Mekons and me
by Jon Worley

Tuesday was a good day. I always enjoy voting. Even on days when my choices don't do well, I dig the tactile pleasure of pushing a pin through paper, or throwing a lever or checking off a box, knowing that those actions are my signature to the implicit contract I have with my government. This year, there was the added bonus of Al D'Amato getting the boot from the Senate. But the most important event of the day was an appearance by Mekons at Fletcher's in Baltimore.

Mekons (or the Mekons, the article situation being somewhat fluid) is a group of thirty and forty-something musicians, originally from England (mostly Leeds) but now residing in Chicago (it's a long story). In addition to recording a large number of relatively obscure but critically acclaimed albums, the various band members also paint, write, sculpt and generally live the artistic life. A gallery show of the collective works of Mekons has been traveling around the country the past couple years. The band has been together (and apart) in one form or another since 1978 or so. And is still soldiering on in true cultured punk fashion.

Okay, so that's what Mekons is. In a sense, anyway. I'd long been an admirer of the band, but due to the weirdness of where I've lived, the band had never appeared within four hours of my home. Well, they showed up at the Lakeland, Fla., opening of their art show, but they did not play. So I didn't quite know what to expect when I drove down Tuesday night.

I've never seen a band (or any artist, for that matter) so completely at ease with an audience. Usually, the stage is a barrier. It reduces singers to exhortations like "Hello Cleveland! Are you ready to rock?" Or, my own personal favorite, courtesy of the Japanese band Loudness, "Hello, Amarillo!" (which came out something like "Herro Ramarirro!"). Even in smaller, more intimate settings, bands seems to have the sense that they are performers, that they are doing something for the enjoyment of the crowd. Not necessarily a haughty attitude, mind you, but definitely a sense of separation. The crowd senses this and acts accordingly.

Not with Mekons. This tour, which is kinda in support of the band's latest album, "me", is actually a way for the band to cover the costs of a trip to the CMJ convention in New York this past week. A few gigs over, a few gigs back to Chicago. No big whoop. Bands with the relative success that Mekons enjoy might eschew the whole side tour completely. Except that the members obviously dug it loads.

Here's the deal. Five members of the band sing at one time or another, and in between songs, any of them might say something to the crowd. And expect a response. Like a regular conversation. And while the crowd of a 100 or 150 was fairly tightly packed into the club, hearing these conversations wasn't difficult.

"Baltimore is a very attractive city," one band member told the crowd. Instead of the usual "Yeah, man!" and cheers, the collective celebrants hooted politely. "No, it really is," she protested.

There was the usual "when were we here last?" question, answered by shouts of "Eight years!" "Nine!" and "Ten years ago, at the eight by ten!". "I dunno," was the response from somewhere on stage. "All I can remember is that we ate Thanksgiving dinner at someone's house, and they're not here tonight," was the final word on the subject.

I might mention at this point that I was one of the youngest people at the show. This is a rare experience for me. Even when I was sixteen and crowding into the Ratt/Bon Jovi show at the Amarillo Civic Center, I was pretty old, considering. The last time I remember feeling young at a show was at an Iron Maiden/Anthrax concert at Kemper Arena (Kansas City) in 1991, when I was about ten years younger than the average fan. Thirty-year-old guys with monstrous beer bellies was the crowd. And now that I approach thirty, with a beer belly which isn't exactly monstrous, I finally hit another "old folks" show.

Maybe the presence of a number of white-haired folks in the crowd added to the gentility. Maybe not. At one point, someone in the crowd yelled for "Sausage" to say something. "How did you know I called the bass player Sausage?" was the reply. Some witty wag in the audience tossed forth "Is that because you bang her?" (a reference to the British slang term "banger", meaning "sausage"). Kinda crude, and certainly personal. But such rudeness, which might have sent lesser men stomping off stage in a hissy fit, elicited only an "I'm afraid I don't get that one" response.

Philosophers have often written about the marketplace of ideas. The give and take between people of difference aspirations and stations. Some folks like to claim that the press (or "the media", as most people call this beast) serves this purpose in today's world. A more sensible notion is that the Internet, in all its free-wheeling splendor, is the true marketplace. But I think that Fletcher's, on that cold, rainy Election Day night, served as the real forum for give and take. For expressing the hopes, dreams and fears of a small group of people. An instant community of revelers and revealers. Intimate, yes, but I think such a get together is what those old thinkers had in mind when they put forth the idea in the first place.

I don't often get excited about live shows by bands. Generally, the music is incompetently performed rote renditions of studio work. Boring. But every once in a great while comes something like Mekons, an ever-evolving carnival of ideas, be they words, sounds or pictures. And, just occasionally, I'm even inspired.

Jon Worley lives in York, Penn. But not for long.

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