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DAVID LESTER ART

Normal History Vol. 112: 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 27-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

In June, 1991, when Anita was 20, she mailed a check to K Records for her six-day International Pop Underground Convention pass. Fingers crossed that Nirvana would play, even though she’d heard they couldn’t, but her friend Louise had returned from Evergreen State College saying she knew someone who was silk-screening LP covers for a convention compilation, and she swore there was a track on it by Nirvana, which, in theory, meant they might play.

The write-up announcing the convention was printed in the K Records Newsletter: “As the corporate ogre expands its creeping influence on the minds of industrialized youth, the time has come for the International Rockers of the World to convene in celebration of our grand independence. Hangman hipsters, new mod rockers, sidestreet walkers, scooter-mounted dream girls, punks, teds, the instigators of the Love Rock Explosion, the editors of every angry grrrl zine, the plotters of youth rebellion in every form, the midwestern librarians and Scottish ski instructors who live by night, all are setting aside August 20-25, 1991 as the time.”

Anita took the Greyhound from Ellensburg to Olympia and stayed at a house near the Capitol Theater, along the railroad tracks. She went to Bratmobile at a daytime theater show and Bikini Kill at the North Shore Surf Club, and she sat in the balcony on Girl Night, not believing her eyes and ears when Kreviss played—eight girls on guitars spread across the front of the huge stage, a blazing blur of sequins, boots and guitar electricity. At Beat Happening, she watched Calvin dance, dipping down low, one arm above his head, rolling his hips.

At Fugazi, she sang “Suggestion” with the entire crowd after a young woman got up onstage to sing about being sexually assaulted. The woman, an audience member, sang through her tears, and when no one else would go onstage to continue singing, the crowd carried on with the words to the song. Fugazi singer Ian MacKaye sang gently, not much above a whisper, over and over again, “She did nothing to conceal it/He touches her because he wants to feel it.” Building up and ending with a raw scream, “We blame her for being there.”

Continued on May 21