Some stuff and things from a boy who should almost certainly be doing something else.
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History is a nightmare from which the Mekons are trying to awake, and when they do, they’re still drunk. To the first Mekons, “punk” meant collective self-realization through playful art against a backdrop of social strife. It meant an unfinished utopia in which the freedom to say everything would lead to the freedom to do everything. The present-day Mekons are like any casualty of a defeated revolution - nervous, on good terms with oblivion, filled with rage and guilt. A celebration of the values that keep them alive can turn instantly into a curse; mocked by each day’s news of the adventures of the rich and powerful, those values rob the Mekons of peace of mind. They’re like any losers who’ve won the gift of history: in a crucial public moment, they found themselves, but, as A.J.P. Taylor said of the revolutions of 1848, it was a moment when “history reached its turning point and failed to turn.” So now they live by their humor, and their humor is what used to be called “survivor’s humor” before “survivor” became a reference to someone between jobs.
A Mekons song begins from the premise that the singer is oppressed by everything that is empowered. It includes the corollary that the world could care less: self-pity becomes sardonic self-hate. When the Mekons rail from the stage against U.S. funding of the Nicaraguan contras, they mean it, of course, but it’s also a hopeless joke, and the joke’s on them, and they know it - that’s part of what they mean to say. The denunciation is real, but what its tone dramatises is less outrage than powerlessness.
By the same token, a Mekons bad joke, even a cheap play on words, can change into a moment of passion, of resolve.
— Greil Marcus, ‘The Return of King Arthur’, in In the Fascist Bathroom: Writings on Punk, 1977-1992
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