The Mekons started as a late 70s British punk band, but that isn’t really the point. Certainly they developed out of an important scene at a very important time, but the history of the Mekons points back more directly to 1984, when the British miners’ union was on strike and people had assumed the Mekons were already over. After a slew of punk singles and an album or two, the band had been laying low, or so everyone thought. Turns out they were just getting started. And tonight, some 24 years later, they’re bring their punk-country madness to the Picador, a fact which is still slightly blowing my mind.
The stories of the miners’ union support concerts are the stuff of legend, with the Mekons emerging from the ashes of punk with a transformed sound filled with with fiddles and banjos and female vocals. The music was part English folk and part Nashville, and resulted in 1985’s Fear and Whiskey, a barroom-stomp of a record that upon its 2002 rerelease was either “one of the greatest records ever,” or simply a 9.7 on one particular scale. So yeah, it’s good. And it’s good in that way that only people who really support the working class can be: by being loose, pissed off, and deeply political. Like their countryman Billy Bragg (who wants his share of $850 million), the Mekons energy, even after that whole punk thing, is as much about exposing inequalities as it is about the sheer fun of making music. But why choose? See a some fiddles and middle fingers fly tonight at the Picador. Matthew Grimm opens, doors are at 9, and the price is a whopping $20. It’s worth it.
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