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 33-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Turns out Gina Birch of the Raincoats loves this song! As a huge fan of the Raincoats, this is really exciting! She asked me what the music was (on Facebook) in a video of my currently available paintings, so I listed all five songs and she said she hadn’t gotten past the first one, that she’d been playing it over and over. I got her email address and sent her the mp3. She also loves my paintings—says she’s gonna buy one! I’m not gonna try and hide my excitement here! The Raincoats were hugely important to the formation of Mecca Normal. It’s hard to imagine what we’d be doing if the Raincoats’ records weren’t around in 1984 or so—and much earlier for Dave, who lived in London (squatting!!) in the late ’70s and saw them play a Rock Against Sexism show in Hackney.
“This Is Different” from Jarred Up (K, 1993) (download):
