A Word With Jose Fritz

Another day finds another piece from Jose Fritz talking about KK Rampage's swan song, in the form of The Final Friend.

No matter how good the movie is, it’s always a little empty feeling when you turn that last page. You stayed up because you couldn’t stop. It’s late at night, and the suns gone down and all the sounds of diurnal life have died down to humming security lights and cicadas in the weeds. Then you flip that last page and the next one is white. You can stare at it all you want; your greedy goddamned eyes just make out the bleached wood pulp fibers making up the paper. This record feels like that.

To that effect the letter from Brandon that accompanies it reads like an incunabulum. I’ll quote it here in its entirety:
“KKR is officially dead. When we were living no one gave a shit. Now that we’re dead… people still don’t give a shit. Anyway… with KK we tried to make something different and I think with these last four releases we succeeded at creating something different and interesting and without-a-doubt something I’ll be proud of for years to come. Thanks for supporting our little band. We’ve got some new bands we started and we’ll keep you updated with those.”

Since 2004 they released 14 CDs, one cassette, three 7-inches, and three 12-inch LPs. This final release compiles some of their out of print material. It includes their second CD, the False Flattery EP, the Without Feelings EP and the Skull LP. Performance artist Weasel Walter provides liner notes that make for some of the best reading I’ve ever found wrapped around a CD-R. In it he reports three amazing things. 1. He reports that KKR once sent a dead animal fetus to a music columnist. (I’d like to report for the record, it was not me.) 2. He thinks they are vulgar, and get naked too much. 3. He likes their vocal harmonies.

In congress I’d guess that Mr. Walter met them in a pizzeria but never actually heard them, nonetheless a hysterically funny essay. If you can beg a copy off of an ex-band member I totally recommend reading before listening. The band is everything they’ve always been: painfully noisy, unbelievably insane, like a half-naked hobo running through a Chicago snow bank. The king is dead, long live the king.