Every week, 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 43-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
I can still conjure the original images I had in my mind when I wrote “Don’t Shoot,” which we performed live for many years. It’s one of those cases when a very specific narrative somehow makes it more open to interpretation than less. As a cultural activist fairly new to songwriting, I wasn’t aware of this phenomenon, and I sometimes felt like lyrics that intend to illuminate injustice might reduce interest or shorten the song’s lifespan as the world hurtled on, past various reference points.
Granted, when it was released in 1989, we were not yet in the information age with its ever-increasing circulation of cultural artifacts (books, films, songs, other art) that both hint loosely at, and articulate clearly, better ways forward from agendas that benefit the powers that be.
For the video, I used a painting from my “Searching For Utopia” series, turning them sideways to replicate the pepper spray used on UC Davis student peacefully protesting tuition hikes. In 2026, the orange spray appears again in a painting inspired by street activism in Minneapolis.
It’s like there are internal catalogs to pull from, to make associations, repurposing and enmeshing various themes, concepts and techniques to fortify the new front lines as they occur. This is one of the realms of creativity that I wasn’t forewarned about. How work doesn’t essentially die and disappear; it follows you around, waiting for opportunities to connect a bunch dots into new ways of communicating.
I’m not sure if this is at all true if one writes songs about sunny days and motorcycles, but it seems to be the case in the push for human rights.
“Don’t Shoot” from Calico Kills The Cat (K, 1988) (download):
