Political provocateurs. Social agitators. Punk’s reigning contrarians. The Mekons have been called all this and more. REVENGE OF THE MEKONS chronicles the unlikely career of the critically adored, cultishly revered band/art collective from Leeds, England. Emerging from the first blast of 1977 U.K. punk rock, the Mekons were notorious, as critic GREIL MARCUS notes, for being “the band that took punk ideology most seriously.” Charting the group’s progression from socialist art students with no musical skills through its reinvention as rabble-rousing progeny of Hank Williams, the film reveals how, four decades into a still-evolving career, the Mekons continue to make original, genre-defying music while staying true to the punk ethos.
The eagerly anticipated Revenge of the Mekons will be making it’s WORLD PREMIER at this year’s DOC NYC, New York’s Premiere Documentary Film Festival. Emerging from the first blast of 1977 U.K. punk rock, the Mekons were notorious, as critic Greil Marcus notes, for being “the band that took punk ideology most seriously.” Charting the group’s progression from socialist art students with no musical skills through its reinvention as rabble-rousing progeny of Hank Williams, the film reveals how, four decades into a still-evolving career, the Mekons continue to make original, genre-defying music while staying true to the punk ethos.
Revenge of the Mekons is Director/Producer Joe Angio’s follow up to his award-winning documentary film How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)(2005), which chronicles the illustrious career of film maker/director Melvin Van Peebles. How to Eat Your Watermelon… screened at numerous international film festivals, including Tribeca, Los Angeles, Chicago, Melbourne and the Biografilm (Bologna) Festival, where it received both the Jury and Audience awards for best film. The film made its theatrical debut at Film Forum, NYC, and its television premiere on IFC. The DVD is distributed by Image Entertainment.
Revenge of the Mekons teaser (click here)
Keeping a collective together for 37 years is difficult under any circumstances, more so when the endeavor won’t even pay the bills and its eight members are scattered across six cities on three continents. Toss in a history of miserable fortune with record labels—fueled in part by the band’s own mistrust and rejection of the music industry—and almost comical bad luck, it’s a wonder that the Mekons have persevered. How they’ve managed to do so—and why they bother to carry on—are the questions that drive the film.
Near the film’s outset, on the first stop of a recent U.K. tour, the band learns—on stage—from an audience member that the following night’s gig has been canceled. They respond with the kind of improvisatory, self-deprecating wit that Mekons fans have come to regard as much as the music itself. “Perhaps it’s sold out,” yells a voice from the crowd. “Sold outis a term that never comes into our lives,” replies singer SALLY TIMMS, the double entendre cutting sharp as a blade. The band’s response to setbacks such as this reveals the collaborative process that underscores the film’s primary themes of community and collectivism, notions borne from the Mekons’ punk-rock inception as politically engaged socialists.
Rewinding to Leeds, 1977, the film establishes its twin structural tracks: interspersing original vérité footage shot on three continents between 2008 and 2012 with interviews and archival footage that explore the band’s history within the socio-political milieu of Thatcher-era England. We learn how neo-Nazi mobs clashed with left-wing groups from the University of Leeds, home to future members of the Mekons and their friends and art-department classmates from Gang of Four. Inspired by the DIY attitude of the Sex Pistols—and undaunted by their own conspicuous lack of musical ability—the Mekons made an instant splash. Signed to a record contract after their second gig, their first single, “Never Been in a Riot,” was a sly riposte to the Clash’s “White Riot,” and immediately marked the Mekons as a band that had no use for punk orthodoxy. When that record was named Single of the Week by NME, it prompted one admiring journalist—better known today as the filmmaker MARY HARRON—to write an article extolling the band’s “spontaneous amateurism.” In a tone of amused bewilderment—she can’t believe she’s still talking about the Mekons more than three decades later—Harron poses the now compelling question that seemed ludicrous at the crux of their semi-fabled history: “How do you have an amateur band as a career?”
Cofounder and singer/guitarist JON LANGFORD provides a clue when he tells a radio interviewer, recalling a time when the band was routinely ignored after the initial furor over punk rock had subsided, “We were universally hated and derided, so we thought we’d have our revenge on the world.” But the answer is more complex than that. By retracing the band’s wildly improbable history—its early embrace of traditional English folk music; its reinvention as a country-influenced band to support striking miners; its forays into the art world, including collaborations with VITO ACCONCI and KATHY ACKER; its recurring bad fortune with major record labels; and the band’s restless exploration of diverse musical genres—we understand how and why this band grew to be so admired by fans and critics. Along the way, we come to know what it truly means to be an artist in a culture debased by materialism, selfishness and greed.
Original footage of the Mekons living together while they compose songs for their new album reveals the group’s unique collaborative process. Unlike most bands, in which one or two songwriters provide the material, the Mekons are proudly leaderless. Scenes ranging from the quotidian (the octet taking a break to prepare and eat dinner together) to the ineffable (when we witness each member’s organic contributions to the creation of new music) speak to a social responsibility that begins at home. It’s a captivating window into the working methods of a band unlike any other.
The Mekons long ago stopped playing punk-rock music but, as the film shows, they’ve stayed true to the punk ethos: to create something of value and that has meaning, without compromising your ideals. The band members’ lives outside the Mekons underscore this point. Violinist SUSIE HONEYMAN makes a case for the value of older artists—in a culture that’s obsessed with the “new and emerging”—by drawing parallels between the Mekons and the artists she exhibits at her Grey Gallery in London. We accompany multi-instrumentalist LU EDMONDS to Tajikistan, where he spearheads the construction of a low-budget recording studio for third-world musicians in Dushanbe. And we witness the boundless creative energy of Jon Langford: painting in his studio, greeting visitors at his art opening, hosting his Chicago radio show, performing at benefit concerts with his numerous side bands. The Mekons may be avowedly leaderless, but Langford proves to be the engine that keeps the train running.
As befits a group that remains fiercely committed not only to its art but also to each other, the film reaches a stirring conclusion: the eight Mekons affirming their vows to one another during a pagan wedding ceremony at a stone circle in the English Lake District. Part alt-history lesson, part reflection on the role of artists in society, REVENGE OF THE MEKONS is an intimate, revealing and entertaining portrait of a one-of-a-kind group—with killer music, to boot!