The Anarchist Black Wedge
1986
We want to set some wild hearts and imaginations free. We want to release a riot of emotion – opening up a new arena for activist resistance culture. Disintegrate CONFORMITY. And hey, it’s going to be fun too. – Black Wedge poster
The first Black Wedge tour -- Mecca Normal, Rhythm Activism, Dave Pritchett, D.O.A. manager Ken Lester, Bryan James. Our driver -- Gary 'Scary' Taylor wrote and performed a poem somewhere along the way -- I think it was his first performance, maybe his first poem. Ken Lester used his D.O.A. connections to book the shows.
David Lester, "We kicked off our first tour by selling out two nights in a Vancouver nightclub called "The Venue". Political poetry? Nightclub? Sold-out? No one had heard of such a thing. As the poster stated -- We are anti-authoritarian poets and minimalist musicians reclaiming our voices, taking back culture, setting our wild hearts free!
We borrowed D.O.A.’s school bus and drove the west coast playing clubs, a soup kitchen, an alternative school, radio stations, parties, and the anarchist bookstore in SF. These tours continued for a few years – the name, The Black Wedge, is up for grabs. Take the name and create a tour! Like those bicycles in Holland -- you just take them and leave them for the next rider."
Jean Smith continues, "Touring the west coast in 1986 opened our eyes to a whole different underground, a whole new punk rock. Everywhere we visited we met artists, writers, musicians and activists with a DIY aesthetic and their own methods for making things happen. It was a challenge for us, could these berry-picking, pie-baking kids organizing dance parties and swimming hole picnics be political? Everyone happy, picking up instruments to join in the fun. Us with our smash the state ferocity, and them with a bag of marshmallows and some extra sticks."
1987
The BLACK WEDGE is spreading the word of how to combine poetry, music and politics and have a good time doing it. The BLACK WEDGE wants to inspire people to reclaim their voices and speak out against oppression. If you fight for a little, you don’t get a lot.—Black Wedge poster
Jean and David of Mecca Normal organize the second Black Wedge tour Vancouver to Toronto with Peter Plate (San Francisco), Mourning Sickness (Toronto); Rhythm Activism (Montreal) and Bryan James (Vancouver). As we crossed a body of water on a ferry, Peter climbed up to the roof of the bus to perform one of his pieces. Most of us went up after him, including our driver Nelly Bolt, who read one of her poems.
Jean designed the posters, t-shirts, and booklets and recorded promo compilation tapes for the Black Wedge tours. Jean and David created and mailed out promo material, contacted the media to secure interviews, booked shows, tour managed, and arranged for accomodation.
The Black Wedge connected with activist organizer Bob Sarti of Vancouver's Carnegie Centre in Canada's poorest neighbourhood around the time the Downtown Eastside Poets hit the road in BC. We shared information and skills, and some of us performed at Carnegie.
The Black Wedge kept going for a while... Peter Plate and Mecca Normal tour in the UK -- the first show is with Vi Subversa of Poison Girls. Most of the shows are of a cabaret type, with comedians, dancers and poets which take place in pubs, castle tower, Labour Party club, an opera house and by the wall where the Humpty Dumpty story came from. The tour set up by English ranting poet Nick Toczek.
After the tour Jean stays in Huddersfield to do solo performances and run a women's writing workshop. David travels in Europe and returns to Vancouver.
West coast, central Canada and NYC -- Mecca Normal with Sang (Keith Jafrate and Rachel Melas) and Peter Plate.
K Records’ Calvin Johnson Interview (in the late 90s)
by Jean Smith
Jean: When you're interested in a band, is it the idea of working with somebody who has a similar method or vision and not necessarily a particular sound?
Calvin: Right, for instance, Mecca Normal. The first time I saw them was on the Black Wedge tour where they got together with their friends and said, "hey, this is important, let's do it." It wasn't as if they were saying, "How can we sell this new album?" It was a tour of people and half of them weren't even bands.
Jean: You know, when I think of K, it doesn't exist in the realm of "isms." I don't think of an interest in overly politicized dogma. I see you doing things that follow some of those sentiments, like putting out a lot of music by women and being a do-it-yourself label, but the word from K isn't put together in a literal way. It's interesting that you were attracted to the Black Wedge, because it was very literal.
Calvin: One of my ideas, in the back of my mind, is that instead of saying that we're smashing sexism, we're trying hard not to be a macho rock 'n' roll label.
Jean: Does it ever bug you how much Mecca Normal talks about these things in literal terms?
Calvin: No, I think it's great. For me, the idea is, we're trying to create an environment where those negative things don't exist. I think for a lot of people who are making music in a political way... one criticism I might have is that they don't allow for a dialogue. If you disagree with them they just turn off. I've encountered a lot of people in music who have strong political views who don't have a strong tolerance for other people's views.
Jean: They need to get out more.
Calvin: It's hard for things to change if people aren't going to exchange ideas. If they're only going to say, "If you disagree with me, then you're the enemy." One thing that's really useful when discussing issues, especially issues of repression, is to see all the different points of views and try to understand why someone would look at something as oppressive and someone else doesn't. Not to say that one person is right or wrong but to understand why they can exist.
Jean: To want purity out of every situation is an antiquated idea. It is totally language based--having everything succinctly packaged, allowing no ambiguity to leak in at all. I don't think there is a reality where that exists.
Calvin: Extreme points of view are also very useful because so many people are trying to avoid conflict. The great thing about rock 'n' roll is that because it is a three-minute song, you can get one idea across. That's important. Artistically, it seems like so few people are doing anything interesting, taking risks, changing or adding anything. I see a lot of changes with Mecca Normal. I see you adding things and subtracting things one at a time, slowly over a period of time and it's really interesting. Whatever you're doing at any one time is fantastic. It works as a whole, it's complete, and it's not like a work in progress. That's exciting, and it's exciting to meet other people who are doing things like that, but a lot of times those people aren't well understood by the people who are just consumers of media, consumers of music. They're just like, "oh, entertain me." It's kind of sad when people who are doing something that's different get to a point when their different thing becomes the accepted thing.
Sounding Off: Music as Subversion / Resistance / Revolution (Autonomedia) book is published with Jean’s chapter on the Black Wedge. It was edited by Ron Sakolsky and Fred Wei-han Ho. The book would go on to win an American Book Award.
Excerpt from The Black Wedge Tours by Jean Smith from Sounding Off
In the early part of 1986, Mecca Normal released their first LP on their own label, Smarten Up! Records. Soon thereafter, they flew to Montreal and hooked up with Rhythm Activism; another voice and guitar duo dealing with social concerns from an anti-authoritarian perspective. While the four stood around in the basement of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation building waiting to go on live radio coast to coast, they listened in on the segment prior to their spot--England's Red Wedge was being featured. Formed in the late '80s to support the Labour Party, the Red Wedge presented political ideas within a musical context, a showcase of musicians encouraged people to vote Labour. The Black Wedge, coming into existence that night, would encourage people to reclaim their voices, to speak out against oppression rather than rely on electoral politics as a means to solve social problems.
A phone call was made to Vancouver and a bus was secured for a West Coast tour. The tour line-up included Mecca Normal, Rhythm Activism, Ken Lester (D.O.A.'s manager, activist and poet), Dave Pritchett (longshoreman and poet) and Bryan James (a self-describe "jingle man").
Leaving Vancouver after a sold-out show, the tour headed south, playing nightclubs, a bookstore, an art gallery, a soup kitchen, a record store, universities and as many radio stations as possible along the way. Our preliminary promotional work paid off, and articles appeared in many publications, including mainstream daily papers.
The show, divided into five segments, dealt with a variety of issues. Mecca Normal performed "Strong White Male," "Smile Baby," and "Women Were King"--all of which brought up sexism and male oppression. We also performed "Are You Hungry Joe?", a dialogue between Joe and the guy that stood between him and a bag of groceries at a food bank. Rhythm Activism also addressed poverty in "The Rats." Bryan James' songs were about pornography and the lure of the TV screen. Dave Pritchett's poems were mainly about disenfranchised citizens and lost love. Between songs and poems, we all talked about what we were trying to do with the Black Wedge. Sometimes it sounded dogmatic and rhetorical, other nights it was spontaneous and charming. In Olympia, Rhythm Activism's Norman Nawrocki called for a raid of the Safeway next door--it didn't quite happen, but there was enthusiasm for the plan.
Prior to the Black Wedge, Mecca Normal had not toured at all. That first tour was amazing; we met poets, community activists, anarchists, feminists, people at radio stations, recording label people, fanzine writers and bands. It was incredible to drop into a community and see what was going on and, at the same time, represent ourselves. I don't think we had any idea of what was out there in terms of like-minded people. Since that first time out, Mecca Normal has done about thirty tours in North America and Europe. After the group tours, we became more insulated, preferring to tour by ourselves and play on regular rock bills as a contrast to the four-guys-on-stage syndrome.
In 1987, the Black Wedge got on the same old school bus and drove from Vancouver to Winnipeg. Rhythm Activism, Bryan James and Mecca Normal were on the bill again in addition to Toronto's Mourning Sickness--"committed to destroying all forms of patriarchal power..." and Peter Plate, an agent of the spoken word, who had seen our San Francisco shows the year before and decided to join us. Responding to an ad in Open Road, an anarchist news journal, Nelly Bolt took on the driving and information table with anarchist news, Black Wedge booklets and prisoners' rights information. David Lester set up a display of political posters at every show. Booklets containing a selection of everyone's work and a compilation tape were sent out to secure shows. One promoter in Edmonton canceled our show after hearing Peter Plate's piece "San Bernadino" in which, to paraphrase, Peter jerks off on church door handles Saturday night so his dried seed will glisten on the priest's hand Sunday morning. Konnie Lingus of Mourning Sickness brought up the rights of sex-trade workers, herself being one. Prudence Clearwater and Lynna Landstreet were the other band members. When we met up with Mourning Sickness for a Toronto show, Prudence had been attacked by a man on a street the night before. She was so strong up on stage doing her usual rant against street harassment, "Listen to me, little man," she howled down at the audience. It felt like our introspective world touring had been interrupted by reality.
On a ferry ride across a lake in British Columbia, Peter jumped up on the roof of the bus without warning and began a poem. The other passengers tried to pretend this was not happening; people in cars actually rolled up their windows. Nelly Bolt, our driver, also got up there and did her first public performance of her poetry to a captive audience.
In '88, Peter Plate and Mecca Normal went to England to perform on the cabaret circuit. We were sandwiched between highland dancers, comics, and skits. Peter was dynamic; all his pieces were done from memory. Mecca Normal had always wanted to be either a contrast to a larger, more traditional rock band, or as part of the Black Wedge, an element within a similarly motivated group. In England the other acts were entertainment, something we never wanted to be!
After the tour ended I stayed in the North of England doing solo readings and running a women's writing workshop which was set up for me by Keith Jafrate, a poet, sax player and an employee of the local council. He was running writing workshops at all different levels involving poets and people interested in improving their writing skills. Keith joined the '89 Black Wedge tour in North America. He teamed up with Rachel Melas on bass. We were joined again by Peter Plate. We toured the West Coast and in the East before the thing exploded for financial and personal reasons. That was the last tour that I know of called the Black Wedge. The name is available for other people to use to present anti-authoritarian ideas. It is meant to be an arena for people who might not otherwise be known well enough to bring out an audience. It was never meant to be a closed group that was only active for a short time.
