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 29-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
The intimacy that our lack of notoriety (fame, draw, celebrity) provides us with has, from the very beginning (1985 or so), been one of our most valuable assets and handiest tools. To be an ongoing band of two individuals that formed expressly to change the world (as opposed to becoming famous, rich or even liked)—a man and a woman in a non-romantic, creative partnership—who realize self-generated projects that require the packing, lugging of equipment and the presenting of songs and artifacts that we have made, that we believe will alter or fortify the consciousness or the resolve of those who see it—to go from the near obscurity of not having released an album for seven years—living off the fumes of Facebook “Likes”—to inclusion in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Well, what’s this all about (and was that even a sentence)? It has nothing to do with art collectors and speculation or gallerists jacking up prices or The Press, through which the varicose veins of money and hardened arteries of fame pump into and out of the heart of the Art World.
The exhibit within which David and I have work is political in at least a couple of ways. David’s Inspired Agitators poster—the one included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial—isn’t a random example from his series about activists (including filmmakers and musicians) who intended to create progressive social change. Nor is it just any of Mecca Normal’s dozen or so seven-inch record covers (which always feature my art) that will be displayed. The Mecca Normal set wasn’t selected for its artistic merit or recording quality. They are artifacts that will illuminate more about the subject of the exhibit. The subject is political in that it is about an activist whose final act—his death—was a protestation of war. To use his name in conjunction with the froth that goes along with Art World announcements and Music Industry prattle seems vaguely crass, but that is the essence of what we do. Not the part about being crass, but in the tradition of creating art to further a story that was not adequately heard or responded to. Creating art and repeating it as necessary until it makes a dent in the universal psyche.
“This Is My Summer Vacation,” from Janis Zeppelin (Smarten UP! 2003) (download):
