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DAVID LESTER ART

Normal History Vol. 185: The Art Of David Lester

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 28-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

I was not yet a singer in a band when I heard the Raincoats, but I wanted to be. I took a cassette of this song and drove my ’74 Corolla down to the waterfront in Vancouver, near the docks and industry. I stopped in the middle of a large, isolated gravel lot and turned on a secondary tape recorder while this played on the car stereo. I recorded as I sang along, feeling like a total idiot. I also sang along to X-Ray Spex’s “Warrior In Woolworths,” but I did not like doing this nor how it sounded later, at all. At our first rehearsal, David took me out onto the tiny balcony on the back of the old wooden house he lived in across the alley from the Value Village on East Hastings in Vancouver. He handed me a potted plant and told me to chuck it onto the cement pathway leading from the house to the alley. I did.and then we came back inside and he said, “Belt it out!!!” I turned on the cassette tape recorder and we did our first song, “Conform.”