Obit

In the midst of all the holiday joy comes sad news: Joe Strummer is dead. (Via Michele)

Joe was something of a jackass, I'll just say that up front. I was a huge Clash fan for a long time, but they're one of those youthful enthusiams of mine that hasn't stood the test of time, at least for me. They began to lose me right around the time "London Calling" came out. Their experimentation with ska and dub for the most part left me cold, even though I like ska as a rule, and they did it fairly well. I hardly listen to them anymore, even though I still like the early stuff.

But there's no denying how influential they were with all the young punks in those days, myself included. And there's no denying Joe's sincerity and commitment, either. He was a largely unskilled musician who still managed to find a way to express what was in his heart and his soul, which is the founding and inviolable Prime Directive of rock and roll. He was in the vanguard of the movement to re-empower and re-energize the adherents to that principle by snatching rock and roll from the withered hands of the prog-rock dinosaurs and the overproduced showbands and pompous art-rockers and putting it back in the hands of the garage bands; by bringing the music out of the studio and back to the clubs and barrooms of the world, and by making sure people started saying "rock and roll" again instead of just "rock." There is a difference, after all, and it's crucial. As Jerry Lee Lewis once said, you have to have the "rock" AND the "roll."

Joe was about as Left as they come politically, and he used his music to express his political beliefs, which is something I generally don't care for and usually try to avoid. I was a lot younger and a lot more Left myself during the Clash's heyday, and that's probably why I liked them so much more then than now. And I had occasion to meet Joe on a couple of different occasions, at late-night Lower East Side hangouts like Veselka and the bar where I worked, where I actually had to help throw a very drunk and obnoxious Strummer the hell out one night.

Article Author: Mike Hendrix

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