The Mekons’ Jon Langford and Sally Timms recount discovering Country Music in this 2016 interview

March 16, 2021March 16, 2021 ~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

This [below] Factory session series features Jon Langford & Sally Timms of the legendary band The Mekons performing live at CHIRP Studios. The songs they performed are Mekons classics, a Skull Orchard tune, and a rare song from their upcoming collaboration with singer/songwriter Robbie Fulks.
1. Geeshie (0:21) 2. Land Ahoy! (3:23) 3. Dickie Chalkie & Nobby (6:10) 4. Sentimental Marching Song (9:12)

Letters to The Hobbledehoy

August 10, 2020August 10, 2020 ~ Michael Stevenson ~ 1 Comment

Terri writes:

Hi Mike ! I’ve just discovered your website and Yeh, I love it! Do you know what I DON’T love??? I really REALLY don’t love having that orange douche bag in my Direct peripheral vision while watching a video. There’s no such thing as a good Trump pic….. but that one! Omg! Seriously?? Please please please please….. AT LEAST move it down the page … Because THAT MOUTH. It’s like my cats assh@le. Worse!

Thanks for your time & Happy Monday

Hi Terri!
Thanks for visiting the website. You are so right – it’s time to move that cat’s asshole from the homepage. The link for “Trump’s Covid Timeline” will no longer be accompanied by an image of Trump.

Robert writes:

I live in the small town of Hana, Maui and I stumbled upon your website this evening. I have fallen madly for it. Do you have a subscription list? How do I find it regularly? I have bookmarked it and will search for it regularly. Great work!!!

Hi there Robert!
So glad you are enjoying the content. As the masthead reads, “I use the best, I use the rest” (And ‘thank you’ Johnny Rotten). Yes – you can subscribe to THE HOBBLEDEHOY and receive daily notices of new posts in your email.
I’d love to visit Hana, Maui someday. Must be beautiful.

K. Cam writes:

Bravo on the small and lovely community you have … I’ve been enjoying using the music recommendations and review posts to soundtrack the evenings as I create a new portfolio and redo my CV, it’s been helpful in keeping my blood pressure down. I hope working on this site provides you with some of the happiness it has given me to read it, it certainly seems to be maintained with care. If it’s not too poky I’d also like to ask, how do you curate posts for the site?

Hey K. Cam!
Thanks and ‘cheers’ on keeping that blood pressure down. My BP also requires diligent watching. THE HOBBLEDEHOY curates content from multiple sources – fine newspapers such as The Guardian and The Scotsman; media companies such as BBC and NPR; and video platforms such as YouTube, of course. Because we feature British Folk music, we often curate music from the wonderful Folk Music UK website. We are careful to list our sources on each post.

Litte Sparta writes:

Hi Mike, We thought you might be interested in this: MEKONS singer Sally Timms joins alternative folk three-piece LITTLE SPARTA (featuring Mekons’ violinist Susie Honeyman) for new EP LOST BOAT PARTY out 29 July 2020 on Grey Gallery Records Listen to Lost Boat Party on SoundCloud

We LOVE Sally Timms and will check-out the new EP as soon as our breakfast dishes are washed and dried. We have featured Sally, Susie Honeyman, Jon Langford and Mekons music and news often. Cheers, and best of luck with Little Sparta!

Bulla writes:

Hello Sirs
” … I am not a drinker but I enjoy your posts on ale. I appreciate the effort and history behind each variety even if I don’t touch the stuff personally, the articles here have helped me to appreciate pubs more as someone who can’t handle the atmosphere or drink due to migraines.
Outside of music and alcohol I’ve also been intrigued by the other media peppered here. I have been going down the birding rabbit hole, which is a subject I did not expect to find here but who am I to complain about such an interesting smorgasbord?
I spent an evening exploring the concert videos which are a treasure, thank you for sharing them. I have also ran into a podcast (radio show? audio drama? does anyone really care what they’re called?) thanks to you called Annika Stranded. Isn’t it funny that the BBC is making shows about Norwegian detectives now? But I like it, I look forward to the sixth season appearing on this website at some point as the BBC deems my locality unworthy, for little fifteen minute bites the episodes has done their bit helping me cope with grief these last two months.”

Thank you, Bulla.
THE HOBBLEDEHOY hopes to post Season 6 of Annika Stranded soon. Nicola Walker is marvelous, isn’t she? Take care of those migraines and glad you are exploring birding as a new hobby.

The Mekons to release ‘Exquisite,’ surprise new album recorded in isolation

June 20, 2020 ~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

Group’s latest, a Bandcamp exclusive, “recorded in splendid physical isolation on mobile phones, broken cassette recorders, clay tablets and other ancient technologies”

The Mekons’ latest

In Paris, in 1925, Yves Tanguy, Jacques Prévert, André Breton and Marcel Duchamp invented a game they called ‘cadavre exquis,’ derived from a phrase that came up when they first played: ‘le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau’ (‘the exquisite corpse will drink the new wine’).

Basically each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed. In the current plague year 2020, after a planned rendezvous in Valencia was necessarily cancelled, mekons adopted this method as a means of collectively assembling lyrics and tunes and recording their new album.

Locked down in various locations, scattered from the West Coast of California to the East End of London, they sang and played into their mobile phones and emailed, uploaded and Whatsapped their wailings, beatings, scratchings and strummings around the globe through the billions of interconnected nodes of our networked panopticon.

ESCALERA video edited by JAMES LANGFORD