Mecca Normal live in Montreal on June 11, 2011
In Toronto, sitting at the UFO Cafe before the Type Books event, David showed me a newspaper story about the cops shooting two people in Montreal. One of them was a mentally unstable homeless man using a knife to rip open bags of garbage on the street, the other a bystander on his way to work at the hospital.
Back in April we did a show at the Chapel in Seattle that included a song called Shot By a Cop in Seattle about a Native carver shot by police for carrying a three inch blade. The man was engaged in carving, wearing ear-buds. Evidently he was somewhat deaf and probably didn't hear the cop telling him to put down the knife.
David asked if I would want to break from our standing set and do a variation on the song about the incident in Montreal earlier that week. Vince recorded it and included it in his show on CKUT a week later. It was recorded on the left side only.
The song was also a tip of the hat to Norman Nawrocki, who was manning our merch table. During the years we toured together Norman did "news poems" at events and some of these were quick responses to events as he found out about them on tour.
In Seattle I wandered through the audience while I sang it. In Montreal, I saved the wandering for I Walk Alone.
The news story:
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2011/06/07/montreal-shooting.html
released June 11, 2011