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 34-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Fantastic to see Dave the other day! He’s been sequestered high-pressure style, immersed in the Winnipeg General Strike (1919) longer then the actual strikers were (by some number of weeks)!
We met on the way to our sushi joint (both dressed in solid black—me with studded leather belt) where we ordered the usual. Dave had a giant art book with him that took up a lot of room on the table beside us.
Over tuna and salmon sashimi, gyoza and negitoro maki, I told him about all the crazy shit happening in my world (the for sale sign in front of my building, looking for property and school buses and how I figure I did too much for my parents and am now experiencing symptoms that I’ve been researching).
Back to the giant book. After all the plates were cleared, I flipped it open. Dave sat beside me and we leafed through, looking at portraits by a Russian painter neither of us had heard of. We made observations about the work, and it was just fantastic! I don’t think we’ve ever done that! Sat side by side and looked at an art book!
I googled the guy and saved some images to refer to. I’m interested in how that might play out. Having been introduced to a new painter in that way, seen larger reproductions in the book and then the jpgs. The brain will have collected data in ways that my conscious mind is unaware of.
Anyway, I mentioned some of this in an email to Dave and he wrote back. “It’s Sevro not Servo 😀.” And I replied, “He’ll always be Servo to me 😂.”
“Drive At” from The Eagle And The Poodle (Matador, 1996) (download):
