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Me on Last.fm
“The politics are not obvious” is a painting I did that a banjo player bought after seeing it displayed in 2004, when Mecca Normal played a barber shop in Olympia and a bookshop in Seattle during a west coast tour. The man later sent me a cassette of his banjo playing. He recorded just this one copy to send to me. This was art. This was political.
Further information about David Lester and Mecca Normal can be found in this post.
Quite honestly I never thought I would get to the stage where there’d be such a thing as a guest poster on my blog, but hey!
David Lester is one of the two members of Mecca Normal, a wonderful band from Canada currently celebrating their 25th anniversary this year. Jean Smith, the band’s other member, was one of the first people I ever interviewed formally as a music writer back in 1993, shortly before a great show she and David did on the UCI campus.
Mecca Normal’s anniversary tour is not simply one of music straight up — in keeping with their long-stated political and philosophical beliefs it’s much more akin to Ian Mackaye’s spoken-word tour earlier this year emphasizing involvement and awareness in general. To quote Jean from their tour site:
I wasn’t expecting to be impacted by the economic downturn when I was laid off from my retail job at an eco-friendly clothing store. The company decided to close the much-loved, quaint, creaky-old-floorboard store to concentrate on their wholesale and online business. As an almost fifty-year-old (single, debt-free) musician, novelist and painter, I am perhaps better equipped to deal with variations on the theme of employment and income, better than people who felt they had security. Rather than look for a new part time job, I’m hitting the road with Mecca Normal to present “How Art & Music Can Change the World” — an art exhibit, lecture and performance event in university and high school classrooms, bookstores, art galleries and music venues.
In cities where we don’t have a confirmed lecture yet, we want to connect with journalists, bloggers and radio people to inspire readers and listeners towards cultural activism — to fortify a new optimism that cultural activists can impact progressive social change.
David wrote me about providing occasional posts and artwork about a month back, and I admit to being quite initially surprised that my own small blog would be of interest to him. But I’m quite honored and flattered to be able to host some of his work. I’d certainly say David takes more of an active approach politically than I do in the end — I tend towards the discursive and reflective, for better or for worse. As a musician I quite admire, and as someone who like myself is careful not to let himself simply be defined just by music, he is someone who can and does show the importance of continual activity to best contribute to a wider world.
David’s contributions here will appear as he’d like to provide them! I’ll be putting up the first one shortly.
