Mendelson Joe - Spoiled Bratland

Tracks

		Track Name	Length
	1	Slow Down Joe	02:21
	2	Honkis de Konkis	03:27
	3	Take This Tip	03:55
	4	The Muse Will Choose	03:52
	5	February	03:31
	6	Long, Long Time	04:46
	7	True Love	03:40
	8	Counting Sheep	02:20
	9	Whatever Makes Me Tick - It is You	03:52
	10	Lawyers	05:09
	11	Puke (He Makes Me)	03:06
	12	Spoiled Bratland	05:51
	13	Untitled	00:25

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Information/Write-up

Mendelson Joe – Bluesman, Outsider, Truth-Teller

Mendelson Joe was never just one thing. Over the course of six decades he carved out an eccentric, fiercely independent career as a blues guitarist, songwriter, painter, political gadfly, and cultural irritant in the best sense of the word. Born Birrel Josef Mendelson on July 30, 1944, in Toronto and raised in Maple, Ontario, Joe began playing guitar at age eleven and was writing and performing blues by the time he entered the University of Toronto. He graduated with a degree in Arts in 1966, but music had already claimed him.

In 1968 he co-founded McKenna Mendelson Mainline with guitarist Mike McKenna, bassist Denny Gerrard, and others. The band quickly became one of Canada’s premier blues-rock outfits, earning respect at home and in Britain with their explosive live shows and the cult LP Stink (1969). Mainline’s gritty authenticity stood out at a time when Canadian rock was still fighting for legitimacy, and the group’s reputation has only grown with time.

After Mainline first dissolved in 1972, Joe struck out on his own. At first recording as Joe Mendelson and later adopting the permanent stage name Mendelson Joe, he developed a solo career that was as uncompromising as it was unpredictable. His gravelly voice, idiosyncratic phrasing, and stripped-down approach gave his blues a confrontational edge. Over the next four decades he released more than a dozen albums on labels ranging from small independents to Anthem, often collaborating with musicians like Ben Mink, Colin Linden, Gwen Swick, and the Shuffle Demons. Songs like “Dance with Joe” and “Addicted” captured his off-kilter humour and blunt social commentary, while his live shows—sometimes just him and a guitar—were equal parts performance art and sermon.

In 1975 Joe stumbled across a discarded paint set and began experimenting. What started as curiosity became a second career. His painting style—bright, naïve, and unfiltered—was as distinctive as his music. Portraits of friends, musicians, and political figures carried both tenderness and scorn. Some works were whimsical landscapes or erotic studies; others were searing indictments of political leaders. His notorious image of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney with his face rendered as buttocks remains one of Canadian political art’s most enduring provocations.

By the 1980s his work was exhibited widely, including a solo show at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris. His long-running Working Women portrait series, begun in 1982, eventually encompassed hundreds of women from all walks of life, from household names like Margaret Atwood to local advocates and unsung heroes. He also published several books of paintings and essays through ECW Press, blending art, polemic, and autobiography.

Joe’s activism was never separate from his art. He protested weekly outside Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario against nuclear power and government corruption, wrote furious letters to editors, and used his paintings and songs as political weapons. To him, art was inseparable from truth-telling, and he wielded it without compromise.

By the 2000s, Joe had retreated from Toronto to rural Ontario, continuing to paint, record, and speak out. Even as health issues limited his ability to perform guitar later in life, he kept creating—landscapes of Muskoka, portraits of neighbours, blunt depictions of leaders he despised. “All art is political,” he once said, and he lived by that creed.

Mendelson Joe remains one of Canada’s most singular artists: uncompromising, confrontational, and deeply human. Whether through his raw blues, his vivid canvases, or his relentless commentary, he held up a mirror to the country and dared it to look.
-Robert Williston

Eclectic, multi-media artist Mendelson Joe follows up his historic LIVE AT SIXTY-FIVE solo CD with his visionary, and most accessible toe-tapper Spoiled Bratland. Spoiled Bratland is the work of a visionary. It’s a landmark of love and passion for truth: many truths. Timing is everything. Behold the renaissance of Canada’s resident existentialist and self-taught minstrel.

Painter-musician Mendelson Joe on Omar Khadr

Mendelson Joe's latest CD is Spoiled Bratland.

As a Canadian, do you want Omar Khadr repatriated?

"Sure."

Why?

"He's a victim. He's a victim of his father. He's a victim of his family and their religious extremism and their political associations. Religion and politics, in many cases, are one and the same. Let's assume for a second he actually did kill that medic …"

He confessed to doing so.

"That doesn't mean he did it! His lawyer told him to confess if he ever wanted to get out of jail. C'mon! He's been raised to think the infidel is the devil. He's a kid. Kids will do crazy things. That's why they make child soldiers out of kids. They become the greatest killers."

Is Omar Khadr a "real" Canadian, or one in name only?

"He's a real Canadian. If you're born in Canada, you're a Canadian, end of story."

Simply geography? Are his values and outlook those of a Canadian?

"Why not? People have their own views. Some may conflict with yours and mine. They're still Canadians."

Can he be rehabilitated?

"Of course. I don't think he's the only kid in the world who was raised by nutty parents. He probably will do well with some shrinkage. Just like most humans."

Become a good hockey-playing, mortgage-paying, Tims-drinking Canuck?

"I didn't say that. Yes, unless he's a psychopath, there's every reason to think he might be rehabilitated to the state where he's a functional person. He may be a killer, but there are killers walking around on the streets today. They did their time. This guy's already done eight years, and he's a child. That's more than a third of his life. Paul Bernardo's wife, Karla Homolka, she was involved in the raping and killing of two women and the raping and [death]of her sister and she got out of jail. And she was an adult when she did those things."

Are you ashamed the government didn't go to bat for him as a Canadian citizen?

"Yes. The government of Canada should behave as if he were one of their kids. And they didn't."

Omar Khadr was sentenced to 40 years for crimes to which he confessed. A plea arrangement could see him repatriated in a year and free shortly thereafter. Is this justice? Is this fair?

"There is no 'fair.' Let's say you had a 15-year-old child and you taught that child that the worst thing that could happen to you is Halloween; on Halloween, people will come out and, if you allow them to come to your door, you must kill them. That's what happened to this kid. It sounds crazy, what I just said, but it amounts to the same thing. Religion is all mental illness to me. No God gang is any different to the other.

Would you invite him to lunch?

"I'm not inviting him to lunch. I don't have an interest in him on a personal level. I have an interest in him on an ethical level."

Would you have him sit for a portrait?

I'm interested in women because I think women are the only hope. When I paint a male, it's usually because I respect them. I don't have Tony Clement in my house. But I did a painting of him. I don't want Brian Mulroney in my house, but I painted him probably 30 times. I want people I respect in my house.
-Anthony Jenkins, Nov 19, 2010, The Globe And Mail

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