The Mekons/Kathy Acker:
Pussy, King Of The Pirates

My Name Is O
Ange's Song As She Crawled Through London
I Want To Tell You About Myself
Song Of The Dogs
We're Just Outside London
Ostracism's Song To Pussycat
Antigone You See Her
Antigone Speaks About Herself
Now Let Me Tell You
My Song At Night
Since Ange And Me Are Innocent
Into The Strange
Captured By Pirates
A Prayer For All Sailors
O

The Mekons/ The Art of Living To

The Full"
which appears in issue number 43 of Puncture magazine ("early 1999")

"It was apparent that Kathy was ill [in September 1997, when she did four performances of "Pussy, King of the Pirates" with the Mekons in Chicago]. She had breast cancer but she said it wasn't anything--she said she had food poisoning, which I think was meant to make us not go on about her being so ill.
"She would die eight weeks later, but here she was still out in a nightclub--still onstage with the Mekons. "The 'Pussy' recording is a nice companion piece to her book. It was like a short story version of the book put to music--very interesting for us, musically. It was one of the best things we'd done in a long time. But it was dismissed [by the rock press] as a knocked-off thing-- because people couldn't handle it. A lot of male rock journalists could not deal with Kathy Acker.
"I think she made up the story about her illness so she could do what she wanted to do-- so people wouldn't put her in a hospital. She was a very difficult, demanding person. I liked her very much. I think she really liked working with us as well-- which was incredibly flattering to me. She wanted to do another album; she sang us some lyrics. So I've got some words we were gonna put music to. And maybe we still will."

Jon Langford

REVIEW:

The potentially irksome meeting of literature and contemporary music is littered with the corpses of good intentions and vaulting pretension. This particular foul-mouthed, genitally-obsessed collaboration between the punk authoress/diva and world music's ex-punk, world-weary Mekons leaps over the obstacles with a frisky bound. A companion piece to Acker's forthcoming novel of the same name, PUSSY, KING OF THE PIRATES is a fragmented, sometimes bewildering, odyssey through the backwaters of an England brought vividly to life with dark Dickensian images. Sounding like Mystic Meg on novocaine, Acker's hypnotic mind-bending narration of the metaphysical quest for hidden treasure is punctuated by Mekons songs which straddle every corner of cross-cutting musical genres, pummelling bass-heavy dub sharing shelf space with techno and strident Celtic folk.

- Paul Davies

Q, Issue #115 (April 1996)

More information about Pussy:

The Mekons & Kathy Acker: Pussy, king of the pirates, MTV review

Another Review of Pussy from Seattle Times.

A third review of Pussy.
And a last one with sound files.

An interview with Kathy Acker about Pussy and the Mekons.

Kathy Acker died Nov 29th 1977