Sewer Rats - Unwelcome Company for Alison Mosshart

In September 2009, Baby Ruthless posted a couple of blog... uh....posts on the Vault about a giant rat that almost chased her out of her house.

(Here, though you probably can't see the blog if you're not a member.)

Her night had started started with an angry wasp and it went rapidly downhill until she faced evidence of a veritable Beast of Bexley, except one from East London - a Monster of Mile End, a Serpent of Shoreditch, a Liver Bird of Liverpool Street. Wild, convincing and entirely demotic, here's a short excerpt from the first post:

... until finally i got really tired again and fell asleep... with one eye open.
got out of bed at 8:30 with the sure realization that the racket a few hours before, had not been a dream. got up to inspect. and here's what i found... a flag pole had fallen off my bookshelf and created a barricade between my bedroom door and the living room. vases were knocked over. my mexican jumping beans had been eaten! there was a pile of shit in a corner. plastic horses knocked over in my fire place. tiles knocked back from my stove. and a chewed up chocolate bar...
either i was visited last night by the creature from the black lagoon, or an ENORMOUS satan rat!
fuck my life. 

A little later she posted a do-it-yourself-mugshot picture of the intruder, which I can't reproduce here as the Vault screams "copyright!" if you try to right click on its pictures. It was very ratty, though it had little round specs that made it resemble a friend of mine from university who rejoiced in the name Andy Dash. (To distinguish himself from the other Andys he used a prime mark, or dash, comme ça Andy'.) (Come to think of it, he was quite ratty.)

Then, on September 24th, Jack White went a-conversing with his loyal fans on Modblast, a "chat" or vehicle for star/commoner interactions where the commoners pay $60 a quarter to hang out shooting the breeze on the off-chance a star will turn up to speak. Between other cryptic exchanges, when he was asked about the rat, he said the rat was a metaphor. Modblast chats are read from the bottom up.

[JackWhite] it's a metaphor for another rat.
[ymagirl] what is Alsion's rat a metaphor for? I think I know...
[JackWhite] alison's rat is a metaphor.
[ymagirl] what do you think of Alison's rat?

This pseudo-revelation pissed me off - because it hadn't sounded like a metaphor. It sounded from her post like an actual enormous Satan rat.

This is is a long winded way of introducing the fact I learned today, that new evidence suggests the rat was an actual rat! Here's Henry Wagons, interviewed by the AUReview about his new record, Unwelcome Company ft., as they say, Alison Mosshart:

"While staying in Alison's house in East London, she told me the most biblical tale of relentless waves of pestilence which took place in her home. Disturbed by the construction of a new underground station deep beneath her house, all of the sewer-dwelling rats were inspired to rise to the surface for a party above ground. Her tale went through rat poison, rat death, maggots, followed by a plague of blowflies. Perfect material for a twisted duet. I ended up going to London to record her vocal, in the very house the song is about. If you listen closely you can hear the last of the blowflies saying hi every now and then." 

I feel so vindicated.

Also at that link, and most likely of more interest to people who are not me, there is a stream of Henry Wagons' cowboyish rockabilly song, ft. Alison on vocals with extra echo tra echo tra echo ko ko ko. I can't say I love it but if it were a Bond theme I'd enjoy it. Here it is, pop fans!




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