The LP Questionnaire/Pick Three – Alina Simone

Ukranian born Alina Simone got her start performing in the doorway of an abandoned bar on Sixth Street here in Austin. Now she’s a critically acclaimed singer and published writer with a book of essays coming out next year.

Eugene Mirman (Sub Pop comedian and this year’s host of the SXSW Film awards) was the Best Man at her wedding. Amanda Palmer (of the Dresden Dolls) was the Maid of Honor. They all went to high school together. Simone worried that this was one of Amanda’s random facts when she did the LPQ last year, which may be true, but it does not make it any less interesting.

She once played a show at a rock club located within the Arctic Circle in Arkhangelsk, Russia. On her way to the concert she slipped on some black ice and wound up on her back, staring at a giant statue of Lenin and wondering what she was doing with her life.

Simone performs on Wednesday night at The Ale House at 11.00 pm. She has a rich voice and her music evokes near distant memories of a place I can’t put my finger on. I think I’ll be sitting here all night trying to figure it out. Have a listen to “Beautiful Machine.” It’s pretty kickass.

Here’s here take on…

The LP Questionnaire
Name: Alina Simone
Pro Wrestling Name: For the love of all that is sacred in life…!?! Oh, okay. It’s “Blonde Star.”

1. Pretend you’re 15. Name three songs you’d put on a mix tape for your boyfriend. To my mind, the songs on the mix tape would depend entirely on my relationship to said boyfriend. If I was fifteen though (early 1990’s) then most likely, I secretly hated my boyfriend and was only dating him as a way of torturing myself. In which case the songs might be:

I Wanna Be Adored (The Stone Roses)
I Don’t Mind If You Forget Me (Morrissey)
Kiss Them For Me (Siouxsie and the Banshees)

2. Which evil villain would make the best President? Voldemort. Now that Obama has broken the unusual name barrier.

3. What was your favorite cartoon as a child? I remember liking The Smurfs until Papa Smurf hit on Smurfette, thereby introducing the terrifying specter of smurf incest.

4. What superpower do you wish you had? I wish I had the power to make people forget we were in the middle of a conversation. If that’s not a superpower, it should be.

5. What would the title of your autobiography be? It would be called You Must Go and Win which is something my Russian friend Roman said to me once in his not-quite-perfect English when I complained about having to play a show that night. But the weird thing about this question is that last year an editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux offered me a book deal. And now my book of autobiographical essays, You Must Go and Win is coming out next winter. For real.

Pick Three
These are all bands that I’ve had the pleasure of sharing the stage with on tour
Kid Dakota: The uber-talented Darren Jackson can burn up a stage and leave you jaw-dropped with just his electric guitar and a drummer. It will move you.

Sgt. Dunbar & the Hobo Banned: Neutral Milk Hotel on acid. A riotous mixture of guitars, horns and plaintive vocals. Infectious good energy.

These United States: One rain-soaked weekday in the middle of Illinois, These United States transported me to a time out of mind. Their music just has a gorgeous gorgeousness that defies explanation. Go see any of these bands at SXSW and I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Writing these features is one of my favorite parts of my job here (the rest of the day I spend doing monkey stuff, I mean, really important media stuff) because the thrill of discovery factor is pretty darn high… like here… with Ms. Simone. I will be back tomorrow with a Pick Three from… haha… Eugene Mirman, an LPQ from JBM and a little surprise for a friend named k. If you can’t wait that long, you can catch up with all that came before here.