Now Hear This

Joe Strummer would have turned 56 yesterday had he not left this mortal coil criminally early. The Clash’s influence on my beliefs about what music can do and what it should strive to be are impossible to put into words.

I had an opportunity to pay tribute to Mr. Strummer on KALX in Berkeley last night. A brief search around the internet made it seem like The Clash was well represented in the myriad tributes across the blogosphere so I decided to focus on his post and pre-Clash output. Both are as deserving of further investigation as “London Calling” and “I Fought The Law” are deserving of repeated plays.

Give it a listen:

Joe Strummer birthday tribute podcast (48 MB)

Songlist:

“Get Down Moses” – Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros (from Streetcore, released almost a year after his death and #1on my 2003 Top Ten)

“Straight To Hell” – The Clash (from Combat Rock)

“Keys To Your Heart” – The 101ers (Joe’s first band, from the soundtrack to the recent documentary The Future Is Unwritten)

“Slant Six” – Joe Strummer (from, barring the soundtrack to Walker, his first post-Clash album Earthquake Weather)

“Coolin’ Out” – Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros (from their second album Global A Go-Go)

Joe, you are sorely missed…