I've been in the studio for the past week (or so) with my associate and bandmate Mike Jacobs working on our new record. Based on a few live shows and comments from innocent bystanders the pop hit is a track called "You're Like William McKinley" - a sweet love song by our standards. The first chorus is as follows:
You are like my main man William McKinleyIn that nobodyGives a fuck about youLike I do
My infatuation with forgotten presidents surely seeped into the writing process, but I never realized how much the story of Kaiser Vilhelm McKinley fits my style. His assassination is a mere historical footnote to quirky nerds, and most people have no clue who the dude is. You might get one of those "rings a bell ::shrug::" numbers or a crooked Pinochet stare back.
Court TV - a fantastic Web site for people who like to drink 9 espressos and stay up all night reading about serial killers and hallucinating - has an admirable feature on the case. The assassin was a confused young man named Leon Franz Czologosz. Somehow (nutjob!) influenced by Emma Goldman, the famed anarchist, Czologosz decided to get the job done.
The handkerchief choked his Polish immigrant hand - a pathetic sort of yin and yang - said good morning to the president... pleasure to meet you in two shots.
