"( The Mekons performing "Where Were You")" "?" "I was waiting in a bar, where were you?" "?" "?" "I was buying you a drink, where were you?" "?" "?" "I was crying at home in bed, where were you?" "?" "?" "When I was watching from a distance, did you see me?" "?" "?" "You were standing in a queue, did you see me?" "?" "?" "You had yellow hair, did you see me?" "?" "?" "I want to talk to you all night, do you like me?" "?" "?" "I want to find out about your life, do you like me?" "?" "?" "Could you ever be my wife, do you love me?" "?" "?" "I was waiting in a bar, where were you?" "?" "?" "I was buying you a drink, where were you?" "?" "?" "I was crying at home in bed, where were you?" "?" "?" "I was watching from a distance, did you see me?" "?" "?" "You were standing in a queue, did you see me?" "?" "?" "You had yellow hair, did you see me?" "?" "SUSIE HONEYMAN:" "Oh, Eric." " What?" " HONEYMAN:" "You're an alcoholic." "I am not." "I was going to get a drink of water but I saw this." "( laughter )" "I thought, hmm, 1.50, that's a deal." "What?" "It's cheaper than water?" "Cheaper than water." "STEVE GOULDING:" "Not in our case." "GOULDING:" "No, I know." "SALLY TIMMS:" "Next?" "JON LANGFORD:" "Uh. "Diamonds."" "One, two." "One, two, three, four..." "TIMMS:" "?" "Sly like a magpie ?" "?" "Shared between the species... ?" "Someone should sing this with me-- this is a harmony." "?" "Something there glitters ?" "?" "The theft is made ?" "?" "Gold speckled waters... ?" "GREG KOT:" "The Mekons, as a collective, to last as long as they have, and still embody the ideals that they started with in 1977?" "There's no comparison." "There's no other band like them." "("Diamonds" continues playing)" "LANGFORD:" "We used to have a roadie, but he became too successful to work with us anymore." "So he's only available for social functions now." "TERRY NELSON:" "Somewhere along the line, they must have accepted that they were never going to get rich and may not even support all of them." "And if you can't come to terms with that, you break up, I guess." "And at the same time," "I think that's why the Mekons have been able to..." "I mean, as far as I can see it," "I don't think there's ever been a rock 'n' roll band who's had a run of albums as good as them, and are still making, possibly, their best records-- each one, you think, my God," "this might be their best record, and how could they do that after 30 years?" "It's astounding." "?" "Salmon at sea that head back to fresh water ?" "?" "To the head of the stream and the inevitable slaughter ?" "?" "Carry the future back off down the river, ?" "LUC SANTE:" "The Mekons have persevered, realizing that remaining true to whatever it is you stand for is a lot more important than success." "And, you know, you can find ways to keep eating while you do your stuff, but transforming yourself into a commodity is never the way to go." "?" "There's nothing of magic ?" "?" "In this shining pearl, ?" "JONATHAN FRANZEN:" "It began as a thing for friends, and the circle of friends has gotten larger-- and they have thousands of friends, but if you go to a show, it feels like it's a gathering of friends." "MARY HARRON:" "I would never, ever, have imagined that 30 years later I would be talking about the Mekons and they would still exist." "?" "Where rough diamonds lie. ?" "( applause )" "TIMMS:" "Come to Birmingham or Sheffield tomorrow." "MAN 1:" "Sheffield was canceled." "MAN 1:" "I thought Sheffield was canceled." " Sheffield's canceled?" " What?" " MAN 2:" "Email, it was email." " MAN 1:" "Yeah, by email." "Really?" "Cardiff's canceled." "( audience laughter )" "Oslo is looking a bit iffy." "Beijing's holding steady." "It can't be canceled-- it's Sheffield." "They want us there." "It's going to be a very relaxing tour, then, isn't it?" "It's very depressing when your audience..." "I'm sorry, can we do the last one again?" "I'll go berserk, because I was conserving me energy for Sheffield." "( audience laughter )" "MAN 3:" "Do it now." "Should we call them and find out?" "Who's got a cell phone?" "MAN 3:" "Do it now." "WALTER JACQUISS:" "This is Walter, doing our sound." "He's Eric's son, and he's got a computer because he's young and knows how to use one of those things." "It would be really depressing if we find out that it's..." "Maybe this is the only gig on the whole tour." "( audience laughter )" "Then I'll have to go fucking bananas." "JACQUISS:" " No." " It's not sold out." ""Sold out" is not a phrase that ever comes into our lives." "I'm very proud to welcome the Mekons to the studio." " Hello, Mekons." " LANGFORD:" "Good afternoon." "It's really wonderful to have you here." "I guess you can say your band's had a pretty good run." "You've been doing it for 30 years." "What's the key to your success?" "How have you kept the train on the tracks?" "Well, the stock answer is, lack of it." "Success is the thing that usually kills bands in the end." "So we haven't had any success, and have had none of the attendant problems." "Has that been difficult?" "No, it's easier than fighting over who gets what amount of money." "We just fight over ten or fifteen dollars, as opposed to thousands." "You fight over the beer tab, is that what it is?" "There's a lot of fighting over that." "HOST:" "You formed back at Leeds many years ago." "How did it all work?" "You went to the same school as the Gang of Four, right?" "So the funky guys joined Gang of Four and the people who were into the roots and the country joined the Mekons?" "We couldn't play at all." "We were like people who hung around with the Gang of Four, and then we used to sneak in and use their equipment while they were in the pub drinking." "( Mekons performing "I'm So Happy")" "Both Gang of Four and the Mekons, we started as a social group before we became two musical groups." "And the majority of whom were in the fine-art departments in Leeds University." "Leeds was this very curious mix of radicalism, really." "And there's something about the geography about the place that seems to encourage radical thought." "KEVIN LYCETT:" "That culture, that atmosphere, imbued our world-- strongly egalitarian and highly critical of authority, unwilling to accept the way that things were, very left-wing atmosphere was very strong in Leeds." "( Mekons performing "Roseanne")" "TOM GREENHALGH:" "Leeds at the time had the largest student population in the U, K, and a lot of good bands coming through." "LYCETT:" "I can remember somebody coming up to me in the street and saying, "Are you a punk rocker?"" "And saying, "I haven't got the faintest idea what you're talking about." "What's a punk rocker?"" ""Don't you know?" "No."" ""Ugh." And walking off." "And then a little bit later that same summer, the "Anarchy in the U.K." tour happened." "(Sex Pistols performing "Anarchy in the U, K, ")" "LYCETT:" "Suddenly, the rule book had just been torn to bits and thrown away," "It's incredibly inspiring," "Because up until that point, this huge gulf between you and the performers on the stage-- uncrossable, unknowable-- and then this bunch of idiots who couldn't play and shambled around and..." "Oh, right, sound." "Let's get going." "( Mekons performing "Heart and Soul")" "ANDY CORRIGAN:" "The Mekons, originally, was me, Mark, Tom," "Then we asked Kevin to come in because he was our friend," "And we swapped around to try and see who could play what." "Obviously, Tom was going to play the guitar because he could play the guitar a bit." "And neither Mark, me, nor Kevin could play anything at all," "That's partly what punk rock brought to the whole scene-- you didn't have to be a good musician in order to have..." "And here are the two things that are most important-- attitude and ideas." "?" "Sometimes I'm thinking that I love you ?" "?" "But I know it's only lust ?" "?" "Your kiss so sweet... ?" "ANDY GILL:" "Well, in the early days," "Gang of Four would be rehearsing and then the Mekons would turn up, and when we took a break, or whatever, they'd literally pick up our instruments where they were and start playing them as well." "Any story of that period, you can't separate the two, really." "The Gang of Four, they were always going to be a group." "They had a proper scheme of what they were going to do," "We shared thinking, but they were much more overt in their political thought, much more dogmatic." "( Mekons performing "32 Weeks")" "LYCETT:" "At the beginning, we didn't want the cult of personality, the cult of genius, the cult of the artist." "GILL:" "No one would be named, and no one would be photographed, and no one would be credited with any particular thing," "I suppose that is a Socialist kind-of idea that we had." "LANGFORD:" "LANGFORD:" "They got me in because I had a drum kit," "That's the only reason they asked me to join the band, I think." "Because Tom was like, "Do you want to be in a band where no one can play?"" "Then we got Ros in because she was our mate and we were all the losers on the top floor of the art studios trying to hide from the teachers all the time." "I think because I told them I played the cello and they were desperate for a bass player, they correlated the cello-bass, and I think they had this idea that I was musically talented." "( Mekons performing "Dan Dare")" "For our second gig, we ended up supporting the Rezillos." "BURNHAM:" "We would all try to get gigs opening for the national acts, and the Rezillos came through and the Mekons got it." "And we were all there, because we traveled in a pack, whoever was playing." "And they were fantastic and marvelous and we were all..." "shouting them on." "("Dan Dare" continues playing)" "One, two, three, four!" "WHITE:" "And we came off to be presented with Bob Last, who was the manager of the Rezillos, standing there, saying, "Do you want to make a record?"" "And, "Uh, really?"" "If you knew what it was like to be two people, that was the time for all of us." "It was like, "Fantastic!" "Bastards!"" ""Wonderful!" "Brilliant!" "Why not us?"" ""We're the real band!"" "All we could think to do was tell Bob Last how great the Gang of Four were." "Ros would be saying," ""You shouldn't be putting out a record by us." "You should put the Gang of Four out." "They're a proper band."" "And Bob would be like, "I don't want a proper band." "I want the Mekons."" "I think, really, the critical thing was that they just clearly could not play, but they'd listened to some pop." "And I loved the fact that there would be these moments that were like a photocopy of a bit of pop, even though they hadn't a fucking clue as to how you should actually construct it." ""Never Been in a Riot" was inspired by "White Riot."" "( The Clash performing "White Riot")" "?" "White riot, I wanna riot ?" "?" "White riot... ?" "LYCETT:" "I, and definitely Mark, found the Clash's "White Riot" very offensive" "I want to riot for us poor, downtrodden white people," "So we wrote a song that was actually about," ""Well, what is life like now?"" "And no, I have not been in a riot." "In fact, I'm frightened of being in a riot." "In fact, the police scare the living shit out of me." "LANGFORD:" "There was a large West Indian population in West London, and they always had a big carnival, and it became a place where the SPG group-- the special patrol group-- and black youth would get out on the street" "and just have pitched battles," "And The Clash pledged solidarity with black youth," "And by the time that song had gone up the M1, 200 miles north in Leeds, it meant something completely different" ""White Riot" for them was we're having, you know, it's a white riot, that it was a fascist thing-- white power." "( Mekons performing "Never Been in a Riot")" "?" "Missing out the noise, ?" "GREENHALGH:" "The record was single of the week in the NME, and John Peel immediately picked up on it," "LANGFORD:" "John Peel was crucial to the whole 1977 punk-rock thing," "The fact that we were played on John Peel was just huge." "At the very beginning of it," "Peel would always introduce who he was gonna play, and he said, "Tonight we have a new single by the Mekons."" "( gasping )" "Yeah." "And running, really running, down to the pub with a radio-- little hand radio thing-- and skidding down the wall of the pub, and around then, getting over to Kevin and saying," ""We're on the radio!"" "And all standing around outside listening to it-- and standing outside listening to it, and looking at each other and thinking," ""Now what do we do?"" "( Mekons performing "Where Were You?")" "I wouldn't say gigs started flooding in, but you know, it was apparent that something was going on." "We sort of jumped in a van and felt like we kind of went off the next three years," "WHITE:" "We were playing somewhere in Dublin, and we're sitting in the dressing room, and these school kids came in." "They wouldn't speak to us." "They just sat in the corner, changed into sort of black, and then went out again and went and stood on the stage." "And it was U2-- it was about their second gig or something," "There was about 30 people there, and he was doing all the moves he does now-- the big stadium moves-- he was just doing the whole thing." "And it was like-- it was like a throwback, it was like seeing something from, you know, what we thought had been destroyed." "It was, like, back." "We just looked, and go, "Oh, God, they're rubbish." "They're never going to get anywhere doing this."" "The Edge starts talking about that gig, and how their manager at that time was going," ""The only difference between you and this band is they've got attitude." "And that's what you need."" "And he's talking about the Mekons." "He said, "Yeah, they're no better than you."" "But we were, like, headlining, so they obviously were worrying about the Mekons at the time." "( laughs )" "How they were gonna crush us into dust, which they did." "( singing unintelligibly )" "HARRON:" "It was my first article for Melody Maker." "I think it was the first article ever written about the Mekons." ""Amateur night meets the avant-grade," "You could call it a perfect concept:" "take six variables-- the out-of-tune Mekons-- throw them on stage in random order, and the maximum number of ideas will be produced." "You can also say they did this because they didn't know how to play together on stage." "The Mekons genius has always been in the way they expose their defects instead of hiding them," "Although at times the Mekons sound wildly experimental, that's just a byproduct of confusion." "In fact, the Mekons never improvise-- they just try to follow the notes." "This is what gives them their sincerity, their conviction." "The Mekons are not art-rock, but they're not authentic primitives either." "What they are is a strange combination of sophisticated theory and technical incompetence, which is what allowed them to develop a complex justification of amateurism, while spontaneously putting their ideas into practice."" "I think there was a lot of art-school posturing and a lot of art-school theorizing because they were in art school-- when I saw them, they were still students," "But the basic idea was actually really simple and really good, like most great ideas." "And then there was a lot of theory on top." "But I really loved what they were trying to do." "Whether or not you can do it long-term was what I always thought was the issue, which is, "How do you have an amateur band as a career?"" "( Mekons performing "Tina")" "?" "Good people with good intent ?" "?" "They're paving the highway down ?" "?" "It seeps into the water ?" "?" "Where the bad side is burning, ?" "TIMMS:" "We never really used to make much money from touring," "Recently, we've got quite good at being able to-- especially in the States-- make some kind of reasonable amount of money." "But you know, I mean, it's for a month," "So for a month we get to pay ourselves," "?" "They're putting on human faces ?" "?" "Say "There is no alternative" carved in stone ?" "TIMMS:" "We do play in England for very little money," "We just cover our costs, and we just go and do it occasionally for the hell of it because we all like to go home," "I really love doing it, but I also have a real job, you know, where I go to work every day." "And then, luckily, I've always tried to find jobs where I can take the time off." "Well, I've do bits and bobs as I always have." "I'm a musician, and I have to be available to rehearse." "I'm usually in two bands, so I work for not much money doing various jobs" "I do websites, and I do whatever I can to get by, basically." "I just had to find some means of getting a regular income." "It's a job that... really should be done by robots." "RADIO HOST:" "You made 26 albums." " LANGFORD:" "At least." " HOST:" "How do you get together to actually record an album and do gigs?" " LANGFORD:" "Airplanes." " TIMMS:" "It's amazing!" "HOST:" "Yeah, there's this new thing called..." "I suppose you guys are like a bi-continental band." "We have this huge carbon footprint that's just destroying the planet." "Do you write songs separately?" "Or do just kind of.?" "We only ever do anything when we're together, really." "And then sometimes we don't do anything when we're together." "TIMMS:" "Maybe that's part of the guideline to being a band with longevity 'cause we actually don't-- individuals don't come with songs-- we just get in a room and the songs are written while we're there." " HOST:" "Yeah." " No plans." "So there are no plans, yes." "So you can't be..." "No one person can have an idea." "LANGFORD:" "Afar and forlorn in occult territory." ""Afar and forlorn" is really good, like "alone and forsaken."" ""Afar and forlorn in occult territory." "We have strayed, we have strayed."" "( rock music playing over speakers )" "LANGFORD:" "Let's see, what've you got?" "( Mekons rehearsing "Afar and Forlorn")" "?" "We have strayed ?" "?" "And found each other ?" "?" "Afar and forlorn ?" "( someone plays wrong note;" "band stops playing )" "LANGFORD:" "GOULDING:" "LANGFORD:" "( laughter )" "You think that's you on the record?" "Yeah, really." "GOULDING:" "One, two, three, four... ?" "Here is all still and silent ?" "?" "Lonely, as if no one ever passed this way ?" "?" "Here is all still and silent ?" "?" "Lonely, as if no one ever passed this way ?" "?" "The book became like a bible ?" "?" "The boy needs a home ?" "?" "A place to call his own ?" "?" "Afar and forlorn ?" "?" "We have strayed ?" "?" "And found each other ?" "?" "Afar and forlorn. ?" "RADIO HOST:" "Didn't your band almost quit back in '82?" "Didn't I read that someplace?" "LANGFORD:" "We got sacked by Virgin Records in 1980." "We didn't really split up-- we couldn't split up because we didn't do anything, anyway." "The band was universally hated and derided, so we thought we'd just keep going to have our revenge on the world." "Bloody-mindedness, it's called." "( Mekons performing "Walking Song")" "?" "It's a walking song ?" "?" "Start walking, ?" "We were a bunch of art students when we formed, and it was an art project basically." "It was an experiment." "We weren't musicians." "We were seeing how far we could take it." "And we were on Virgin, in a big studio, making a crap album, and going and playing loads of gigs all the time," "We were bored at that time." "( Mekons performing "Lonely and Wet")" "CORRIGAN:" "I didn't know enough about the industry to know that signing to a major was a very, very bad idea for a band like us." "And a very bad idea for many bands, because of the fact that you only get one chance." "And if you're not successful, then you'll be dropped." "LYCETT:" "We wanted really high royalties 'cause we'd earned that and it was our money," "And we wanted total control." "They couldn't say what was released." "They couldn't put anything out without our say so." "They couldn't package it without our say so." "They couldn't do posters without our say so." "We removed every possible incentive from Virgin to be interested in us." "It was a masterpiece of flushing yourself down the loo." "?" "I'm just not happy anymore ?" "?" "Why don't the sun shine when I'm dead?" "?" "WHITE:" "We were living in a fairly broken society, one, of course, that Thatcher capitalized on-- it's why people like Thatcher came in." "What you were getting in the '70s is increasing immigration into England, and particularly into areas like Yorkshire and into the north," "So you had this visible "other" going on, which groups at the right always jump on immediately." "Rise national pride!" "National pride..." "LYCETT:" "I think it was partly to do with the influence of Margaret Thatcher and the brutality of her policies, and the poverty of the time, and the unemployment and people's frustrations-- it was a very ugly time," "And it expressed itself in very violent ways," "And we were a magnet for that, because we were seen as being a very lefty, radical band." "We did play an awful lot of... any cause you can think of..." "Rock Against Racism, Anti-Nazi League-- any benefit for any downtrodden group, we'd be there doing it." "LYCETT:" "After doing a lot of Rock Against Racism gigs, the world got more extreme, confrontational, and we started getting a lot of violence at our gigs," "And we got to the point where we said," ""We just don't want to do this anymore." "It's just too depressing."" "I remember playing at Leicester University with the Gang of Four, and we opened, and the Gang of Four went on and somebody was stabbed." "It was just getting too much, and that's one of the main reasons we stopped playing live," "We got dropped by Virgin, which didn't help, but we just weren't interested in playing in England anymore." "So, if you can't gig, and you haven't got a record label and you haven't got any money, kind-of that is the end of the story usually for a band." "But we just wouldn't lay down and be dead." "( Mekons performing "The Parson's Farewell")" "LYCETT:" "We were looking for a way out of that sort of dead end of the first album," "Punk had got stupid, and it got very narrow and formulaic, so we wanted to try something else," "We went to a cheap recording studio-- that was our criteria." "It happened to be Leader Sound, which happened to be owned by Bill Leader, who was the most interesting archivist and promoter of really wonderful English folk music." "ROBERT WORBY:" "Bill was what we'd now call an ethnomusicologist," "He went out and recorded country music," "And he made this amazing LP-- this is Tom's copy-- on Topic Records, an LP called "English Country Music", recorded in front rooms in a village in Norfolk." "(English country/folk music playing)" "The folk revival was very political, very left wing, and it was about trying to kind of reclaim the music of the people," "The accidents that they made-- the misplayings-- then got embedded in the music and became part of the music." "So there's a very, very interesting, raw, simple music that was also a kind of, a bit atonal, and a bit disharmonic." "It was exactly the right thing to hear at that time," "John Gill was recording folk music for Bill as his studio engineer, but had also recorded The Sex Pistols and Siouxsie and the Banshees, so he understood punk as well." "We got to know and talk to him, and he would say things like," ""Have you thought actually what you're doing is folk?"" ""Hmm." "What do you mean by folk?"" "And he'd play things and talk to us about it." "This horizon had opened up for us, of a way of thinking about what we were doing, and locating it in some practice, or some tradition, as well, which we'd never thought of before," "that absolutely was-- yeah!" "Now we can get going." ""The English Dancing Master" was what came out of that," "?" "The dance floor's nearly empty now ?" "?" "Everyone's gone home ?" "?" "We're fragmented and broken up ?" "?" "Like love affairs ?" "?" "And as if seeing you for the first time ?" "?" "Something whispered ?" "?" "And looking at you in desperation ?" "?" "Knowing nothing ever happens ?" "?" "I wanted to say fall in love ?" "?" "I wanted to say fall in love with me ?" "?" "I wanted to say fall in love ?" "?" "It'll be all right. ?" "( audience cheering )" "Is it loud in the front?" "Because I'm feeling like..." "It's not loud enough, is it?" "If it's too loud, you're too young!" "I'm too old." "MAN 1:" "Have you started playing yet?" "MAN 2:" "More DJ!" "This is the very cradle of punk rock, Sally." "Don't come here with your complaints." "( audience laughs )" "?" "The wind and the rain beat on his fair head ?" "?" "As he stood in the darkness, wishing he was dead ?" "?" "Bitter tears rolled down his cheek ?" "?" "He couldn't stand to hear talk of defeat ?" "?" "Despair in a terraced house ?" "?" "A ghost from the past ?" "?" "The living death that they'd fought ?" "?" "Is here at last ?" "?" "Oh, the weeds choke and the rust corrodes ?" "?" "You'd think it'd had been 50 years ?" "?" "Since the place was closed ?" "LYCETT:" "What brought everything to the fore was the miners' strike," "And that was an incredibly important moment." "Police in full riot gear have fought a dawn battle with a mass picket of striking miners outside Denby Grange colliery." "In addition to horses, police dogs were in use for the first time," "Some miners were truncheoned as they tried to break police lines," "MARGARET THATCHER:" "I must tell you that what we've got is an attempt to substitute the rule of the mob for the rule of law." "And it must not succeed!" "( crowd cheering )" "LYCETT:" "We weren't miners, We weren't on strike," "It was fatuous posturing to go and stand on the picket line." "What could we do?" "Well, the only thing we could do was do the Mekons, and get out and play benefits and raise money." "LANGFORD:" "This is the band that got back together to play the gigs during the miners' strike, when we wanted a band to be able to play live." "You know, so we could do something." "We'd been sitting in our bedrooms and sitting in recording studios for a long time." "Steve and Lu were kind of recruited." "I think it was the last thing they wanted to do." "But they felt like doing-- they wanted to play some gigs for the miners." "I started with the Mekons in about 1984." "Before that I'd played with Graham Parker and the Rumour." "I'd been playing with Gang of Four and a few people connected with the Gang of Four introduced me to the Mekons and said, you know, these guys could use a good drummer, basically." "And I said, no way, because I thought they were horrible." "I went to see them a few times and they were drunk, they were on stage yelling and screaming with a drum machine," "I didn't get it," "I reconsidered because my friend Lu was saying, you know, we should probably do this." "It would be really nice to do something for the miners," "And it was like, with Lu and me, it was much better, and Susie," "It was like, well, this is kind of interesting," "And then Dick happened." "And Dick was great." "He was..." "He was-- because he had his whole legend behind him." "I started off playing, I actually was at school with Mick Jagger and we started a little band, and it grew quite a bit bigger in the end." "( laughs )" "LYCETT:" "Dick just walked up in the middle of the gig with his little" "Sessionette amp and his guitar, through the audience, got up on stage, biddied about, plugged it in, and went bang!" "And just like nitrous oxide had been lit, we just roared on... ( Mekons performing "Flitcraft")" "I'd never heard anybody play at such a volume, incessantly, throughout every song." "You know, there's no such thing as backing down." "TAYLOR:" "It was the smallest gig I've ever seen, but it was also the most packed gig that I've ever been to," "And it was terrific fun." "And I started doing a few more." "LYCETT:" "Both of them made wonderful entries into the band," "Kevin coached me down the phone." "He just said, "Well, this one's A, E and B." "And this one's D and G."" "They weren't very difficult." "WHITE:" "As they became more musicianly, the discussions became more about music and less about why are we doing this." "And I began to feel-- not left out, but just, this wasn't really what I was for." "And I was dreadful at doing all of this" "I couldn't sing, I couldn't play anything, and as the others got better at it, I didn't." "increasingly, this wasn't something I was part of." "?" ", to me "I don't understand it happened in '33", ?" "LYCETT:" "We were then exploring folk, and doing our own take on it," "We all now know that country music in America, one of its core historical threads, was English folk music." "Terry knew that and could see that continuity, and so then, introduced us to country music." "I sent them these tapes and I called them Honky Tonk Classics." "And they were made up of all the classic, '50s mainly, and some '60s country-and-western guys" "Ernest Tubb, Merle Haggard, George Jones-- which they seemed to really, really like, 'cause all the songs were about drinking beer and stuff, and ruined relationships, and stuff like that, which was not too dissimilar" "from what they were singing about, which was a little bit different than the other punk bands, who were singing about anarchy all the time." "Sometimes, it's people from the outside discovering a kind of music and trying to mimic it in their own ways and they inadvertently screw it all up and come up with something new and vital and amazing." "It's like the Ramones wanted to sound like the Beach Boys." "Well, they don't, but it's a great thing that they came up with." "And it's the same thing with these bunch of drunken Limeys who hear Hank Williams records and," ""Hey, let's sound like Hank Williams, "" "And they came up with this completely original take on it," "?" "I was out late the other night ?" "?" "Fear and whiskey kept me going ?" "?" "I swore somebody held me tight ?" "?" "But now there's just no way of knowing ?" "?" "I saw your face in a crowded bar ?" "? "Excuse me, please" ?" "?" "At least I thought it was you, ?" "KOT:" "When we got "Fear and Whiskey", that was when the light bulb really went on," "It was like, holy mackerel, these guys are really on to something totally their own." "It's like they were playing country music, but getting it totally wrong." "And in the mistakes it was just way more interesting than the original version-- like, nobody wanted to listen to Ernest Tubb anymore." "But these guys were taking that whole country paradigm of hard lives, regular people, and translating it in their own crude language and making something really beautiful and profound out of it." "MARTY LENNARTZ:" "They came to Chicago and they found a part of Chicago's musical history that not too many people knew about." "DON WALLS:" "Hi there, this is Don Walls on lead guitar," "And Kurt Delaney on bass," "Bob Boyle on rhythm," "ALL THREE:" "And we're The Sundowners," "KOT:" "The Sundowners are huge," "They were a last example of that really vibrant, really active, old-style honky-tonk scene that was coming out of the music of Hank Williams and early George Jones." "?" "( singing unintelligibly ) ?" "?" "Till my lonely song... ?" "MARY DELANEY:" "I was married to the bass player of the Sundowners, Kurt Delaney," "My husband came home one night from work at 4:30 in the morning and he said," ""Honey, are you awake?" And I said, "Oh, I am now."" "And he said, "You'll never guess what fell into the door tonight." "A bunch of punk-rock kids from England called the Mekons."" "And I said, "Okay, did you get them up on the stage?"" "And he said, "Oh, yeah." I said, "Are they any good?"" "He said, "Not really." "But they're willing to learn."" "?" ", there's been no country here ?" "?" "Nothing here but the war ?" "?" "And again and again we say ?" "?" "I'm not ready for this ?" "?" "I am not ready for this, ?" "KOT:" "The Mekons really learned a lot, observing The Sundowners and then playing with them, and got this tutorial in hillbilly music." "I'm a southern guy who grew up on country music, and to hear these, you know, intellectual, arty Brits doing country music was just amazing." "I think that sometimes" "Jon Langford gets my culture more than I do." "He gets the blue-collar, working-class aesthetic more than your average Toby Keith, certainly." "You know, I mean... blue-collar country-and-western fans shouldn't be conservative." "They shouldn't be Republicans;" "they should be leftists." "And only, like, a Socialist Brit could get that across." "?" "I'm going up to Sheffield ?" "?" "I don't know when I'm coming home ?" "?" "He took me in a corner ?" "?" "And I don't know why ?" "?" "I was looking for a friend ?" "?" "He shaved me dry ?" "?" "Never been in trouble ?" "?" "Don't call me on the phone ?" "?" "Put the blower in the bathroom ?" "?" "Burn the house and start from scratch... ?" "GREIL MARCUS:" "It's hard to think of music that is more despairing, that is more blasted and defeated, that is more... people singing as if the heart has been ripped out of them." "?" "It's hard to be human ?" "?" "To be human again... ?" "Just that lyric, "hard to be human again."" "Just the very simplest notions." "Essentially, these are depressive people singing about how shitty the world is." "?" "It's hard to be human... ?" "FRANZEN:" "If I were to try to describe what was so particularly inspiring about their music, to me, was that they consistently resolved what ought to have been despair and rage into humor-- without losing the despair and without losing the rage." "?" "Doubt and resentment ?" "?" "Bile in my stomach ?" "?" "Feelings of hate ?" "?" "And a pain behind my eyes ?" "?" "Looking at a world ?" "?" "That's shaking slightly ?" "?" "My ears are filling ?" "?" "With rubbish ?" "?" "Can't find it ?" "?" "And make it work ?" "?" "Hello, cruel world, ?" "FRANZEN:" "If you feel like the inheritor of a very embattled critical stance, while the rest of the world is going over to the dark side, they're the band for you." "And I say that not because they give you hope of ever winning the battle, but they teach you how to be gracious and amusing losers." "?" "It's a cruel world ?" "?" "Come on, cruel world ?" "?" "Show me what you've got, ?" "( Mekons performing "Nine Mile Burn")" "MALE INTERVIEWER:" "How did you get this car?" "eBay. 350 quid." "We got the van on eBay as well." " MAN:" "Hello!" " HONEYMAN:" "Hello!" "HONEYMAN:" "When I met Jock, I was touring a lot," "And then immediately we started having children and I couldn't tour anymore." "It wasn't feasible." "So I started working with Jock-- he's an artist," "Since about 2001, he hasn't had a gallery representing him," "But by that time, I'd been working with him a lot, helping him with exhibitions." "We called it the Grey Gallery, partly because we were so sick of the emphasis on young and emerging artists," "So we were interested in doing stuff with people of all ages, that's serious." "And this year, it's Bob and Roberta Smith," "Do you want to explain about this work?" "Mmm." "Yeah." " Briefly what it is?" " Yeah." "This is a text, it's an article that appeared in The Guardian," "And they did this brilliant thing, they sent the art writers to look at sports events, and they sent the sportswriters to look at art events." "So this is my translation of the tennis correspondent of The Guardian and he went to see Louise Bourgeois." "And it's really just a mad article, it's really great." "HONEYMAN:" "And it's a complete departure from your usual work, isn't it?" "In that it's-- usually, you do little stories." "HONEYMAN:" "I see a lot of similarities between what we're doing with the gallery and with what the Mekons are doing, in that we're doing it ourselves." "Nobody's pouring huge amounts of money our way, so we've had to work around our limited budgets and do things our way." "But it does mean that we've got virtually total control over what we do." "We've stood back from making the image, we're making it work together more now," "We don't need to make a big statement with a "fuck off" song, saying, you know, "Where Were You?"" "or "Never Been in a Riot" or something." "We're making something much more expressive and experienced." "And I think that is what is interesting about older artists." "EDMONDS:" "WOMAN:" "You don't want to hear what, "Where's my pacemaker?"" "( audience laughter )" ""Who's got the diapers?"" "?" "The hope and the anchor ?" "?" "Lies between ?" "?" "Levels and layers ?" "?" "Two places to be ?" "?" "The land and the sea ?" "?" "The road and the grave ?" "?" "The snakes and the ladders ?" "?" "The sadder and sadder ?" "?" "Lies between ?" "?" "The hope and the anchor ?" "MALE RADIO HOST:" "Very nice." "It's the Mekons, live in the studio." "Lu, what's that instrument you're playing?" " What would you call that?" " It's called a saz." " S-a-z." " S-a-z?" "And it comes from Turkey." "Is it hard for a band like you guys?" "Okay, you're in Chicago." "Rico, you're in Los Angeles." "And where are the rest of you living now?" " Uh, mostly London." " HOST:" "London?" "Well, where else do you go?" "Lu goes all over Central Asia." "Mainly Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan." " Bishkek." "Dushanbe." " HOST:" "All over the world, huh?" "He has the most interesting life of any of us." "(Lu Edmonds plays and sings Russian folk song)" "EDMONDS:" "Over the last four or five years," "I've been coming in and out of Tajikistan and trying to meet musicians, and try to find out what they're doing, what kind of conditions they're doing it under, the facilities they have, and just trying to find ways of helping them along," "( saz playing )" "( man singing in Tajik )" "EDMONDS:" "What I'm bringing here is connections-- connections to ideas, and knowledge about technology, because they have no access to going on to the Internet and just looking on a website and finding out something." "So I have this privilege of access," "And like every musician in America is so privileged." "You not only have access to being able to travel everywhere, relatively easy, but you also have total access to all your own culture, to all your recordings, all of those archives-- all the great old blues and bluegrass records," "the gospel records." "These people don't have that," "( speaking Russian )" "MAN ( speaking Russian ):" "So he's saying you can just hang these." "They're looking at the West, the rich, incredibly rich, rich, rich West, and they're going, "We will never be able to make a good record." "We will never be able to be good musicians." "Because we don't have any of this technology, "" "( Edmonds speaking Russian )" "EDMONDS:" "So that goes on to this next thing, what we're trying to do here, is we're trying to show them that by just getting a simple laptop and a couple boxes, and a few decent microphones," "you have... equipment, which 20 years ago, would have cost you the best part of half a million dollars." "( whistling and light applause )" "ED ROCHE:" "Lu is just so incredibly important to the process of making music in that band," "Probably for the first five years I knew the band and became friends with them, it was almost like," "Lu was a ghost and I didn't even know he existed." "And all of a sudden, one day," "Jon was talking on and on about how Lu was flying in from Siberia, and how he was learning throat singing," "I just played along, and I thought, this was just another crazy Mekons thing." "And then Lu showed up one day." "He's the guy who's got the giant bug eyes on the side of the stage-- he's just the crazy man who looks like he wandered up there, but he's the backbone of the band." "EDMONDS: ?" "They shall come with me ?" "HONEYMAN: ?" "They shall come with me ?" "Okay, again." "ALL:" "?" "Today we shall war against ?" "?" "The roaring of the sea ?" "?" "Look back to land and see sorrow ?" "?" "The light will be darkened ?" "?" "And they shall come with speed ?" "?" "Ancient and modern tomorrow ?" "ALL ( over speakers ):" "?" "Today we shall war against ?" "?" "The roaring of the sea ?" "?" "Look back to land and see sorrow, ?" "Here's to Cliff Richard!" "?" "The light will be darkened ?" "?" "And then they shall come with speed ?" "?" "Ancient and modern tomorrow, ?" "Good afternoon." " We're the Mekons." " Good afternoon." "In this podcast for the Calgary Folk Festival, the Mekons will explain and introduce themselves." "Sally Timms." "Hi, I'm currently in Wales, and we are recording a new record for the Mekons." "We're in a beautiful location in..." "Bethesda." "...Bethesda, in the northern Welsh valleys." "Hills!" "Hills, valleys." "Well, I don't know what to say!" "GOULDING:" "It's supposed to be entertaining!" "LANGFORD:" "It doesn't matter what it is." "HONEYMAN:" "But you can't entertain." "It doesn't matter what it is, if you all talk over it." "Steve, you're the drummer in the Mekons." "How long have you been the drummer in the Mekons?" "I've been the drummer in the Mekons for about 35 years." "Actually, that's a bit of an exaggeration-- but not by long!" "LANGFORD:" "Who else famous have you played with that might encourage people to come to this festival?" "I've played with that Elvis Costello, that bloke." "You did that bit-- how does it go?" "The beginning of "Watching the Detectives"?" "It goes..." "( mimics drum sounds )" " That's you?" " That was me." "So, Lu!" "Hey, Lu." "Lu just burst into the kitchen." "TIMMS:" "He's making tons of noise." "LANGFORD:" "He's looking in the fridge." "He's making himself a gin and tonic." "Hang on, I'll come over there." "What sort of gin do you favor?" "Tanqueray's pretty good, but my favorite is Bulus, which you can get in Yakutsk." "It's a form of vodka, which they put the juniper in, and it's made of glacial ice." "And it's very rare, and they keep it to themselves." "And I recommend everyone to drink it." "Ladies and gentlemen, encounter the Mekons." "LANGFORD:" "What's boring about most bands is that there is a leader and everyone follows them." "I've heard that so many times, that "Jon Langford, the leader of the Mekons."" "That's a gross misunderstanding of the situation, you know." "This is anarchy." "There's many leaders, and there's many leaders in different departments," "Tom's a very quiet man," "He's not comfortable with being as big a public dickhead as I am." "We want you all to stand up for this one." "TIMMS:" "Don't do that." "It's cruel." "You'll want to sit down." "People can't see behind you, and this is a spectacle, the like of which... ( audience laughter ) ... you will poke your own eyes out afterwards." "We have to look at it every night..." "You'll shove burning sticks into your eyeball sockets after you see this." "Look away." "That's all I can say." "BELLIS:" "It's frightening." "Are there any Michael Flatley fans in the audience?" "( audience laughter )" "?" "You take the high, I'll take the low ?" "?" "Off through the gorse and brambles ?" "?" "Far off the road and far from home ?" "?" "I ramble ?" "?" "A hornet's nest lay on the track ?" "?" "It's half formed larvae scattered ?" "?" "Leave the path, strike out alone ?" "?" "Up on the ridge I ramble ?" "?" "Back to the wind, face wet with rain ?" "?" "Above the fields of cattle ?" "?" "High in the ferns I find a scull ?" "?" "I see the flashing shadows ?" "?" "You don't have to believe in the end ?" "?" "You have to believe this is the end ?" "?" "This is the end ?" "?" "Over the hills and far away ?" "?" "All through the day I ramble ?" "?" "I rock 'n' roll in standing stones ?" "?" "With Brian Jones I ramble ?" "?" "You don't have to believe in the end ?" "?" "You have to believe this is the end ?" "?" "This is the end ?" "?" "I ramble, yeah, I ramble ?" "?" "I believe, believe, believe ?" "?" "Believe, believe, believe ?" "?" "Believ-liev-lieve ?" "?" "Believe, believe ?" "?" "Believe and believe ?" "?" "Believe, believe, believe ?" "?" "You don't have to believe... ?" "HONEYMAN:" "We wouldn't tour if we didn't have Jon," "Jon's a renaissance man and he is a force of nature." "It wouldn't be the same without him." "Jon is just sort of around." "( laughs )" "Especially, if you go to the right places-- if you went to Lounge Axe, if you went to the Hideout" "Jon is kind of like the mayor of that scene, of that kind of underground, country-rock, Chicago art scene." "LANGFORD:" "?" "I ramble, and I ramble ?" "?" "Well, far off the road, I ramble ?" "?" "And I lose my way, I ramble ?" "?" "When I lose my clothes, I ramble, ?" "THOMAS MASTERS:" "He typifies a lot of great artists who are capable of choosing a variety of ways to communicate," "If I remember Jon's story correctly, he really was a painter first, and sort of found music, and then came back to painting again in his evolution as an artist." "But, boy, the two are really close." "This love for that underbelly of country music, and the original greats of country music, he celebrates it both in his music and in his painting as well," "The good thing about Jon is that his work tends to put off the assholes." "I've always liked that about him." "You can always tell the really smart, urbane types in the art crowd-- they're the ones wearing the stupid glasses, you know." "I've always like that Jon's work kind of repelled all the right people." "( song ends; audience cheering )" "GREG KOT:" "He's almost like a Pied Piper figure," "You wanted to be around Jon," "He's a very cheerful guy," "And he's an energetic guy." "And at the same time, he's... you know, despite the Mekons having this reputation as heavy drinkers and, you know, they'll go all night and party or whatever-- he works really hard." "LANGFORD:" "Good evening, and welcome to The Eclectic Company, I'm Jon Langford and it's packed in here tonight." "A load of guests:" "Bridget Murphy, Chris Ligon," "Heather MacAdams-- local superstars whose job descriptions defy all description." "I don't know where to start," "ROB MILLER:" "The things we do with Jon are the Waco Brothers, the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, the kids' band-- the Wee Hairy Beasties," "He's done a couple of solo records for us." "He has produced all sorts of people." "He has played on probably 25% of our releases." "Looking around the office, you can see that he's produced a lot of the cover artwork." "He plays at all the showcases." "I don't know where he gets his energy." "?" "(unintelligible singing) ?" "LANGFORD:" "?" "It's our mid-week crisis ?" "?" "I'm lost in myself ?" "?" "In the wrist-job motel ?" "?" "Get the money ?" "?" "And don't leave anything behind ?" "?" "I got ants in my pants ?" "?" "I got butterflies... ?" "SALLY TIMMS:" "The Wee Hairy Beasties was purely mercenary," "I got an email from Boche saying," ""Do you want to play Brookfield Zoo?"" "And I went, "Well, not really."" "Then he emailed me how much it was, and I went," ""Yes, we want to play in Brookfield Zoo."" "?" "I can sing like a bird ?" "?" "I'm a cowboy sun ?" "?" "I'm a little horse 'cause I sung too long ?" "?" "I have a whale of a time, I'm a busy bee ?" "?" "I'm the black sheep of the family... ?" "TIMMS:" "With the Wee Hairy Beasties, I try to say nothing, 'cause I'm just waiting for the moment when the word comes out in the wrong way, in the wrong place, at the wrong time." "So, I don't say much, except, "Jump up and down!"" "I'm Cowboy Sally from Wild West Yorkshire." "I'm here to do a little goat rustling." "Come here, you goats." "FRED ARMISEN:" "Sally actually got me to take my focus off of music," "She was the one who, kind of snapped me out of, like," ""Stop trying to be this one thing." "I think you should go this direction."" "And I'll always credit her for being the person who kind of started gearing me towards doing comedy." "All right, cool." "What's going on?" "It's Fred from Hofstra University doing some South by Southwest action." "We got the Mekons." " I don't like your look." " You don't like my look?" "They're punk rockers!" "Those punks are rude." "But they're not really, though." "They're really excellent." "What do you guys think of Pavement?" " Fuck off." " Right." "Pavement, fuck off." "ARMISEN:" "I ended up playing with them only by default," "They were very welcoming-- they were just, like... it was really interesting to see a band that was so... they just wanted everyone to be a part of it." "TIMMS:" "I got married to Fred in '97 and moved to Chicago," "So, all of us ended up kind of coming here because we got married to people who were living here." "MALE INTERVIEWER:" "It's a strange confluence, or something like that?" "There's a lot of available partners in Chicago, which is one of the things that draws people from all over the country, and they haven't got very high standards." "?" "People say I'm frightening ?" "?" "It's only 'cause I'm scared ?" "?" "If I say something to hurt someone ?" "?" "Then I cry alone for days ?" "?" "This is the ballad of my life, ?" "SUSIE HONEYMAN:" "I love Sally," "I totally adore her," "But it's taken..." "It has taken years." "She terrified me when I first met her." "She was this completely stroppy, outspoken girlfriend of Jon," "I just thought she was so sophisticated-- she wore tons of makeup, she was wearing Vivienne Westwood clothes, and extremely rude and vicious," "She's toned down the viciousness, but she's..." "Well, she's got the voice of an angel." "?" "Up in the hills above Bradford ?" "?" "Outside the napalm factory ?" "?" "They're floating above us ?" "?" "Ghosts of American astronauts ?" "?" "Are drifting too far from the sea ?" "I've forgotten the words." "LANGFORD:" "?" "Drinks cocktails with God ?" "No, it's not." "That's the next one." "?" "In a cafe in-- ?" "No, it's-- I've forgotten the words." "( crowd booing )" "What is it?" "It's very unusual." "MAN:" "Refund!" "Refund!" "I've got alcohol-induced brain damage." "I don't know what that is." "It's mine now." "It's just a small step for him." "Thank you." "We have a book of lyrics." "( audience cheering )" "LANGFORD:" "It's so much easier when you're published." "Turn to page 54 of your Mekons hymn book." "Is it really?" "I don't usually forget the words to a song." "I knew I didn't understand that line." "Okay, let's try again and do a really professional version." "LANGFORD:" "Can we skip the beginning?" "Because they heard that." "Walter, rewind the tape with all the song on it." "( audience laughter )" " LANGFORD:" "From the top." " Bloody hell." ""Glow in the"-- yeah." "( band starts back up mid-song )" "The fact that we have managed to maintain almost the same number of people coming to see us as we have done since I started in the band, and probably, you know, if you look at it," "relatively, sell the same number of records-- that is quite unusual, and it's an achievement, I think," "ROCHE:" "Everybody who has any opinion on the Mekons would be shocked to know how few records they sell." "A good-selling Mekons record is probably about 8,000." "The joke around the label was always that every critic loves the Mekons, but unfortunately, they get free records." "There's a lot of bands that do it for the right reasons-- you know, to my mind-- to have fun, and be creative and connect with their fans-- but..." "I don't know that there's any other band that I can think of, that's done it for the right reasons over such a long period of time." "?" "If you one day be the new Mekons ?" "?" "And you, perhaps, a myth bygone ?" "?" "Know they have something that they can see ?" "?" "And history is there to serve our cause... ?" "OLDHAM:" "I'm sure I couldn't describe what it was like to be "Substitute Tom, "" "Was it like going to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory?" "It was kind of like that." "?" "Somebody woke me this morning ?" "?" "I didn't know where I was ?" "?" "The person I spent the night with ?" "?" "Just looked at me and sighed ?" "?" "I caught a train to Sheffield ?" "?" "But in my mind, I was already in hell ?" "?" "I betrayed a friend ?" "?" "Beaten and broken to the end... ?" "OLDHAM:" "It was one of the highlights of my life, I would have to say," "I felt like... this was something that I had trained for, unintentionally." "?" "I caught a train to Sheffield ?" "?" "But in my mind, I was already in hell ?" "?" "I betrayed a friend ?" "?" "Beaten and broken to the end. ?" "( audience cheering )" "Good job, well done!" "Jon granted me "Deputy Mekon Status"" "after those shows in Chicago." "Maybe even via text, or something like that." "( laughs )" "Well, those are our second vanity plates." "Our first plates, we had Ramones plates-- unfortunately, we parked around the corner from CB's, and came out, and both plates were gone." " We had the plates one day." " Yeah, one day." " Somebody unscrewed them." "Gone." " Gone." "We've had the Mekons plates, like, what, like 25 years, and no one's touched them." "?" ", with me, way out ?" "?" "We've read the books, ?" "DENNIS:" "We didn't have a conscious plan of having monsters and Mekons together any more than the upstairs area, where we have Simpsons and animation characters with Mekon posters." "Along this wall, we have a collection of a lot-- there's still more-- but a lot of our Mekons, Wacos," "Skull Orchard posters." "And these are Jon Langford's old jeans." "He sort of knew we had Joey Ramone's jeans and thought we'd like his jeans." "At one point, we held these next to Joey's jeans and there was quite a bit of difference in the waist line." "The Mekons inspire a particular sort of devotion that I've never felt for any musical entity." "I mean, I've actually worn a Mekons t-shirt, which I don't recall ever having worn the t-shirt of any other band." "By normal rock band standards, they've remained a cult act, and Mekons "Rock 'n' Roll", by all rights, had it been promoted, might have been a hit." ""Memphis, Egypt" had hit written all over it." "( Mekons performing "Memphis, Egypt")" "?" "Destroy your safe and happy lives ?" "?" "Before it is too late ?" "?" "Rock 'n' roll... ?" "GREENHALGH:" "We were written about as being this kind of country-folk band, and so we thought, okay, well, we'll spell it out to people that we're not that now." "?" "I walk through the wall ?" "?" "There's no pain at all ?" "?" "I'm born inside the belly ?" "?" "Of rock 'n' roll... ?" "KOT:" "Mekons "Rock 'n' Roll" came out at a time when rock 'n' roll couldn't have been more unfashionable." "I mean, that was the time of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, and, you know, there was less rock music on the charts at that time than any other time in the history of the Billboard charts." "When they were on AM for the "Rock 'n' Roll" record," "AM didn't know what to do with that record." "They had no idea." "I'm sure that the promotion people got that record and were like, "What are we supposed to do with this?"" "Hello." "This is Tom Greenhalgh from the Mekons and we're introducing ourselves to you." "I play guitar and sing with the band." "This is Sally." "Hi." "My name's Sally and I sing." "This is Jon." "But he's not speaking to anyone at the moment." "We also have Susie Honeyman, and Susan has very generously offered to give herself to the man, or woman, who manages to sell the most records for the Mekons." "We can't show her to you because it may discourage you from going out and actually selling the records, but if you do show any interest in her at all, please, please go out and sell them for us." "HONEYMAN:" "We thought we were going to earn some money, and we were really excited," "We went to the AM Christmas party, and then there was this speech welcoming the whole new roster of people that they'd just signed." "And we're all looking at each other, thinking, "This is it, we're made now."" "And they went through a whole list of people and they didn't mention us." "And we left, just thinking, back in the van," "They've always encountered horrendous obstacles to doing what they wanted to do." "There's always that "We're going to sign to a major," thing." "And I remember towards the end of my time with them, it was decided they were going to sign with AM Records-- a major record company in America." "And I just thought, uh-oh, disaster." "And the record we made was "The Curse of the Mekons, "" "We had this guy, a friend in Leeds," "PD, who was a practicing wizard-- he knew a lot about spells and curses and stuff." "And he could read runes, and write runes, Nordic runes." "So, if you look at the sleeve of the Mekons, it's got that image of a hen or a cock or something;" "it says "The Curse of the Mekons," written in Jon's hand, in his blood, taken out of his leg." "But there's a curse, written in Nordic runes," "PD said to us, "You guys got to be really careful, because when you use curses, they can turn around," "With you guys, it's bound to happen, "" "And then, one evening, we're all walking back from the pub, and PD's with us, and a lady friend of PD, who is a witch." "And I heard this woman saying to PD, she said," ""Did you write that curse on the cover of the Mekons album?"" "And he said, "Yep."" "And she said, "Well, that's that, then, isn't it?"" "And he said, "Yep."" "And no more was said." "That was it." "And I don't know what the curse says" "I can't read runes;" "and none of can read runes." "But sure enough, what happened was the executives at AM Records, who just signed the Mekons, all got sacked and a new lot came in and that record was just dumped by AM." "But it was bound to happen." "It was bound to happen." "It's the curse of the Mekons." "?" "Magic, fear and superstition ?" "?" "This is the curse of the Mekons ?" "?" "You'll be called on by our crew ?" "?" "It's no joke, I'm telling you ?" "?" "On our stone heads and leaky hearts ?" "?" "We'll leave our mark to say we called ?" "?" "Crazy rags around our legs ?" "?" "In the dark we got the kid ?" "?" "Listen to our battle cry ?" "?" "Ai yi yi yi, yi yi yi yi yi ?" "GOULDING:" "Whatever our relationship is with the music industry, it's always been very, very fraught, and sometimes quite negative, and I don't think we are capable of being any other way." "I don't know that it's anti-capitalist so much as really just having an ideal that you want to stay with." "You know, you start out with this way that you want to work, which is very single-minded, so whenever a record label come along and say, we can make more money out of you if you do this, or do that, it's very difficult" "because the Mekons don't want to do that." "It's not really a political stance I don't think." "It's an artistic stance." "( Mekons performing "Millionaire")" "After we left AM, we ended up with Touch and Go in 1993, we felt-- what's the word-- obliged to go out on the road and play gigs, so through '93 and '94, we kind of toured furiously," "with various people who hadn't left the band after AM falling apart." "?" "I love a millionaire ?" "?" "I love a millionaire ?" "?" "I love a millionaire ?" "?" "I love a millionaire ?" "?" "The champagne was never cheap ?" "?" "But I could pay someone to drink it for me... ?" "LANGFORD:" "We were basically just over the touring band business," "We had to do something else," "Eric became involved again." "Kevin became involved again, and we started doing the art thing." "BELLIS:" "It wasn't like bands that had a huge amount of commercial success and then spent loads of money on sex and drugs and stuff, and then fell out 'cause of their egos took over." "It was just really about total disappointment and disenchantment." "So this idea of working, more of an "art thing", was just a new direction, really, which made it more interesting again." "We talked about doing collaborative paintings," "We mailed bits to each other," "We would do a painting based on a drawing I'd done." "It was about the miners' strike-- a very aggressive policeman on a stomping horse, and this guy was beating the shit out of people, you know." "Everybody had a different take on it and did different things to it," "Like, Kevin was working with computers," "And Tom was kind of working in a semi-abstract manner." "SALLY TIMMS:" "?" "I was waiting in the bar ?" "?" "Where were you?" "?" "?" "I was buying you a drink ?" "?" "Where were you?" "?" "?" "I was lying home in bed ?" "?" "Where were you?" "?" "LANGFORD:" "The exhibition was called Mekons United." "There was a guy we knew who was curator of the Lakeland Museum of Fine Art," "And he just thought it'd be really excellent if the Mekons had a show there, but... he got fired just before the show was going to take place." "( chuckles )" "Which has been a recurring theme." "As soon as we get signed up to do anything, the person who signs us up always gets fired or leaves." "SANTE:" "I remember being really curious about it and never seeing it around until one day" "I was in an anarchist bookstore on Avenue B on the Lower East Side, and they had it." "And it cost some unearthly amount of money." "And just I savored the irony of not being able to afford something in an anarchist bookstore." "LANGFORD:" "We were attempting to be a kind of art collective, and it was the doing of it that was the most important thing, rather than what came out of it." "That's been a useful thing to fall back on." "We're the Mekons." "We can just do anything we want." "?" "I had a dream ?" "?" "I had a dream, ?" "KOT:" "Some of the greatest shows I've ever seen have been by the Mekons, and some of the worst," "And I think part of it is, they just want to mess things up." "They just want to throw caution to the wind and say," ""Fuck it." "We're gonna do something different tonight."" "You know, I remember that Kathy Acker" " God bless her-- great writer, "Pussy Queen of the Pirates,"" "that was kind of like a high-school,level costume play," "You really have to be a huge, huge fan boy to love this stuff." "LANGFORD:" "Kathy Acker was talking about what her new book was going to be," "She says, "I'm writing a book about lesbian pirates."" "I'm like, that sounds great." "Are there any pirate songs?" "Any sea shanties in it?" "She's going, "No, do you want to write some?"" "KATHY ACKER ( narrating ):" "Hello, my name is O," "Once upon a time, there was a girl named Ange, and she didn't have anything, like me." "Together, we looked for buried treasure, in rubble and in garbage." "That's how we came to London." "?" "The foul breath of the lower mouth ?" "?" "becomes a jewel ?" "?" "The blood of this rose The blood of this rose ?" "?" "Now there's nothing left of me ?" "?" "The foul breath of the heart ?" "?" "Is the best part... ?" "Why not just go and put out a book?" "Or why not have an art exhibition?" "Okay, we'll do that for awhile." "TIMMS:" "Vito Acconci was always coming to shows in the '80s and suggested this project," "GREENHALGH:" "It was really nice to meet him," "He was in all the kind of books of all the people I was into." "Most people who know who I am know of me as an artist, but a particular kind of artist-- an artist that was involved with performance activity, installation, so-called conceptual art." "BAM wanted to do a series where so-called visual artists would come up with theater pieces." "The Vito Acconci thing was very weird." "It was just like getting taken up by all these very enthusiastic arty people, who were really, really nice." "They're lovely people." "I don't really pretend to understand what he was doing." "ACCONCI:" "The theme I had was "How do you form?"" "Could we do a theater performance in which the end of the performance is the forming of a band." "( guitar riff echoes;" "Sally Timms sings indistinctly )" "ACCONCI:" "I wanted to give each audience a kind of personal Mekon," "Just as walls would come up, ceilings would come down," "At the end, when all the Mekons come together, all the ceilings are down," "Mekons above, audience below, strong light on the Mekons, so that each Mekon becomes five times his or her size," "So there were these Mekon shadows looming over the audience," "I found the end exhilarating." "I don't know if anybody else did." "Whether it "worked"-- in inverted commas" " I don't know." "You know, it certainly wouldn't work as conventional entertainment, but it isn't trying to be that." "The feeling I've got from the Mekons, sometime, with every album is, you know, we know each other for a long time, maybe too long-- let's close our eyes and almost not recognize each other," "They kind of understand what it means to refresh." "ROS ALLEN:" "It was lovely to see them, and to see that they've evolved into something that's completely different from where they were" "30-odd years ago." "And that's how it should be with a creative entity-- it should be evolving," "?" "She had been misplaced by the government ?" "?" "Our old friends are under attack ?" "?" "They crossed over the border ?" "?" "But I have been to heaven and back ?" "?" "I've been to heaven and back ?" "?" "Right in front of my eyes ?" "?" "Things have a habit of happening to me ?" "?" "It's no surprise... ?" "MARCUS:" "I remember getting an invitation for the "20th Anniversary of The Mekons Project."" "That's how it was described." "At that point, nothing surprised me about the fact that-- not that they're still here, but that they're still able to play as if they are discovering their music." "You know, talk about capturing the punk ethos." "?" "Ooh, animal radar ?" "?" "Like a thread around the world... ?" "TIMMS:" "I think this is what is the legacy of growing up during punk, which was that you should make functional art, and that it's not important whether it does well or not." "We have this thing that we can do," "We get together." "We get to travel." "We get to, like, make things." "And that seems to be a very human endeavor." "And we get to share it with other people." "?" "Some people write little verses ?" "?" "Others go on searching for cracks ?" "?" "Ooh!" "Handcuffed to history ?" "?" "I have been to heaven and back ?" "?" "I've been to heaven and back... ?" "We think the way we operate is more interesting, almost more ethical, you know?" "We were very interested in, sort of, right and wrong when we started." "Very black and white." "You can't stick to a manifesto, as such, but there's definitely a thread, I think, in everything the Mekons have ever done that goes right back to the initial moment of forming the band, which was..." "It's not just self-deprecation, it's not just being clowns-- although there's an element of that in it, and there's a way self-deprecation is a useful way of defusing awkward and difficult situations." "I've always thought we've pretty much believed in what we were doing." "And it was the way you did it was more important than even in what you did." "( audience cheering )" "RADIO HOST:" "So now that you've hit 30 years did you guys exchange gold watches and stuff?" " Or how does that work?" " We actually married each other in a stone circle in the Lake District two years ago." "TIMMS:" "We all stood in a stone circle and had a pagan wedding, and we all joined in matrimony." "And then we went to a motel." "LANGFORD:" ""Consult the map," "Ignore the signs," "Lose the keys," "The road is narrow," "A pile of bones up on the hillside." "A pile of rocks." "We drive at night." "To this place." "Stick it here."" "VARIOUS VOICES:" "Hands." " LANGFORD:" "I do." " TIMMS:" "I do." "VARIOUS VOICES:" "I do." "We do." "Let this day be remembered..." " HONEYMAN:" "As the We-kons." " ...for the next 25,000 years." "GREENHALGH:" "I now pronounce you..." "LANGFORD:" "You may fuck the bride." " HONEYMAN:" "All right, us?" " Husbands and wives..." "ALL:" "Hey, hey!" "( Mekons performing "Orpheus")" "LANGFORD: ?" "All my time I spent in heaven ?" "?" "Revelries of dance and wine ?" "?" "Waking to the sound of laughter ?" "?" "Up I'd rise and kiss the sky ?" "?" "Ecstasy and fornication ?" "?" "Music, lust and poetry ?" "?" "In my ears, I hear a warning ?" "?" "I look for Euridice ?" "?" "Lose, lose, lose, lose ?" "?" "Lose, lose ?" "?" "Lose your head, ?" "The curse on the record sleeve said," ""Anyone who did anything against the Mekons would live for eternity in the ice giant's cave."" "TIMMS: ?" "Searching through the pits of Hades ?" "?" "Like a miner in the gloom ?" "?" "I strike out to find my baby ?" "?" "Don't look back, the warning booms ?" "OLDHAM: ?" "In my mind that warning shakes me ?" "?" "How can fate deceive me now?" "?" "?" "I will think of worlds in order ?" "?" "I will make a solemn vow ?" "?" "Lose, lose, lose, lose ?" "?" "Lose, lose ?" "?" "Lose your head ?" "?" "One last glimpse to take back with me ?" "?" "Set my eyes, despite the fear ?" "?" "One last glimpse was all they needed ?" "? "Loose the Mekons" came the cheer ?" "?" "Torn in two, and cut and scattered ?" "?" "Limb from limb and heart from mind ?" "?" "In the water hear me singing ?" "?" "As my head swirls in the brine ?" "?" "Lose, lose, lose, lose ?" "?" "Lose, lose ?" "?" "Lose your head ?" "TIMMS: ?" "I will teach them from my lesson ?" "?" "I will teach them from my song ?" "?" "I will speak of all life's wonders ?" "?" "Where I land will be renowned ?" "OLDHAM: ?" "Where I land will be the fortress ?" "?" "Of this fight against the tide ?" "?" "Tide of rotten patriarchy ?" "?" "Tide of tricks and greed and lies ?" "?" "Lose, lose, lose, lose ?" "?" "Lose, lose ?" "?" "Lose your head ?" "?" "Lose, lose, lose, lose ?" "?" "Lose, lose ?" "?" "Lose your head, ?" "Well, our clothes seem to have blown off." "We seem to have lost all our clothes." " Our clothes seem to have blown off." " Oh, dear." "We better go now." " Yes, we better." " Good-bye." "Bye, AM." "Can't wave, sorry." "( laughter )"