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All the Old Punks
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"We’re the Mekons . . . celebrating the glorious institution of punk rock!" bellowed Jon Langford as his band tore into the hypnotic pounding rhythms and staccato incantations of "Teeth" downstairs at the Middle East last Thursday. Released in 1980, the song was the Mekons’ last single for Virgin records; it’s also the first track on their new Punk Rock (Quarterstick), an album that resurrects scabrous screeds from the early days of the Leeds collective — back when the Mekons were a revolving-door line-up of art-school propagandists who could barely play their instruments — and gives them a new airing. The band have called it quits and had several tragic dalliances with major labels since then, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Their 27-year musical evolution was apparent as the coed octet breezed through "Work All Week" recast as a pretty calypso number, with accordionist Rico Bell thumb-plucking a tiny mbira and Lu Edmonds strumming a bouzouki. "Got any new songs?" shouted an audience member. "We do, but you won’t remember them," admonished singer Sally Timms. Indeed, it was a trip down memory lane, the band mostly eschewing newer numbers in favor of favorites from their mid-’80s drunken punky-tonk heyday like "Beaten & Broken" and "Hard To Be Human Again." Langford and guitarist/vocalist Tom Greenhalgh have been at the core of the Mekons since the beginning, and Langford waxed nostalgic about those salad days, "way back in 1977, when we were a bloated, corporate major-label band hanging out at Richard Branson’s country mansion, playing billiards and eating sandwiches prepared by hippie ladies." Originally the Mekons’ drummer, Greenhalgh took the sticks as current drummer Steve Goulding bashed guitar for the primitive chug of "Trevira Trousers," with the group shouting in unison a debauched football chant: "Drinks! Fags! Dirty books!" Surveying the middle-aged hipsters in the audience, a friend remarked that coming to a Mekons show always makes him feel young. But if band members themselves are getting long in the tooth, they hardly show it. Between the ribald stage banter, they turned in a set that was loose but tight, indulging in mock rock-star theatrics (Greenhalgh busted a few disco moves, Timms led the audience in a sort of punk-rock tai chi). "Where are the other punk bands?", Langford asked. "What are they doing now? We’re still out here!" Given the sad spectacle of pudgy mercenary John Lydon and the death of Joe Strummer, he had a salient point. And as these punk-rock survivors sank their teeth into three-chord rave-ups like the Clash-bashing "Never Been in a Riot" and the interstellar working-class manifesto "Dan Dare" (the first song the Mekons ever wrote, titled after the comic strip whose villain is the band’s namesake), you just had to sing along: "Dan Dare! Oh yeah!"
BY MIKE MILIARD
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