Sook-Yin Lee CBC radio interview

AUDIO: Sook-Yin Lee talking with Strombo about Mecca Normal in this national (Canadian) radio interview (CBC)

Sook Yin Lee (Canadian broadcaster, musician, filmmaker, actress) discusses her early musical projects, lessons learned from Mecca Normal’s Jean Smith, punk rock and existentialism.

3 hour, 27 minute, 30 second mark

“Mecca Normal led by Jean Smith, who was considered the god-mother of the riot grrrl movement. She was always somebody on stage, it was her and David Lester playing this very urgent and energetic beautiful but rusted passionate music that was very political and artful. Both of them are visual artists as well and I think they were part of the Black Wedge Tour, that was a very political movement of art and culture, and resistance, activism. Activism was key in that community growing up, and so yes, she was always on stage. And she was one of those people who half of the punks hated her and couldn’t stand the singing, “What is that noise?” and so many people loved her. They did feel to me in the very early days that they were kind of, you know, on their own path. Not necessarily of the crowd and completely full of conviction. This song is a beautiful song, its called “Throw Silver” and there’s something in Jean Smith’s voice that is like an injury, it’s like a wound, but it’s a wound that is healing, that is like a shard of glass that is beautiful. She encompasses these paradoxical gorgeous elements and she’s a real powerful, dynamic woman of words and painting and song.” – Sook-Yin Lee

“Live in Montreal (1996)” review

“If you haven’t picked up Mecca Normal’s recently released Brave New Waves, a live recording from ’96 in Montreal with Peter Jefferies on drums, you are missing out. Tremendous.” – Bret McCabe (Johns Hopkins Magazine writer, arts journo, Baltimore, MD)

 

Rabble Interview: David Lester

AUDIO: the radical origins of Mecca Normal guitar player David Lester – long time mixer of art and politics, profoundly influenced by the Emma Goldman bio “Living My Life”

“I Am Here”

Bikini Kill Records shared our video snippet of “I Am Here” on International Women’s Day!

“Feminism was not a phase or a failed experiment. We are here!”

Better Things “I Walk Alone”

Thursday, March 7, 2019 episode of Better Things included 3 snippets of “I Walk Alone” (original studio version, 1986).

Season 3, Episode 2: Holding

We’ve played “I Walk Alone” at a ton of shows since 1985. I think we gave it a rest for some time in the late 90s, but it’s in our current set list. Here’s a snippet of the LIVE version at Horses Records a few years ago.

“I Walk Alone” is on the New Album: LIVE in Montreal, 1996 (Artoffact Records, 2019) — part of a three- song ‘medley’ with “Man Thinks Woman” and “Strong White Male”.