I'm very sorry to see Joe Strummer go - 50 seems ridiculously young to me now. I was an enormous Clash fan - while the Sex Pistols may have been more "punk," the Clash were a real band, a rock 'n' roll band that transcended the strictures of punk to incorporate funk, reggae, dub, roots rock, even folish elements. I enjoyed a fair amount of the post-Clash work of Mick Jones' Big Audio Dynamite and Strummer solo, especially this year's world music manifesto, Global a Go-Go, but like so many magical combinations, the Clash was greater than the sum of its parts and Strummer/Jones were always better together than apart - it's that synergy thing.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame better be careful or it will come to be associated with a curse, at least concerning punks: Joey, Dee Dee Ramone, now Joe, but at least Joe knew he had been voted in. This year's induction ceremony will be a downer instead of the riot it would have been with a Clash reunion - Joe will be an impossible hole to fill.
When it was announced back in November that the Clash had been voted in, I wrote the following in tribute:
Clash On Broadway, the career collection, was the first CD I was willing to sit through all the way, and it's a 3-CD set. That's how good it is. Basically it's all here: "White Riot," "I Fought the Law" (live), "Safe Europen Home," "London Calling," "Clampdown," "Train In Vain," "Police On My Back" (written by Eddie Grant), "Magnificent Seven," "This Is Radio Clash," "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go." My only complaints are the lack of "Charlie Don't Surf" and "Lose This Skin" (with vocal and violin work from Tymon Dogg) from Sandanista!, the band's most underrated record.
Article comments