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A REAL FAUX
Kirsten Malone remembered
BY CAMILLE DODERO
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On a Friday night in March 2004, a bunch of kids in an L-shaped Allston cellar were watching a handful of bands. Around midnight, the third act of the night, an all-male three-piece, crawled on stage. The singer screamed like an injured animal, scaled the drum kit, and humped the drummer’s head. Then he writhed on the floor, pogoed in the air, and squealed like a pig. He was amazing, but the band sounded hollow; I just figured it was the unforgiving acoustics of a vacant basement. Turns out, that was Jo Coelho of the Faux, the same band who’d lose their female keyboard player — Kirsten Malone, a/k/a Lady K — to a fatal bicycling accident three months later. (See "Queen of the DIY Scene," This Just In, June 25, 2004.) It had been a rare occasion when the synth-noise foursome had played the noise without the synth; that weekend, the 29-year-old Malone had been interviewing at an art school in Chicago. As it also turns out, Coelho thought they sounded empty too. A week after Malone’s passing, when I spoke with him for an obituary about his bandmate, I mentioned that night. "[That show] was a catastrophe," he recalled. "It was good example of why we can’t play without her. We were like, ‘Uh, we can’t that do again.’" And they didn’t. It’s been nearly a year since Malone’s death, but she’s still around. Google her and you find hundreds and hundreds of references; check the event listings this weekend and her name’s all over the place. At present, there are four concurrent projects benefiting the Kirsten Malone Memorial Fund, a MassArt scholarship created for female students "who push the boundaries of conceptual and experimental artwork," in the words of Malone’s best friend, Kat Irannejad. The Faux’s former label Mister Records recently released Mister Records Comp 3: The Max Lord Sessions — a Max Lord–produced collection of label-affiliated bands like Big Bear, Big Digits, and Tunnel of Love — and five bucks from every sale goes to the fund. This Saturday, proceeds from DIY indoor sale Punk Rock Flea Market 5 will also benefit the MassArt fund. The following night, there will be a memorial show at Great Scott, featuring Bulb Records’ guitar-and-drums duo U$AISAMONSTER, garage freaks Tunnel of Love, and the Count Me Outs. Finally, the event will also serve as an opening for an exhibit of Malone-related images and Faux-related show posters, which will be up for the month of June. More than likely, it will be amazing. But again, there will definitely be something missing. Punk Rock Flea Market 5 is from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Massachusetts College of Art’s Pozen Center, 621 Huntington Avenue, in Boston. It’s all-age, and admission is $1; for details, visit www.honeypump.net. The rock show and art opening takes place at Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave, in Allston; call (617) 566-9014.
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