Mecca Normal
Anniversary Art Series #5 + #6

David Lester

The final installment in Zoilus’s series of art by David Lester and text by Jean Smith, aka “riot-grrrl godmother” Vancouver guitar-vocal duo Mecca Normal, who are in Toronto tonight for the Over the Top Festival, 6 Nassau, as part of their 25th anniversary tour, with the lecture-performance “How Art & Music Can Change the World” at 8 pm and music at 11. Also appearing are Dave Borins and Wilderness of Manitoba.

Munich, sometime in the 1990s
When we arrived for soundcheck the booking guy had the microphone in pieces - bare wires. The PA was a pile of crap. I don’t think we even got a soundcheck. The club was packed and management was pressuring us to start the show. The set was pretty intense - wild. At some point the booking guy started coming up to me while we were playing to tell me management wanted us to stop - we were well short of completing the set. I probably told him to fuck off. He came up and said if we didn’t stop we weren’t getting paid - and the money was good in Europe. They pulled the plug on their shitty PA - which suited me just fine. The mic had been an obstacle impeding my ability to be heard - free of it, I stepped off the stage into the audience of beer-drinking Bavarians and sang right in their faces. Dave’s guitar was still coming through his amp. The DJ put the music on to drown us out and the booking guy said we weren’t getting paid. I found the manager and yelled at him until he got out some money and threw it at Dirk, our tour manager, who we’d known for about two days. Dirk didn’t speak English at this point. We had to push our way out - lugging guitars, amps and merch through the crowd the whole length of the bar. Dirk had the car out front. There were about six of us and we went to a restaurant and met some record-store people and journalists. Dirk seemed upset - he was concerned that I was really upset - and I was like, “Hey man, this is what we do. That was great!” And our excellent friendship began.
[Jean Smith]

David Lester

Auckland, NZ
[The Gate (Michael Morely), Peter Jefferies and Mecca Normal tour]
David, at that time, in the 1990s, typically threw the guitar in the air, it twisted around, he caught it and continued playing wildly. On this night, when we reached that point in the set - in the middle of the song - the guitar stopped. I kept singing - staring straight ahead. Sometimes the guitar comes unplugged or a pedal gets bumped. I was waiting for David to resume playing. No sound. I looked to my left, to see the guitar dangling by its tuning pegs, tangled up in netting hung above the stage. David couldn’t reach it. A tall guy came out of the audience to free it while David stood waiting. Not the rock-godliest of situations. After the show, I think we sold one cassette - total merch sales. We were packing up rather grumpily when the people who bought the cassette walked back into the club to say they’d put it on in their car and it didn’t work. They wanted their money back.
[Jean Smith]