The Untitled Interview #177: Starring Mercies

So there's this little show going down Saturday night at Comet Ping Pong, y'all. And headlining said show at Comet Ping Pong this Saturday is local sassty hotpants clever clogs Mercies. I do so love their sharp, nervy jangle, and I suspect that you too shall find yourselves shimmying your shoulders and tapping your feet to the strains of their tunes.

I've got an idea. Let's get to know those Mercies fellows a bit better, shall we? Let's. Answers courtesy the one and only John Russell.

MERCIES!

AS A MOVIE: Mercies is...going to resurrect Stan Brakhage to direct an impressionistic quasi-biopic starring an abandoned monorail car.

AS A DRINK: Mercies is...pisco sour, because i just tried one for the first time yesterday -- it's sweet, but raw egg whites are good for your constitution so I'm going with it.

AS A WEATHER EVENT: Mercies is...hail the size of golf balls falling from a cloudless sky - the hailstones then get collected and molded into an ice sculpture recreating the front cover of Chairs Missing by Wire.

AS AN OBSCURE VINTAGE LP: Mercies is...just bought a reissue of Gang of Four's Entertainment on our stopover in Nashville while heading to SXSW -- Entertainment's not particularly obscure, nor is the record in question vintage in any way, but it's gonna rule to put it on super loud, and my excitement over it trumps my desire to fully meet your question's criteria.

AS A MOMENT IN HISTORY: Mercies is...a guy stamping out a cigarette with a steel-toed boot in Detroit at the exact same moment that Leon Trotsky died from his icepick wounds in Mexico City.

AS A DENOMINATION OF CURRENCY: Mercies is...Tunisian dinar -- Tunis being the site of our international debut last summer with some bar band's brokeass gear -- we talked them into letting us play a song between their sets of bizarro Arabic accented takes on American blues, British-invasion-era classics, jazz standards, and "your own personal Jesus."

AS A SPOT IN DC: Mercies is...Geoff, our house in Petworth where we practice, record, and sometimes throw shows.

AS A VIDEO GAME/CHARACTER THEREIN: Mercies is...a sequel to Shaq-fu where Shaq has the powers of Sub Zero from Mortal Kombat so the special moves don't suck, and he's also got a ninja turtle head.

AS A WORK OF LITERATURE: Mercies is...a re-imagining of Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley using only Pixies lyrics.

AS A HISTORICAL FIGURE: Mercies is...whoever invented the breast pocket.

AS A CAMPAIGN PROMISE: Mercies is...we promise to use this question to do a tiny but tasteful bit of self-promotion -- look for our new EP This is Not About Control available on the web (merciesdc.tumblr.com or mercies.bandcamp.com) very soon, or come to Comet Ping Pong on Saturday 3/31 to pick up a physical copy directly from us. (ed. note - self-promotion is allowed, nay welcomed, at Fuzzy Logic.)