![\"\"](\"http:\/\/mekons.de\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Murder-Ballads.webp\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nMekons are featured in a really nice way in his book. There are three chapters about Mekons related songs: about Drone Operator, Trimdon Grange Explosion and Dora. While the subjects of the first two songs are quite clear it\u2018s the Dora chapter which is most interesting. It analyses how three women have been treated by men. Women who have a complicated psyche are treated by psychatrists and by the church with devastating results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The intersting thing about the book is that it has several levels and in the best parts you experience how these levels are interwoven and dependend on one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each chapter is about a song, about other songs, about the underlying facts, about the artists, about the effect a song might have and how these levels are in relation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201eGetting home alive\u201c deals with the fact that waitresses often have a dangerous situation each evening when they walk home. Why does the killer focus on waitresses, how\u2018s the relation to his future victim in the bar, how does this relation raise dominance fantasies? The waitresses situation maybe a special one but it mirrors murder ballads in general. The singer of the song (H\u00fcsker Du\u2018s Grant Hart: Diane) is full of compassion, there is no hint of exploitation when he asks her: hey little girl, do you need a ride.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a>Hart experienced what seems almost enevitable with murder ballads: crowds sing along with the chorus, mistake the song for pro-rape and it all ends with the typical mysogyny, which is too often connected with murder ballads. Hart stopped performing \u201eDiane\u201c.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The book gives you surplus value to the simple collection of murder stories and their songs. No Knoxville Girl but songs about war, a murderer announcing his killing in a song, righteous outlaws, the Kennedy killing, drugs, tuberculosis and most surprising for me Goethe\u2018s Erlk\u00f6nig. (I\u2018ve taught that in school for 40 years.) Some artists you might expect like Cash, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger or Louvin Brothers. But you get Sonic Youth, Smiths, Beach Boys and Clash as well. All in all it\u2018s 25 chapters with more than 100 songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now if you want to read more about Diane or her killer – there\u2018s this book I am talking about. Same if you want to know what Tom Greenhalgh said about Dora or who the other strange angles are, just klick here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks for the pictures to Ken Bigger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a book launch at the Hideout in Chicago on October 15. Watch Sally Timms and Jon Langford revisiting the Mekons\u2019 \u201cDora\u201d\u2014a haunting ballad about a troubled woman inspired by a case of Sigmund Freud\u2019s. With Martin Billheimer and John Szymanski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n