Little Hits

The Mekons — Rosanne
(from the LP It Falleth Like the Gentle Rain From Heaven: The Mekons Story, CND Records 1982)

In print on CD for about 45 seconds in the mid-’90s, It Falleth Like The Gentle Rain From Heaven: The Mekons Story is the reason why it took me forever to get into the Mekons. I heard a few of their songs on my local college radio station during their countryish period — “The Trimdon Grange Explosion,” “Chop That Child In Half,” their version of “Lost Highway” — and was intrigued enough to go exploring at Ralph’s and at University Records, where I found this double LP set. Assuming it was a greatest hits (which seemed like a better introduction than just a regular album), I bought it — thereby decimating my record store budget for that week, because it might have cost as much as $19 — and spent the evening listening to it in the guest room that I had sneakily transformed into my private sanctuary, having moved my stereo, records, books and things into it bit by bit until my actual bedroom had nothing in it but my bed and my clothes. (Luckily, we didn’t have overnight guests that often.) Mostly, I was sitting on the floor with my eyes closed, listening intently to the stereo and thinking, “Okay, seriously, what the fuck?”

What I hadn’t known at the time was that far from being the best-of I had expected, It Falleth Like The Gentle Rain From Heaven: The Mekons Story is a hodgepodge of unreleased tracks, rarities, radio sessions and demos covering the first era of the Mekons, punctuated by the band’s David Spencer drunkenly relating the story of the band’s first 1978-82 incarnation. A mixture of DIY punk, bizarre forays into synth pop, and finally “The Building,” the a cappella song that Greil Marcus later wrote about at some length in Lipstick Traces, this didn’t make a damn bit of sense to my teenage self. I sold it back to University Records when I was in college, which I’m still kicking myself over a bit. Even then, though, I kinda liked the song “Rosanne,” which is about as close as the album comes to a traditional post-punk tune.

Incidentally, one of my sisters is named Rozann. Like me, she despairs of anyone spelling her name correctly the first time out. Me, I’ve always made the habit of just giving my last name if the restaurant hostess or whoever asks for it, just because I know she’s probably going to spell it “Stuart,” and even know I’ll never see it, its existence bugs me.

–Stewart Mason