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.
The song is a kind of fable, a cautionary tale, that a mother could read aloud to a daughter if it appeared in book form. It’s that tedious story of two young people launching into a relationship, with both parties bringing along their social conditioning. I guess we could call it trad-wife indoctrination and a reaction from someone who had been exposed to other, better, ideas for her future.
It was a thrill to have the album (Calico Kills The Cat) released into the digital realm for the first time (in 2025) considering so many of the songs on it are still relevant. I wrote “Joelle” about an personal scenario, making it a sort of an audio mini-doc on the “history of a frying pan,” which I use to this day, almost 50 years later, as I gleefully live alone as a successful painter aiming to open an artist residency.
Note: The “topic” video amusingly lists David Bowie as the song’s co-composer, from which we glimpse a slice of non-human misinformation.
“Joelle” from Calico Kills The Cat (K, 1988) (download):
