Kim The Waitress

who cares what it means? the important thing is that this song was NOT written by material issue! It was written by the GREEN PAJAMAS, Seattle's best and least known pop band. If you really want to hear a good cover of this song, pick up "Surrender You Freak" by SISTER PSYCHIC. They do a much better version, and they got the lyrics right too! It's not "From Kim The Waitress" it's "But Kim The Waitress". God, that always bugged me.

well, as paulmall stated previously, Material Issue didn't write the song. it was penned by Joe Ross and Jeff Kelly of Green Pajamas in 1985. Material Issue changed the lyrics and, hence, the meaning of the song. it's a great story, but i'll let Joe Ross of Green Pajamas tell it in his own words:

The Green Pajamas The Story Of Kim The Waitress by Joe Ross

Kim was a waitress at an all night diner in West Seattle where we used to hang out back in the summer of 1984. We would meet up with friends there after rehearsal/recording (there wasn’t much of a distinction in those days; we jammed when we rehearsed and we recorded when we jammed) to have a late night meal. There we’d sit for hours drinking coffee, joking and scheming, planning the next thing, sometimes writing little verses and doodling on the paper place mats. We wrote the lyrics to more than a few "Summer Of Lust" era songs at a booth in that coffee shop.

One late night in particular --just as the song says-- we sat in the corner booth drinking coffee and writing juvenile limericks which we would immediately crumple up after being passed around the table with all of us cracking up. Kim, who was very cute indeed, worked the graveyard shift and had become over the months the innocent object of our fancy and I remember that one particularly dirty little poem was even titled, "Ode to Kim The Waitress".

The actual song was created in early January 1985, during a late night jam session at my house with just Jeff and me. I remember Jeff sat at the drum set tapping the kick drum and high hat with his feet while simultaneously plucking the bass and singing while I noodled around on an electric guitar. With our favorite waitress still on his mind his ad-lib lyrics and melody flowed effortlessly, very catchy and spontaneous. And as fortune would have it, I had a tape recorder rolling or we never would have remembered how the song went in the morning. Jeff refined the song and the band started rehearsing it.

Although it wasn’t yet part of our live repertoire we just knew "Kim The Waitress" was the song to do in a real studio. We had recently been approached by Tom Dyer (who ran Green Monkey Records) to record at his studio, so we booked a day there to record it. The session took place on May 4, 1985, in Tom’s claustrophobic studio in the basement of his house in Queen Anne. With Tom at the helm, Jeff played bass, I played electric guitar, Karl played drums and Steven played the sitar that I borrowed for the occasion --none of us had ever played a sitar before but Steven really did a fine job. (When I played the recording to the sitar's owner, he was so impressed that he sold it to me for $40) The master tape sat for a whole year before Green Monkey Records finally released it as our first single in May 1986.

A few years later I became better acquainted with Kim when she was going out with a good friend of mine. At first she didn’t know about the song, although it was becoming well known locally by then, and she was really thrilled (much to my relief) when she finally heard it. I still get Christmas cards from her signed, Kim The Waitress.

-Joe Ross

The Green Pajamas need more fame.

You can scarcely find their songs anywhere and they've had 11 albums!