Getting to know the Mekons

by Todd Martens
Diversion Editor

Despite being around for 20 years, we really don't know much about the Mekons.
Well, we do know the band formed in Leeds, England, in 1977 and now centers itself in Chicago. We also know that countless Mekons have come and gone and it would be impossible to list everyone involved in the group, which includes musicians, roadies and technicians.
And from listening to Mekons albums, we know the band is angry, frustrated, sarcastic and sometimes arrogant. But do we really know anything about the Mekons as individuals -- their personal lives and beliefs away from the cynical band? Not really.
On May 19, the Mekons released Me (Quarterstick), a new collection of electronically enhanced rock songs. Well, since the album is titled Me, after all, and many of the members are in their early 40s, that means the means the Mekons are settling down and showing us a bit of its soul, right?
"It has the illusion of being more personal," said lead singer Jon Langford last December. "It's about being personal, the idea of yourself. It's about the idea of me-ness and self-centerness."
So we don't learn how having a child has changed Langford, but the members of the Mekons continue to be the Mekons as we know and love `em -- frustrated, angry and devilishly humorous.
"Enter the Lists" opens the album with it's character rambling off all the various products that must be used before going out, and then there's "Narrative," which features the panting work of Welsh Spaniel Jolly Bones, and shows how desires to want more and more have reduced to thinking like dogs.
Then there's "Men United," where a cult has replaced any idea of individuality and offers its members safe homes downtown and pretty girls to sleep with, and then "Tourettes" reduces the idea of love-making to nothing but a quick go in the sack with a $30 piece of plastic after a day of work.
It takes the idea of "Millionaire" on I (Heart) Mekons even further. There, the band wrote, I've lost count of all my lovers / But I can count my money forever and forever, but now individual greed has been overtaken by big-business greed, which markets sex like shaving cream.
"Sex seems so important in our society, expectations are so huge -- the defining moment of our life, conception, first shag, first porno mag -- (and it's) removed from us by layer upon layer of air-brushing, marketing and shaving," said Langford in the e-mail.
Songs aside, Me also brings together many lost Mekons, most notably Kevin Lycett, one of the founding members who still lives in Leeds.
"For this album it was good to get people that had been involved in it because it was like saying, `This is the Mekons and you've got to do something,'" Langford said. "So it was a load of people that had been involved for a long time."
The self-taught musicians have torn through reggae, dub, folk, country, hip-hop, and even paint and act, which has led some to think that the Mekons are too smart for its own good -- always on some inside joke that the listener will never get. It's the only criticism ever levied against the band, but the Mekons don't deserve to be criticized for this. For this is the band's charm -- you never know what you're going to get, but it will be different and challenging.
The band was able to let loose in the studio and on the computer, where much of the album was edited with digital images.
"It was really quick," Langford said. "You can just find the bits you don't like and remove stuff. It's a pretty interesting sound. The idea of it was to use sounds that no one could play, which is quite impersonal. You could be like God with it. It's really strange."
But the Mekons are no strangers to computers. Check out The Mekons Story (Feel Good All Over), where "Trouble Down South," "Byron" and "Not a Bitterman" are blueprints for what would later become trip-hop and jungle. That was recorded in 1982.
"That album is nearly all synthesizers, with a drum machine," Langford said. Then he paused. And then he laughed. "We invented jungle. We were finished with jungle by 1983."
But let us hope the Mekons are never finished.
Me, which is an entirely unique electronic album with manipulative sounds that are rarely recognizable, tells us the band still has plenty of life left.