The Punk Art of Failure: The Mekons and Ideology

The Aesthetic Mekons

- “Never Been in a Riot”, was a direct response to “White Riot” by The Clash, which Kevin Lycett (a former Mekon) reports the band found “very offensive” with its sentiment of “I want a riot for us poor downtrodden white people” (Revenge of the Mekons). 

- So from day one, they show "irreverence, nihilism, amateurism" (Jesse Prinz 587). 

- Last point has always been important to Mekons history. They were art students who literally couldn't play, when they formed.

- Mary Harron: 1979 Melody Maker article in which she refers to the band as “a strange combination of sophisticated theory and technical incompetence”, says that “The Mekons’ genius has always lain in the way they exposed their defects instead of hiding them, and put them to imaginative use” (17).

- Mekons have always emodied punk values of aesthetic failure as resistance strategy.

- As they've matured, they keep adopting new styles they're not comfortable in and messing them up. This is how they invented alt-country in 1985 with Fear and Whiskey. They keep failing into success.

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