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The Mekons Let It All Hang Out at 30th Anniversary Gig  Jon Langford celebrates band’s 30th anniversary with something special  Steve Goulding and Sarah Corina try to keep the peace at Mekons show  Sally Timms waits for rest of band to finish partying backstage  Danbert Nobacon sings songs of anarchy and activism at Blender Theatre As the band performed songs from throughout its career, including such seminal late-’80s numbers as “Hard to Be Human Again,” “Last Dance,” “(Sometimes I Feel Like) Fletcher Christian,” and “Ghosts of American Astronauts” in addition to seven songs from the new record, various band members swooped up to the front-stage mic, taking vocal turns, playing solos, swizzling tequila, or just bopping around madly. Like any 30-year relationship, there was a bumpy patch in the middle, as Sally Timms sounded a bit like someone’s mum, scolding her bandmates for drinking too much, disappearing from the stage, or not being able to tune their instruments properly. Tom Greenhalgh seemed especially dangerous, nearly falling over several times as he danced, flailing and kicking out at the audience while Jon Langford shook his jiggling belly and adopted pseudo-rock-star poses. Timms and Langford are the yin and yang, the mum and pop of the band, and Greenhalgh could be their illegitimate child. Even if at times it felt like watching Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, the show was outrageously entertaining, where anything could happen at any moment. Steve Goulding banged away on a wooden box, Lu Edmonds plucked away at his saz, and Rico Bell, channeling a bit of Tom Jones, added harmonica and accordion. Only Sarah Corina on bass and Jean Cook on violin maintained any semblance of decency. “You don’t have to believe in the end,” Timms sings on "Cockermouth.” “You have to believe this is the end.” After 30 years, the Mekons, hopefully, are nowhere near the end, despite all their references to death, Satan, and hollering at the audience, “F--k the Mekons!” Opening the show was Chumbawumba cofounder Danbert Nobacon, an anarchist and activist who alternated between songs from his pointedly acerbic new record, "The Library Book of the World" (his first solo disc in 20 years), and stories and set pieces about political figures and the war in Iraq. While the album features Langford’s Pine Valley Cosmonauts backing him up, Nobacon is touring solo, just him, his acoustic guitar, his sweating bald head, and his cell phone, which he works into his act. Nobacon, who calls his blog the Axis of Dissent, holds nothing back as he references Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Bin Laden, Rockefeller, the bomb, global warming, mass marketing, the Iraq war, Zionism, and other controversial topics in such songs as “Straight Talk (Meet Frank),” “Rock ‘n’ Roll Holy Wars,” “Red Mist,” and “Nixon Is My Dentist.” In “The Last Drop in the Glass,” he sings, “Society wedding, East Coast embedding, the military marries into industry / The drinks are flowing, let’s all get blasted, enjoy it while it lasts / Harry Truman raises his glass to Churchill! for warming the seat for his ass / The happy couple are already in the family way / Fossil fuel catches the bouquet.” Nobacon even sang a duet all by himself. Good stuff.
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