Artists-On-Albums: AOA#14 (Lazarus Clamp’s Michael Larkin on The Mekons Rock ‘N’ Roll)

Michael Larkin (Lazarus Clamp) on…

Mekons – The Mekons Rock ‘n’ Roll (Blast First, 1989)

Mekons - The Mekons Rock 'n' Roll

I first heard the Mekons when I recorded one of their John Peel sessions from the radio [1]. The songs were from the The Mekons Honky Tonkin’-era (though they weren’t all on that record).  I was particularly obsessed with one of these songs, which, at the time, I hadn’t caught the title of.  It turned out – years later – to be “Sophie Bourbon” [2] and it seemed to evoke a dishevelled underworld, populated by drop-outs, drunks, artists, anarchists and musicians.  It seems to be hard for people who weren’t around in the 1980s to imagine just how grimly depressing they were: at least I presume that it’s hard, because that’s the only way that I can make sense of the lack of imagination displayed recently in both voting booths and high street shops.  Back then, in the small-town North-East of my youth, I could picture my urbanised, future-self as an inhabitant of this romanticised, decaying British cityscape – and it was a perversely appealing picture. As it turned out, it was a pretty good evocation of the down-at-heel Leicester that I found myself living in, some 10 years later.

Not long after hearing this, I coaxed a few friends up the A19 to see the Mekons for the first time, at the Riverside, in Newcastle. We all came home with The Mekons Rock ‘n’ Roll under our arms.  The things that I recall about that night are probably now muddled up with memories of a dozen subsequent Mekons gigs, and with my impressions of Rock ‘n’ Roll itself.  But I remember the exertions and contortions of Tom Greenhalgh in his animal print shirt, and Sally Timms, beamingly un-rock-and-roll in her Hubba Bubba T-shirt.  And I remember very clearly my own exhilaration as the band kicked off (presumably with “Memphis, Egypt”) with layer after layer of distorted, slicing guitars; Jon Langford looking like he was trying to wring the last breath out of his guitar.

I also remember the band’s uplifting confidence in themselves. This was not the swaggering complacency of latter-day Britrock – it was the ease and good humour, and passion, of human beings collaborating in a joint venture.  The Mekons sniped and joked with each other throughout the performance, like a happily-dysfunctional extended family, reunited for the birthday of an unloved cousin. This was a revelation in itself: the bands that I went to see back then did not look very much like they enjoyed playing music together. They certainly weren’t confident enough in their relationship to one another to be funny about it. I still take a lot of pleasure in that now: on a good night, I’d be happy to just watch the Mekons tune up and trade small talk.  Then, as now, Jon Langford was at the centre of all of this banter; simultaneously avuncular and caustic, always watchable.  But I remember being particularly hypnotised by the performance of Greenhalgh on “Empire of the Senseless” and “Heaven and Back.”  I struggle now for the vocabulary to capture Greenhalgh’s charisma as a performer: there is simply no one that I’d rather watch singing and playing a guitar in front of a busy drummer and a thundering band.

One of the things that I love most about Rock ‘n’ Roll is the way that a beguiling, disenfranchised, English wit leaks through the wall of sound. The Mekons started in Leeds, but accumulated a number of other voices along the way. They have always sounded unmistakeably, collectively, ‘English’ to me, but in a way that isn’t making a particular kind of claim on the listener about what that might mean. They’re unencumbered by the overstated claims to regional identity that plague a lot of post-1960s British music. On any Mekons record you will hear a lot of different voices singing, and this is also an effective way of decentring one prevailing and limiting cultural expectation of rock music – that it is just a vehicle for the narcissistic and/or nihilistic voice of the individual.  The Mekons are a beautifully collective enterprise [3], and that disperses a lot of the baggage that usually comes with the making of rock music.

Rock ‘n’ Roll has long outlived any recency effects which might otherwise lead me to over-estimate my attachment to it.  There aren’t that many records that I loved in 1989 that I still love now, and which you don’t already own. The record is part-polemic (against the miserable, greedy, short-termist, small-mindedness of Thatcherism), part-dreamscape (a fantastic extension of the seedy underworld of Honky Tonkin’), part-lament (for the corruption of rock and roll), and part-deconstruction (of the dream and lie of escape and rescue). Aesthetically, it has those guitars, of course – but it also has great folk instrumentation (violin, accordion) adding melody and texture; it has songs with simple structures and earworm choruses; and it has a wealth of distinct voices (Langford, tub-thumping; Greenhalgh, straining at the leash; Timms lamenting).

And finally, how many records could I have recommended, which despite being made 21 years ago, would not only lead you to a great back catalogue (notably Fear and Whiskey and So Good It Hurts) but which would still allow you to continue discovering new material by the artist in question?  At the time that I discovered them, I didn’t know that they had already been making records for 11 years.  Any other band, and I’d have been discovering them just as they packed the whole thing in (‘it’s a shit business’ etc.). Instead, the Mekons have just carried on and on and on (why stop?) – making some great records (Journey to the End of the Night is especially good; Natural is lovely) and giving some great performances. They are still making them.

Endnotes & Notes:

[1] From 10-Feb-87 / John Peel Session BBC Radio 1 / “Danton” / “Skid Row” / “Revenge” / “Sophie Bourbon”

[2] There’s an old Froots article here which explains the many references to Sophie in mid-period Mekons work.

[3] For example, listen to how they work here.

Mekons have a new LP out soon, and they visit the UK in July.

The Mekons Rock ‘n’ Roll was first released on Blast First in the UK but has since been reissued on Collector’s Choice Music.

Visit: www.mekons.de/mekonhom.htm

Notes On The Artist:

Michael Larkin at the mic (by John Bloor)

Michael Larkin has been the lead singer and guitarist for the amorphous post-folk-rocking Lazarus Clamp over the last 15 or so years.  The band’s recorded repertoire to date has appeared on a smattering of 7″ singles, five albums and numerous compilation appearances via UK micro-labels such as Sorted, Bearos, Words And Works Rejected and Little Red Rabbit.  The latter upcoming enterprise had the honour of releasing the adorable Against Entitlement in late-2009, Lazarus Clamp’s fifth and arguably best LP;  wrapped in stunning packaging that puts many other contemporary vinyl-fetish release affairs to shame.

Michael has also been known to lend his guitar-slinging skills – as well as his violinist and drummer - to (now) labelmates Last Harbour, as best documented on 2001’s excellent An Empty Box Is My Heart EP. Michael and the rest of Lazarus Clamp are currently working on songs for a new album that will hopefully appear in the not too distant future.

Visit: www.lazarusclamp.co.uk

“The Hard Work of Simple Things” by Lazarus Clamp

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