Brave New Waves

A piece in the Feb 1, 2024 Exclaim article about the seminal radio show Brave New Waves includes the phrase “sleek indie rockers like Stereolab and Mecca Normal”.

In reality, no one would ever call us “sleek” and the term “indie rocker” hadn’t been invented when we did most of our interviews and live-to-airs on Brave New Waves. Let alone we’re not indie rockers.

40 Years Later, ‘Brave New Waves’ Still Reverberates Through Canadian Underground Music

How the CBC’s way to fill dead air became a beacon for boundary-pushing sounds

BY DANIEL SYLVESTERPUBLISHED FEB 1, 2024

“Promised You a Miracle is perhaps the most ideal yet unexpected soundtrack to start a revolution. On the one hand, it’s a miracle that two public radio employees could push through 35 hours a week of challenging and subversive programming during the era of Mulroney, Reagan and Thatcher; on the other, the UK hit from Simple Minds that heralded the arrival of CBC’s new late-night lineup didn’t do justice to the cutting-edge and avant-garde radio that would define its next two decades.”

Find the entire piece here.

First airing this month in 1984, we share the 40 year anniversary with Brave New Waves, but didn’t appear on the show until 1986 after we released our first LP. I recall being extremely nervous sitting in the basement of the CBC building in Montreal, waiting to go live across Canada (and some of the northern USA).

Released in 2019, the live album (1996 in Montreal) was originally recorded by Brave New Waves for future broadcast. A snippet of that first interview is included on the album.

1996, Peter Jefferies (drums), Jean Smith, Patti Schmidt (host of CBC Radio’s Brave New Waves) and David Lester in Montreal for the Mecca Normal show that was released as a live album in 2019 in the Brave New Waves series.

KCRW 1997

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 Live on KAOS FM, Olympia WA, 1988

Interview with Calvin Johnson between a bunch of songs.

David Lester CBC Radio interview

CBC’s North By Northwest radio interview with Mecca Normal guitar player David Lester, author and illustrator of “Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, a graphic novel” published by Beacon Press. Very compelling to hear David speak about BLM and how the Benjamin Lay story should inspire activists of all ages.

starts at the 1 h 36 min mark

author and illustrator David Lester

Bing. Bang. Bong. My 15 minutes of fame

Saturday night, David’s wife Wendy spotted my name on the ticker sign outside the CBC building in Vancouver: “Vancouver artist ditches part-time job, then sells over 1,500 paintings” which is the headline of the CBC story for the interview I did.

Wendy sent me the photo at the end of a very intense day with 800 new FB friends, many with questions about how to buy a painting (ahead of everyone else). The next morning when I woke up, I almost wondered if this was part of a dream.

CKUT interview

Download or listen to the podcast of this broadcast here (available for 6-8 weeks after broadcast date). If the podcast doesn’t run smoothly (or disappears) I made a YouTube video of it using random Mecca Normal-related footage.

This is Vince Tinguely’s last ever show on CKUT in Montreal! He’s been on the air every Tuesday since 1995… is that even possible? What a great time talking with him for TWO hours this morning (now that’s a proper interview!) interspersed with tracks from our new album Mecca Normal LIVE in Montreal, 1996 (Artoffact Records, 2019).

VIDEO: CKUT interview audio mash-up with Mecca Normal footage.

NEW ALBUM: LIVE in Montreal, 1996 from the Brave New Waves Sessions series on Artoffact Records, 2019

Recorded live in 1996 for broadcast on iconic CBC radio show Brave New Waves.
Jean Smith – vocals
David Lester – guitar
Peter Jefferies – drums

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

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”

Live album out March 22, 2019

Mecca Normal live in Montreal (1996) album (LP, CD, extra tracks on BandCamp) will be released in early 2019.

2017: Dave found the tape last week and we took it into a studio yesterday to listen to it. Finally, a live album from that era, and it sounds incredible. Until now, not releasing a mid-90s Mecca Normal performance has been one of my biggest regrets.

LP tracks

1. Water Cuts My Hands
2. Prize Arm
3. Don’t Shoot
4. Tower Island
5. Revival of Cruelty
6. The Dogs
7. Drive At / Peach-a-Vanilla
8. Ribbon
9. Man Thinks Woman / Strong White Male / I Walk Alone
10. Armchairs Fit through Doorways
11. Are You Hungry Joe?

Rough mix

 

David Lester interview on CBC radio

“Comics are a form of social activism,” says graphic novelist David Lester in a GREAT interview with the CBC’s Sheryl MacKay about “The Battle of Ballantyne Pier” — David’s contribution to the anthology Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working-Class Struggle.