British Punk Band Turns Page With CD

The Mekons, an English punk rock band that dates to the early days of the movement, put out a fine CD last year, but even fans may not know about it.

The CD, called “Mekons United” on Chicago’s Quarterstick label, could be in the book section because it’s part of a $45 book with art by various Mekons and others. The CD is not sold separately.

The Mekons’ co-leader, singer-guitarist Jon Langford, explains the philosophy behind it. “The Mekons started off as a punk band, playing two-chord and three-chord songs in 1977, and what we’re doing now is an extension of seeing how far you can go from that point of departure that makes sense. It’s turned into many different things over the years. It’s basically about working collectively with a group of people with the understanding we can do anything we want, which is what I understood the idea of punk rock to be in the beginning.”

The book, “Mekons United,” rather lavish and long at 200 pages, features text--from tour stories to left-wing political blasts--and art. The portraits and drawings are haunting and colorful, and the work was highly praised by Artforum magazine last summer. Langford has been holding art shows for three years.

“I think it’s been done very badly before,” Langford says of rockers who have crossed over into painting and drawing. “Or, maybe, a lot of people just aren’t good at it, stepping outside of their particular genre.”

The reaction the Mekons have received, says Langford, “is kind of a confused one. Not as hostile as I’d first imagined. I think the [art] critics realized there was a little more going on there than Ron Wood drawing pictures of Mick Jagger and David Bowie. It’s not a hobby. It’s completely in pace with what we’re doing on the records, a natural extension for us. We have had hostile reactions [to the art] in the music press, which is great: ‘You shouldn’t be doing this. Just sing your songs and that’s the end of it.’ And that’s the reaction we were trying to get.”

The Mekons, being the Mekons, include voices other than their own in the book, including one letter from Anne Bourbon-Levinsky to Sophie Bourbon, longtime friends of the band, in which the former writes, “Isn’t it time they [Mekons] gave up? Sven [a friend] says they’re clowns; grown men taking part in some sad kind of perpetual adolescence, ‘singing’ their dreadful rubbish, which Sven says is not ‘a really radical repositioning of cultural production under the Reagan-Thatcher axis but just some old dumb guys pretending to be intellectuals to cover up the fact they can’t sell enough records to ignore the critics.’ ”

“Oh yeah,” says Langford, with a slight laugh. “Everyone’s a critic. It’s fair enough from someone’s point of view.”

Of course, by not selling the CD separately and by packaging it with the book, the Mekons are almost begging to lose money. Langford agrees that “there are strict commercial reasons for not doing that. But we’ve been through the mill so many times that we’re not really governed by the same laws that govern other bands. Our motives might be slightly different. It’s a basic survival instinct. All logic suggests we should stop doing it, but then there’s a reason, just the sheer bloody mindedness of raising two fingers to the world [the British equivalent of one raised middle finger]. I think there’s room for people who do things that aren’t purely governed by financial interests. There’s not much room these days.”

Musically, the Mekons have always been experimenters, have always mixed poignancy and humor, always come across as a gang of friends who welcomed you to the club. The new CD is a sprawling, rollicking affair: country, rave, ambient-dub, techno, rock. It’s truly across the board, meandering at times, intense at others.

“I couldn’t listen to it all after we did it,” admits Langford, “but now it’s my favorite. I thought it was too long and too rambling and would be seen as self-indulgent. I don’t think it is, really. I think it’s pretty purposeful. No rules really. We tried to take the attitude the book takes; it operates as a platform, it’s tangential. It wasn’t an effort to make some concise hit album where every song sounds the same. It’s a much more open-ended feel about the whole thing.”

The Mekons have staged a show of their art in Florida and hope to mount it again in New York next fall. They’d like to put out a new album in the summer.

Langford says the Mekons suffered the same kind of road blues that afflict many veteran bands--”We kind of lost track of why we were doing it”--but there’s some good news from club Mekon. The band wants to play and violinist Susie Honeyman, guitarist Lu Edmonds and accordionist Rico Bell (who have been on hiatus) are back in the fold. Always an elastic band, they’re a nine-piece one again. Singer Sally Timms and singer-guitarist Tom Greenhalgh are the other front folks.