Artist : Mekons
Album : Natural
Label : Quarterstick
Genre : Indie
Bitrate : 170 kbps avg
Source : CD (LP)
Playtime : 00:46:16 (59.1MB)
Rls date : 2007-07-21
Store date : 2007-08-21
[Track List]
1. Dark Dark Dark 4:57
2. Dickie Chalkie And Nobby 3:05
3. The Old Fox 3:50
4. White Stone Door 3:58
5. Shocking Curse Bird 2:41
6. Give Me Wine Or Money 3:19
7. Diamonds 4:06
8. Burning In The Desert Burning 3:34
9. The Hope And Anchor 3:37
10.Cockermouth 5:03
11.Zeroes And Ones 3:47
12.Perfect Mirror 4:19
The Mekons are a British rock band. They are one of the
longest-running and most prolific of the first-wave
British punk rock bands (rivaled in both categories
only by The Fall).
The band was formed in 1977 by a group of University of
Leeds art students that included Jon Langford, Kevin
Lycett and Tom Greenhalgh - the Gang of Four and Delta
5 formed from the same group of students. They took the
band's name from the Mekon, an evil, super-intelligent
Venusian featured in the British 1950s-1960s comic Dan
Dare (printed in the Eagle). The band's first single was
"Never Been in a Riot," a satirical take on the Clash's
"White Riot", and for several years the loose-knit band
played noisy, bare-bones post-punk, releasing singles on
a variety of labels. The Mekons' first album, The Quality
of Mercy is Not Strnen, was recorded using the Gang of
Four's instruments, and due to an error by the Virgin
Records art department, featured pictures of the Gang of
Four on the back cover. After 1982's The Mekons Story, a
compilation of old recordings, the band ceased activity
for a while, with Langford forming The Three Johns.
By the mid-80s (revitalised by the 1984 miners' strike and
augmented by vocalist Sally Timms, violinist Susie Honeyman,
ex-Damned member Lu Edmonds, accordionist/vocalist Rico
Bell (a.k.a. Eric Bellis), and former Graham Parker and
the Rumour drummer Steve Goulding, among others) the Mekons
had returned as an active group, and began to experiment with
musical styles derived from traditional English folk
(tentatively explored on the English Dancing Master EP prior
to the hiatus), and American country music. 1985's watershed
Fear and Whiskey, 1986's The Edge of the World and 1987's
Honky Tonkin exemplified the band's new sound, which built
on the innovations of Gram Parsons and blended punk ethos
and leftwing politics with the minimalist country of Hank
Williams. This style, sometimes referred to as "post-modern
country," is a direct forerunner of the alt-country genre
represented by bands like Uncle Tupelo.
Subsequent albums such as The Mekons Rock'n'Roll, while
containing several straightforward rock songs, continued
to explore the boundaries of the punk genre by utilizing
diverse instrumentation (notably the fiddle and slide guitar)
and Timms' haunting vocals.
The Mekons Rock and Roll was the band's first major label
release. Issued by A&M Records in 1989, Rock and Roll was
not a commercial success, but it was met with critical
acclaim. Arguably the best album of their career (alongside
Fear and Whiskey), it is perhaps the most accessible
synthesis of their experiments in country, rock and punk.
Just as the Mekons began to grow in critical stature, their
relationship with A&M Records became more tense, and unable
to fulfull their commercial expectations, the Mekons were
soon dropped by the label. However, not only did the band
remain intact, they continued to record at a prolific rate,
releasing such notable albums as 1991's The Curse of the
Mekons, 2000's Journey to the End of the Night, and 2002's
OOOH!
Jon Langford has been busy as an artist and as founder of
several solo and band projects, including the Waco Brothers
(a punk-meets-Johnny Cash-like ensemble) and the Pine Valley
Cosmonauts (exploring the music of Bob Wills, Johnny Cash
and others). Besides his solo albums he has released CDs with
Richard Buckner and Kevin Coyne.
The band has toured and recorded with a mostly unaltered lineup
(Langford, Greenhalgh, Timms, Goulding, Bell, Edmonds, and
bassist Sarah Corina) throughout the 1990s and early 21st
century, and has a highly devoted following.