Neko Case and Serial Murder
Posted on February 28, 2005 by Tito
I was reminded of Neko Case and Deep Red Bells after reading BTK and me. It has alwasy been on of my favorite songs by Neko, especially the lines:
It looks a lot like engine oil and tastes like being poor and small
And Popsicles in the summer
At a concert she mentioned the song was about her memories growing up in Tacoma in the shadow of the Green River Killer, and how the victims were portrayed in the news. I just came upon this article from December 2003 that gives a little more detail.
"I’m sure I’ll have it my whole life. I’m not obsessed but the Green River murder case has always been a really big deal to me. Right when we went into the studio to make the last record [2002's Blacklisted], the third day in, I hadn’t heard anything about the Green River Killer since I was probably 16 and then – boom! – there it was in the news that they had brought him in. I started bawling. I couldn’t believe it.
"Deep Red Bells is pretty much about that whole thing and we recorded that before the news came out so when the news came out it freaked the shit out of me. I wrote the song because I’ve always thought about it and I thought about it too because I lived in Vancouver for a really long time and they had a very similar serial killer. There were 30 women killed, I think, but they didn’t care because they were drug addicts, prostitutes, whatever, but they weren’t people."
