The 200 Best Songs of The 1980s
by Rob Sheffield, November 23, 2023
#189: Mecca Normal, ‘I Walk Alone’ 1987
“An early proto-riot-grrrl pipe bomb. The only sound is the voice of punk poet Jean Smith, with the guitar of David Lester, about a woman walking by herself in a city and feeling like a target everywhere she goes. Every time she sings “I walk alone,” it hits deeper. A song designed to change the way you saw the world around you, and for many who heard it, it did and still does.”
From the KCRW web page: “If Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine had demented younger siblings, they would be the Vancouver duo known as Mecca Normal. Their work is never less than astonishing – jagged guitar sounds matched with a vocal performance as barbed and potent as the lyrics it delivers.”
Hosted by Tricia Halloran
I’m not sure what we were doing in LA in December. We didn’t usually tour in the winter months. Regardless, we were, and “Who Shot Elvis?” was the album we were performing songs from on a visit to KCRW in Santa Monica on December 3, 1997.
The sound quality is pretty bad. The engineer added reverb to my voice even though, no doubt, I instructed him not to. I say him because I highly doubt it would have been a woman. There is also significant damage to the original recording due to its age, I suppose.
Listening to the introduction to the first song, the title track, it’s interesting to note that I’m talking about what we now refer to as misinformation in terms of history and historical events.
Who Shot Elvis? (Matador Records, 1997 and Smarten UP! Records, 2006)
Mecca Normal 