up in a haunted house in Los Angeles. At an early age, she was forced to go to school in the inner city whereby she was chased around the playground by vicious gangs. Because she is small, she had to learn hand to hand combat with her teeth and nails. Aside from singing with The Centimeters, she also performs alone; just her and her portable church organ. The music she plays is what you'd expect from decomposing convalescent home cadavers wrapped in old velvet curtains. It is mournful, it is wailing, and it is the songs of the downtown L.A.; cockroaches on a steamy, foggy night before all the buildings crumble and fall under their own weight and history. A history that only the roaches, moths, and silverfish are privileged to...and Nora's church organ.
While some believe that Nora is a cranky old lady, I’m inclined to think of her as a sort of broken phonographic, scratchy recording of the history of L.A. Not the cheery, orange tinted vision but the one that only gurgling water bugs sing about at night to their children. Think Lizard people in the drainage pipes, dancing in rotted ballrooms, burritos that spit semen at children, Norma Desmond as a dirt caked mascara monster bag lady, Asian businessmen picking apart their cuticles and you get closer to the picture. You see, this is all L.A., but not the kind that Scientology (they own Hollywood so therefore all media everywhere) would want anyone, especially you, to know about.
When not singing in The Centimeters or on her own with her portable crying church organ, she makes pen and ink drawings in her parlor with her Finger people puppets and Ruby the Iguana- who recently escaped for four days because her cage was new.
Part 1- The carpet frock legion of doom underneath the Metroline.
Nora: When I was 7 yrs. old I was sleeping in my grandparents apartment in Fresno. I awoke and saw numerous miniature hurricanes traveling around the bed. This made me extremely dizzy . I bolted up and told my grandfather, who probably thought I was going mad. When I noticed him on his side rather than flat on his back, I thought that this was incredibly strange. I showed much concern over this, as if it might kill him. Needless to say, this probably made him go out the next morning and recount his hard liquor stash at the bottom of the kitchen sink. When I was a child I had a dream in which I was screaming. My father woke me up and asked me why I was screaming. I pointed to the middle of my bed sheets and told him that there was a bug in my bed. He didn't see it at all so he asked me how many legs it had. I told him two.
Rich: How do you go about writing the songs that you do? They all seem to tunnel back to some decrepit Victorian era where families would disappear into huge, shambling houses...never to be seen or heard from again. Old age, senile isolation, flying ponies,etc...
Nora: I don't know. I guess it comes from where I lived in Los Angeles. No...maybe it's the pets I've had over the years and the memories they've brought me, or the insects I see flying around in downtown L.A. Everything’s' horrific and funny in its way.
Rich: I like music that evokes odors other than sweat. Kind of like the smell of rotting velvet curtains, mildewed basements, or old smoked wood.
Nora: yeah,..sweet, rotting wood.
Rich: Do old people like your music?
Nora: I haven't played for very many old people. Once I played a convalescent home with The Centimeters. The old people didn't like it and complained that we hurt their hearing aids. They didn't like synthesizers and Greg’s dancing (Greg Gomberg sings with Nora in The Centimeters). I could see that they were in pain. They liked it when Ray played Beatles songs on his guitar.
Rich: When you played the Harbor View House (mental institution in San Pedro,CA ) people actually got up and danced?
Nora: The developmentally disabled mainly seem to respond to drumbeats (Centimeters = Casio drumbeats). The melodic songs we played, like the"Exercise Song", did not go over well. . It lacked a strong beat. They just stood there dumbfounded.
Part 2- the Finger People fully revealed
Rich: Tell me about some of the street people you've run into.
Nora: Well... There's the Holy Ghost. He plays an accordion and wears tambourines on his feet. He sings a song that goes, "...The Holy Ghost will get your feet a dancing. The Holy Ghost will fill you through and through. The Holy Ghost will get your feet a dancing and set your soul a dancing too." He often insists that you sing along with him. He writes the lyrics out on boards to make it easy for you to join in. He's a Korean war vet. Sometimes, he disappears for months. He admits himself into the Vet's hospital when he is overwhelmed with the desire to kill everyone in a room. That's what he did in Korea. I've tried to book shows with him, but it rarely works out. You have to catch him on the day of the show, because he could disappear, on account of his desire to kill.
Rich: Does he wear a costume???
Nora: No..His eyes are bulging and he has a car that looks like Denis Woodruff''s. He scrawled psalms all over it. I had the address of his house. I heard that the exterior of his house is very decorated.
Rich: His car's really decorated with what?
Nora: Flags, text, art, and pictures...religious mostly.
Rich: Is he super patriotic, as well?
Nora: It's mixed up. One time I walked by and he had a whole wall worked up with pictures of weird cholos psalms behind him. He had pictures pasted up of these strong cholo men doing unmentionable maneuvers. I couldn't believe it...I said,"It's you...the Holy Ghost", and then he sang his Holy Ghost song. He can keep you there for an hour mesmerized.
Rich: Is there anyone else you can think of who inspired you to write your songs and make finger people??? ...people who deserve their own bronze stars along Broadway Blvd?
Nora: Well...uhm...I used to live in this building on 4th and Main and there was...uhm..a security guard who had no nose. It was horrifying. You really listened to everything he said. You didn't want to make him angry. He had a bone triangular orifice in the center of his face...he looked Vietnamese.
Rich: Does this have anything to do with The Finger People in any way???
Nora: No...not that. I don't know. The finger people just came to me one day as I was drawing.
Rich: Do you believe in the possibility that the finger people existed before in some other dimension and that you happened to channel them because you are a worthy vessel? Maybe you tapped into their world, which co-exists with ours, and as you drew them, the more and more they revealed about themselves?
Nora: It seems that way. I'm probably not the first person to have thought of finger people. Though, I've searched many other places for finger people and I haven't found them. I had a rash of finger people dreams. In these dreams I was jealous that other people made finger people crocodiles and finger people planes, which are too close to home to my finger people. I've also had dreams in which the finger people were on TV and they would tell me locations, in various parks, where I could dig for fruit covered in fine filaments of gold and silver. One finger person on TV told me about Dolly, the cloned sheep, before it was revealed to the public.
Rich: You see the Finger People as actual entities that exist???
Nora: Yes. They come to me when I'm sad and they rub my back with their finger nose and console me. It's a wonderful experience.
Rich: But they sound like they're slaves or proletarians at best.
Nora: Well...everyone, unless you belong to the ruling class, is a work slave of some sort. I'm actually a slave. I don't do a very good job of it. (giggling)
Rich: Tell me about Guitar Joe (he hangs outside of the Silverlake Lounge where Nora grudgingly works).
Nora: Guitar Joe? I almost lost my job because I talked to him. He's not supposed to go inside. He should be the MC.
Rich: Is he a good story teller?
Nora: Yes, very good. When he recites his stories, I feel a warm wonderful feeling inside. Most of the bands that play inside the lounge don’t have any interesting stories to tell. He was kicked out and put on the street.
Rich: They should have a night where they fill the club with water.
Nora: Styrofoam would be good. Of course there would be some casualties.
Rich: Do you like going camping??? The animals you draw look like they have rabies or are infested with carrion beetles.
Nora: (???) I don't draw animals.
Rich: What about that mural with the rabid, delirious animals under and up in the branches of an oak tree???
Nora: Oh that? I threw that away after it started to fall apart. The paint was peeling off . I was afraid that the paint dust particles would poison me.
Rich: What is scary?
Nora: Trees are scary.
Rich: At El Camino College the squirrels have the Bubonic Plague They try to jump up into peoples' laps. They move around strange and chatter in a way no normal squirrel should. I saw a baby squirrel fall from a tree and land on a small, Asian woman’s head. They were both momentarily stunned.
Nora: In Downtown L.A., a friend and I were on a roof top, looking down at the ally, when hundreds of rats emerged out of every dark corner. The rats progressively got larger and meaner looking. We threw rocks down at them. They quickly dispersed in a perfect synchronized order, rather than just randomly scattering in all directions. It was a well rehearsed exit.
Nora Keyes has a new solo album out called "Songs To Cry By For The Golden Age Of Nothing" which is available for purchase by e-mailing flyingrottingroots@yahoo.com. She toured the U.S. earlier this year and is currently playing solo shows around Los Angeles and is working on the upcoming new album by The Centimeters tentatively titled "Girls Have Hands". She has also played two live no-fi "sessions" for No-Fi "Radio"; one with The Centimeters and the other for her solo work.
THE END!
E-Mail No-Fi "Magazine".
