This episode brings us a WREK Sunday Special that Thomas did in September 1996, featuring the duo Mecca Normal. One of Thomas’ most beloved bands ever, he had actually been graduated out of Georgia Tech and done with WREK for a couple years when this duo (Jean Smith on vocals and David Lester on guitar) made a rare tour appearance in Atlanta, compelling Thomas to come back to the studio just to do this show.
In fact, Thomas played host to the band on their Atlanta visit, and interviewed them for an article in Stomp and Stammer. Jean Smith has her tour diaries and notes online, and has several excerpts from the article that Thomas wrote:
Mecca Normal’s aesthetic body politic shares a rare ability, a la Czech novelist-in-self-imposed-exile Milan Kundera — to make the political personal. … Lester’s guitars are as inventive as ever. Gracefully attacking and lulling, he has captured Smith’s emotional range in strings.
For more, see Jean’s 1996 tour diary here (Atlanta entries are about halfway down) and the general Mecca Normal website here.
For your reference pleasure, we have Thomas’ original playlist sheet, scanned in and here in PDF form.
We’re now one full year into this podcast, and loving it immensely.
By the way, if you haven’t already heard about the Beautify the Beltline project being conducted on the morning of Saturday October 9th, in memory of Thomas, please see the previous episode.
Enjoy!