Mekons also played Bell House on Friday – click for full size
[photo courtesy of Alexis Maindrault – more excellent shots here]
The Mekons returned to NYC this weekend after a nearly two year absence and proved that while the band and the fans are older and a little more grey, the sense of humor and musical spirit have not changed. At Mercury Lounge last night, for nearly two hours the between-song banter between Sally Timms and Jon Langford was nearly as entertaining as the multi-decade span of the 24 song setlist. Although the absence of Tom Greenhalgh was noted, his stage presence was compensated by the emergence of multi-talented Lu Edmonds. While the setlist leaned heavily towards 2007’s Natural, the band also reached back for three songs from the classic 1985 release Fear and Whiskey.
I arrived late to the venue without a ticket but was able to get in at the last minute and set up the microphones eight feet up on the wall next to the soundboard. The sound quality in the venue was excellent, but the very vocal and boisterous crowd adds some “local color” to the recording. Enjoy!
This recording is now available to download in FLAC and MP3 at Archive.org [HERE].
The Mekons
2009-08-01
Mercury Lounge
New York, NY USA
Digital Master Audience Recording
Recorded at Soundboard
40 Feet from the Stage
DPA 4021s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (level adjustments, set fades, downsample) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac
Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper
2009-08-02
Setlist:
[Total Time 1:52:48]
01 [introduction]
02 Beaten and Broken
03 Club Mekon
04 Give Me Wine or Money
05 [banter]
06 Tina
07 [banter]
08 Corporal Chalkie
09 [banter]
10 Tempted to Believe
11 Perfect Mirror
12 Fantastic Voyage
13 [banter]
14 Abernant 1984/85
15 [banter]
16 Dickie, Chalkie, and Nobby
17 Diamonds
18 Thee Olde Trip to Jerusalem
19 Cockermouth
20 Ghosts of American Astronauts
21 Heaven and Back
22 [banter]
23 Big Zombie
24 Memphis, Egypt
25 [encore break]
26 The Hole in the Elephant’s Bottom
27 The Last Dance
28 Oblivion
29 Hole in the Ground
30 [banter]
31 Powers and Horrors
32 Hard to Be Human
33 Where Were You?
If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT The Mekons, visit their website, visit their MySpace page, and purchase their official releases through the links at their discography or by visiting the Touch and Go Records site [HERE].
Track 4 is “Give Us Wine or Money.” Track 10, at least according to those who saw it performed in San Francisco, is called “Space In Your Face” (it’s brand new).
For those interested, my recording of the previous night’s “acoustic” show in Brooklyn is up at archive.org: http://www.archive.org/details/mekons2009-07-31.flac
There’s a ton of nice photos from this show here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/berger.cvr/08012009MekonsMercuryLoungeNYNY?authkey=Gv1sRgCKrOzqSU5Ku4Eg#
According to the Natural tracklist, its “Give ME Wine or Money”:
http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Mekons/dp/B000S0FJSU
Hmm, so it is. Which is odd since that’s not what they sing, but whatever.
I went to the next night’s show at the mercury Lounge and they were on fire. I don’t have any recordings but I do have a recording of an interview I did with the lads (and Sally) for UK radio. I’ll paste a link below for anybody that wants a listen.
http://www.sittingwith.com/archive.html#c39