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.
I was flown out to Boston from Vancouver on very short notice, put in a very fancy hotel, limo-ed to and from the TV studio. Sam went in a separate limo. They wanted to keep us apart, to get a cat fight going during the show. Sam phoned my room the night before, pleading with me not to make mince meat of her, assuring me that she was a feminist. Cripes. I had no idea who she was or what she was talking about. I still have no idea who she is/was.
As makeup artists dabbed our noses between segments, producers encouraged us to interrupt each other. Evidently, the audience was given a lot of sugar and caffeine prior to entering the studio and told we were in some way spewers of profanity. I had no idea the show was going to be focused on profanity. I think this is why all three of us seem caught off guard at the beginning.
The best bit is Sam’s grandmother, at the end, standing up to say that everything Sam has done, she’s done for herself (really? no kidding) … she’s never done anything for anyone else in her entire life … or whatever she says … sorry, Sam’s granny. All-in-all, totally surreal.
I’m sure I was way down the list of possible radical women guests, but since riot grrrls weren’t talking and I’d been talking for years, they put me on their show.
For the next five years, every time I saw Calvin, he said, “I’m on Def Jam” in the same annoying voice that the woman from Bytches With Problems used when she interrupted me. Or maybe it was the annoying voice that I used to imitate her interrupting me. And maybe it wasn’t every time. Or five years.
Boy, I sure wish I still had that snazzy outfit. Matching top and wide-leg pants. It was really soft.
