Punk

1977 arty punk band The Mekons still rockin’ Sussex

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The packed out crowd at the Lewes Con Club tonight witnessed the rare spectacle of an evening in the company of the original 1977-1980 line-up of The Mekons, known currently as The Mekons 77.

The Mekons formed in Leeds in the late 1970s as an art collective and are one of the longest-running and most prolific of the first-wave British punk rock bands, although during that time they have moved across many music genres.

Through the years, The Mekons musical style has evolved, incorporating aspects of country music, folk music, alternative rock and even occasional experiments with dub. The band has experienced several changes in line-up since their formation over 40 years ago, and although the current line-up of ‘Mekons’ are writing and recording music, playing shows and touring, the original ‘The Mekons 77’ have reunited and are playing live shows for a limited time and the Lewes gig is one of those.

The band were responsible for the totally epic ‘Where Were You?” single which has truly stood the test of time – I never got bored of it. If anything I have always felt that it was just never long enough and I would immediately pick the needle up and place it at the start of my prized 7” vinyl and listen again, oh and errr again.

The six-piece politically and socially aware Mekons 77 are more like a collective on stage rather than a solid band, having been off on their own separate projects. It feels that they got together for the fun of it, for possibly one last tour and one last album – ‘It Is Twice Blessed’. As the singer stated at the Lewes gig tonight, that it was probably the punters last chance to see them as by the fiftieth anniversary they might be dead. This was typical of the bands sense of irony and humour. [ . . . ]

Read Full Review: Brighton and Hove News » 1977 arty punk band The Mekons still rockin’ Sussex

Mark E Smith: the last of the non-conformists

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There was no one quite like the Fall’s post-punk poet.

It was announced yesterday that, after a period of ill health last year, Mark E Smith has passed away aged 60. The only constant member of the Fall since he formed the band in 1976, MES (as his name was often abbreviated) was a true original, a glorious one-off who remained closer to the original post-punk brief than anyone else. His passing is another weary reminder of the fading out of a non-conformist era, a time when public life wasn’t dominated by well-connected head-boy types or pop figures whose idea of being edgy is to endorse Jeremy Corbyn in the Guardian.

Indeed, many of us loved MES precisely because he had an in-built bullshit detector alerting him to the pretensions of petit-bourgeois radicals and their strange ideas. The Fall’s 1994 track ‘Middle Class Revolt!’ was a prescient statement on the shifting direction of British culture and politics. His unaffected persona was that of a cranky old factory worker moaning about students and layabouts. It always made for entertaining copy in interviews, and in real life he was no different. Nevertheless, his proletarian belligerence couldn’t entirely hide his autodidacticism and his role as a genuine artist. For a start, the Fall’s name was taken from a 1956 Albert Camus novel, and MES’s reference points were resolutely literary – Marlowe, Nabokov, Ballard, Gogol and Ellison crop up in various ways throughout MES’s song titles and lyrics. The writer Simon Reynolds pointed out that the Fall’s biggest early influence was not punk rock, but a worn out library card. It clearly showed in MES’s dramatic and vivid wordplay manifest throughout his band’s 40-year existence.

As a precocious teenager, MES was first hooked on pivotal Krautrock band Can, with their motorik chug and expansive drum rolls becoming a mainstay of the Fall’s sound. And yet, at the same time, the Fall never really sounded like anyone else. They may have often given the impression of shambolic chaos, but beneath that there was a tightly honed drive and attack which drew on anything from 1950s rockabilly through to the fizz and squall of acid house. The Fall were always a disorientating collage, but one held in check by MES’s pile-driving energy. The result was hypnotic and compelling. Central to this magnetic quality was always MES’s barked, tumbling wordplay that had its own lexicon and codes. Such was the force of MES’s personality that lesser lights were often drafted in by Smith for guest vocal appearances to add grit, menace and humour [ . . . ] Source: Mark E Smith: the last of the non-conformists