The Mekons - Ghosts of American Astronauts

Odd_Job

A song I first encountered when I bought the NME/CND VHS compilation – ‘Carry On Disarming’ on mail order in 1989. I also seem to remember it featured regularly on The Chart Show that was on Channel 4 on Saturday Mornings in the late 80s, before its move to ITV in the 90s.

I can’t profess to being a fan of The Mekons and apart from ‘Where Were You’, I couldn’t then or now, name any of their songs other than that and this one. This song is a marked departure from the punky and frenetic guitar heavy sound of ‘Where Were You’. Instead a dreamy, almost hymnal female vocal floats over a simple backing track that feels like it’s playing on loop until the vocals end and then the song ends with a guitar solo, to create a lush and gorgeous track.

Despite the song being about American Astronauts landing on the moon, it’s one that always pops up in my head whenever I’m out cycling up and around the radomes at RAF Menwith Hill.

Djpekingman

Tune. One of my favorite Mekons tracks and there are many. Sally Timms voice is gorgeous on this. I was toying with this if my name ever came up again, but the randomizer appears to have randomized me out. All together now ‘Up in the hills above Bradford, out side the napalm factory’….

Anchor

I'm.with you on the 'where were you' front. Only song by them I know of a mutant pop compilation I've got on vinyl.

Had no idea they went off in this direction and it's a great song. Thanks.

I'll check some more out on the strength of this. 👍

Flaneur

It's burnt into to me (very much like Spandau and Duran Duran are for Pies), that I wouldn't like bands like these.

Could be the name of the band? Sci-Fi, Asimov, lentils.

Must have happened in my teens. Too brash, too angular perhaps.

However this is a nice song. Sounds like it could be on a Belle & Sebastian album.

It's very reminiscent of something for me and it will come to me. Girl singing with an indie band.

Flaneur

Flaneur It’s very reminiscent of something for me and it will come to me. Girl singing with an indie band.

It's this - not a girl, but a boy, a badly drawn one:

Djpekingman

The song’s opening line is a reference to the factor on Low Moor which as a former dye works was converted to produce piric acid (Naples to you and me) in Ww1. It and a neighboring gasometer exploded in 1916 after a small fire started in a magazine with the loss of some 60 lives, mostly firefighters and workers.

Djpekingman

After the guitar thrash of Riot and Where were you the first album (The quality of Mercy is not Strnen - a reference to enough monkeys with typewriters they will reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare) was much more melodic. Second album and accompanying singles was full on experimental - try Snow for example. It was only after that they hit the laid back country twinged punk of this track (and I hate country music as a genre).

They have a marvellous back catalogue of wonderful albums.

oneallanclarke

Not the best song I’ve come across on this thread but up there for the most surprising. I expected frenetic guitars and yelling, I got School of Kirsty McColl.
Pleasant.

Placid

Im not angry @Odd_Job just dissapointed. I was expecting isoteric soundscape driven by teutonic motroik drumming.

I'll have a 25 point Personal Improvemant Plan PPT to run through with you tomorrow at Wharf Chambers while we watch Omni Selassi (which Ive never heard of and sounds mad as fuck on 1st listen, bravo).

4/10 Can do better

90Piesanhour

Not heard this track before, but knowing how the Mekons ‘work’, I knew it would be some kind of protest song hidden behind a dreamy tune. It works, too and, for me, it’s always nice to hear Bradford referenced in a song, even if it does include the word ‘napalm’. Jon Langford was in the Mekons, I believe, until his death recently. He was big mates with my sister over in Austin, Texas.
People have mentioned ‘Where were You’, which is fantastic, but the other single I had by them, many moons ago, was this raw little ditty, which DJPekingMan alluded to. Bit of a contrast to this one, I think you’ll agree:

Djpekingman

90Piesanhour Jon would be fucking shocked to hear of his demise.....

John Hyatt of Three Johns fame passed a couple of years ago. Maybe you got your Jons/Johns mixed up which was a 50% chance given only two of them were really called Jon/John.

I love this from the early days...

Foxy_Dread

Djpekingman I bought Mercy, my most played LP in the early 80s. Next thing I bought was the Dancing Master EP, after that I gave up on them, too much of a country vibe.

90Piesanhour

Djpekingman He would be! It was another member of his current band, but I can’t remember his name! I can now you’ve told me. Ta!

Mega_Armageddon_Chickens

Never got the Mekons but I've loved this track from when I first heard it.
Though one of my sisters did once say that it sounded like all the other shit that I played...

Jon

Like it don’t love it.

Young_Marxist_at_Tescos

Thanks; I’d no idea they’d ever sounded like this. Very nice 👍

Harvest

I've heard this a lot as I have it in a playlist dumping ground called 'Liked Songs' - a kind of Spotify Shit-Nat if you will - that I hit when not feeling inspired. I like it.

oneallanclarke

Turns out The Mekons were right about one thing: