Fear and Whiskey

The Mekons

Released: 1985

Stirred to reunite by the English miner’s strike of 1984-85, this ramshackle punk-intellectual collective from Leeds pays tribute to American roots music. Anarchic bleating of guitars/harmonica/fiddle held in place by a tight pub-rock drummer — Steve Goulding, formerly of the Rumour. Lyrics — some cribbed from Michael Herr’s Vietnam memoir Dispatches—reference war, displacement, life on the barricades. Overall effect is akin to a drunken hoedown in a refugee camp.

There was a caravan leaving in the dust

I saw a man hold a chicken to his head

I’m telling you baby I go up and I go down

Hard to be human again