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The Mekons

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The Mekons are a punk rock/post punk band. They are one of the longest-running and most prolific of the first-wave British punk bands (rivaled in both categories only by The Fall).

The band was formed in 1977 by a group of Leeds University art students that included Jon Langford 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 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 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 and violinist Susie Honeyman, 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 continues to tour and record under an altered lineup (still including Langford and Greenhalgh), and has a highly devoted following.

Discography

External links

 

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