Jimmy Fennessy rocks: Great Joe Strummer street art

THANKS to my mate Jimmy Fennessy for this great pic from New York City of Joe Strummer street art. He took it on the south side of Thompkins Square Park on the corner of Avenue A and 3rd Street. I wish there were more murals of this kind in Northern Ireland.

Clash Week: In Their Own Words

I'LL LET this wee audio package to speak for itself. Topper, Joe, Mick and Paul as they saw it. From the great Rockers Galore CD sampler.
Right click on the DivShare logo on the listening bar and download the package to listen to again on your iPods, mp3 players or wherever.

Beware the propaganda: Rock the Casbah

THIS  interview with Strummage would lead you to believe he was the driving force behind 'Rock the Casbah', The Clash's most successful single, but don't be fooled - it's all about multi-talented drummer Topper Headon. (left).
1) The original interview I am using was done while Headon was still suffering from the effects of heroin dependency and he had no chance to give his side of the story. He has since got clean and the record been set straight.
2) Strummage, like the rest of The Clash entourage, love the process of myth making, especially while recording sound bites for American radio and especially when needing to promote something. Disappeared front man anyone?  
3) Bar the bloody lyric and a few guitar fills, Topper had written the most successful song the bastards ever recorded.
At least the story has a happy ending - some time ago it was decided the royalties were to be split four ways and there is no rancour among the Last Gang in Town, it's still a great song.
It's still Topper's song despite what Joe says below.

The true sound of the suburbs: Lost in the Supermarket

THE STORY goes that during the Rehearsals Rehearsals years of the early Clash, their first manager Bernie Rhodes urged them to write about their lives, not about America or love songs or the kind of ephemeral stuff that many pop songs were about, but to reflect the often manufactured gritty realism that punk was supposed to have heralded.
So, in the mythology created by the Last Gang in Town,  Strummer, Jones and Simonon adjourned to Jones' nan's 18th floor flat in Wilmcote House high above the Westway motorway flyover in Notting Hill in West London, looked over the tiny balcony (above) and resolved to write about life as it affected them.
It took another two and half years before they found the highest point of their writing about their own lives.
To my mind, the highest point of The Clash as songwriters is 'Lost in the Supermarket' from the London Calling album, a song which almost poignantly pinpoints the alienation many of us in suburbs can feel at various points of our life.
It's easy to forget that in the 1970s the big supermarkets that have become a fabric of our lives were a relatively new concept and that life in high rises and housing estates had been heralded as a new utopian example of communal living paradise by modernist architects only in the two decades before. The terrible reality of the latter lie would only become apparent in the 1980s and 90s.
Mick Jones, Strummer too, often get stick for not being great singers, unfairly in my opinion, but I really love Jones' vocal on 'Supermarket.' It's febrile and light and worthy of the insecurity of the narrator created by  Strummer in his lyric.
And one line is the best: 'I got my giant hits discotheque album/ I empty a bottle, I feel a bit free.' It says it all about getting your kicks where you can when you are feeling lost in whatever isolated reality you are living.
Over to you Mick and Joe...

Turning rebellion into money: White Man in Hammersmith Palais

OF ALL the nonsense that is often thrown at The Clash, the most common criticism is that they were opportunist arrivistes always flying to Belfast for photo ops and using DM shod, biker jacketed revolutionary chic to sex up their meat-and-two veg rockism.
But that kind of cynical critique doesn't allow for the likes of myself who will be forever in their debt for opening my eyes to a legion of great music that I wouldn't ordinarily have heard of. They were a music library waiting to be explored, because unlike many, they always wore their influences on their sleeves - sometimes literally.
Guitarist Mick Jones once described their fabulously eclectic album fourth album Sandinista as 'music for people who work on oil rigs,  a bit of everything,' but I have always seen The Clash as a practical equivalent of those long lists of artists you got in the credits of Def Jam rap records: after listening to The Clash, I had to search out Prince Far I or Culture or Ken Booth or Vince Taylor.
It was more than just music. Through The Clash, I went and read about movie star Montomery Clift (from The Right Profile from London Calling) and photojournalist Sean Flynn (from Combat Rock). (He worked with John Steinbeck's son).    
On Thursday last, I was struggling with a mountain of work and fired on Under Heavy Manners by Prince Far I, you think I would have known about that 20 years ago living in a new town of roundabouts and little else without The Clash? Possibly, but it was thanks to interviews with them that I did.
The Clash back catalogue is like the big revolving racks of tapes that were in Craigavon library when I was an awkward, mostly friendless teenager stuck in his room. I got The Clash from those racks and those racks contained a lot of the music The Clash lionised and covered and I also listened to that.
The Clash, unlike a lot of commercially successful bands had the ability to make other worldly sounding music, stuff a band in their position would usually not make and 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' is perhaps the best example. A reggae tinged story of being an outsider in a black venue, not the stuff of  zeitgeisty, successful figureheads of British punk in 1978.
And that's the point: it is Joe Strummer's story of being an outsider during an evening of the black culture they so loved. It's about people and love and enthusiasm before turning to pointing a finger at the cynical pricks who make life bad.
It also has the best 'Oooh A hooo A oooh' harmonies ever committed to tape. That might be the best thng about it, too.
Listen to the interviews below from Joe and Mick to tell the story.
(I'll hypertext this up soon)

Clash Week: Let's take humanity back into the centre of the ring

THIS WEEK I will be posting pieces inspired by interviews recorded by members of  The Clash during the production of the wonderful Don Letts' documentary 'From Westway to the World'.
I've been lucky enough to get an audio CD sent out to US radio stations for promotional use after the re-release of the box set 'The Clash on Broadway' near the end  of the 1990s. Much thanks has to be given to my Widnesian mate Tony Dagnall who snaffled said CD in Ed McKay's, the record and book shop he works for in Winston Salem, North Carolina.
The CD looks like it has been sold by someone attached to college radio station of Wake Forest University in Winston Salem.
At the end of the day, humanity is what The Clash, and particularly Joe Strummer, means to me.
Ed Hamell, the one man acoustic guitar wielding colossus, got it right many years ago in his Uncut magazine column when he said anyone who attacks the Clash for posturing or selling out misses the essential humanity at the heart of the majority of their greatest songs.
Joe's spiel here says it all for me, I'll be posting my thoughts and some more interviews for the next seven days.

Joe Strummer RIP

JOE Strummer is seven years dead today, and we are much worse for it.
No one pop star ever touched me more than Strummage and never a week goes by without listening to The Clash or his four 'solo' albums.
I wrote this interview a month prior to his death for the Liverpool ECHO.
It's a rubbish interview because I was overawed speaking to a hero, I hope I did him justice. He even phoned me a day later to make sure I had got the pictures his wife was sending for it. I was feeding our daughter Ella her brekkie when I took the call, I dropped Weetabix all over the floor.
All the best, Joe.

Liverpool ECHO, November 22, 2002
THE voice is as enthusiastic and passionate as it ever was, the beliefs as idealistic as they ever were.
Joe Strummer's back in town and he ain't changed a bit.
Leader of punk deities the Clash, musical pioneer, political idealist and doting father, Strummer remains undimmed by the slings and arrows of 25 years outrageous fortune in the music industry.
And, excited punk rock pop pickers, he's heading our way.
On the phone from his West Country home, the man born John Mellor in Turkey 50 years ago is looking forward to coming back to Liverpool, a city which took the Clash to its bosom like no other.
But more of the nostalgia later. This time he's bringing his band, the Mescaleros, back to town next Friday at Liverpool University's small but perfectly formed Stanley theatre.
This is the story so far.
Strummer and his young band have recorded a couple of critically acclaimed albums (Pop Art And The X-Ray Style from 1999 and last year's Global A Go-Go) and won rave live reviews since the great man came back from nearly a decade of self-imposed showbiz exile three years ago.
They rip through a handful of Clash classics every night and augment these punk favourites with the best tracks from the two albums, as well as throwing in the odd new song or reggae cover.
And how would you describe the new songs?
Well, deep breath now, it's an interesting mixture of pop, blues, reggae, dance dub and African jive.
It's infectious and irresistible for anyone with a passing interest in quality sounds.
This time around they are hitting the university with the intention of honing a set ready for recording a new album early in the New Year.
Cue Joe, rapping quickly and enthusiastically about the vibe in the band.
He says: "We were out in Japan and America and we were really rocking, blowing crowds away with the new songs. So I wanted to get it back out on the road again and bash the songs out and make them stronger before we get in to the studio.
"The new songs are mutating, and becoming more human because we are banging them out without fussing.
"Playing live is a part of the process; we aren't interested in making something pristine, we want to bash the songs out before we get into the studio.
"But what I have learned is that when you are on a roll like this and the vibe is right you have to keep riding it; the only time we ever managed to do it before was with (legendary Clash triple album) Sandinista."
Clang! That there, folks, is the sound of the Clash name being dropped, and it's a musical legacy you can't ignore when interviewing the great one.
Liverpool loves him and he loves us. Heck, Liverpool is practically home territory for Strummer, who made his long-awaited return to the stage at a legendary show at the now closed Cumberland Street venue the Lomax in 1999.
But for many an ex-punk about town, a Clash show at Eric's in 1978 was the high water mark for both the band and the movement.
Joe adds: "We had some great shows in Eric's where it really went off, they were brilliant nights where we really rocked the house.
"We loved Eric's and loved playing Liverpool."
In fact Eric's in 1978 can claim to be the most packed show of all time - the club only held a couple of hundred people, but up to 10,000 claim to have been present.
Despite these nostalgic waxings there was no place for the Clash on the cheap TV celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the birth of British punk.
As middle-aged men and women rehashed a quarter of a century-old anecdotes, Strummer and his band mates Mick Jones, Topper Headon and Paul Simenon kept a dignified silence.
Strummer simply says: "That's all false memory syndrome. I don't want to look back, I want to keep going forward, I still have something to say to people.
"I don't want to be seen as one of the Searchers, doing the same things over and over again.
But until then, I'll just keep going."
There is no chance of a potentially multi-million dollar reunion of the Clash, but they are still the band most revered by the current crop of garage groups.
On top this of their 1979 classic London Calling has been voted one of the top 10 singles of all time by music bible NME.
Joe says: "That's better than money or anything else in this job - that's respect, the fact that these great bands acknowledge a debt to us. That's fantastic."
So that's Joe , punk rock Godfather and a man of the people.
* Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, Stanley Theatre, Liverpool University, Friday, November 22.

MUSIC MISCELLANY: This week's tunes

THIS is the batch of CDs played this week, along with some Falco via the magic of Spotify.

First up is 'Nureyev' by Eskimo Chains who were a Liverpool band fronted by my mate Martin Malone. They made three great albums and he released a solo effort before going on to his current gig which is playing guitar in Simon Armitage's band the Scaremongers. This is the Chains' freshman effort, as the crap Yankee magazines would have it.

May I recommend the Richard Davies album sent to me by GM follower Tony in North Carolina? It's a wee short album on which every song sounds different.

Kraftwerk because me and Tony were watching the German techno kingpins on BBC4 when he was over last week.

The Minnows are a great band from Northern Ireland who took about a decade an half break in their music career to establish hugely successful other careers in PR only to come back with a belting new collection of Lloyd Cole inspired songs. The album is worth a listen just on the basis of its title alone 'Leonard Cohen's Happy Compared to Me'.

The free CD which came with James Brown's first edition as editor of GQ is a belting selection of adult 1990s dance.

You can't go wrong with Girls Aloud, Taha, The Steady, Public Enemy, The Small Faces and the post punk/ new wave best of Atomic.

The CD I'm most proud of is the Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros bootleg of the great man's last ever show before his untimely death in 2002. I'm most proud because an interview I did with him for the Liverpool ECHO is printed on the inner sleeve.

Dabs eyes again...

Double click on the picture for a closer view

FOLLOW FRIDAY: Rachid Taha, the French Algerian Joe Strummer

RACHID TAHA, an Algerian-born, Lyon-raised 'French' singer songwriter has written (and rewritten) some of the most vital songs of the last 30 years.
As the leader of the band Carte de Séjour in the 1980s he helped pave the way for a new conception of French music, breaking down the barriers between rock music and those of the immigrant French and traditional music of France. The band's name referenced the residency card most immigrants were required to have in France.
The band, which eventually split in 1989/1990, was best known for its ironic reworking of the Charles Trenet chanson/ song Douce France a version which raised questions about the status of the North African immigrant French and their status in a France that was witnessing the rise of the Le Pen-led Front Nationale.
But it was after the split with Carte de Séjour that Taha would go on to become the great star of what is rather patronisingly called 'world' music. He comes out of the tradition of Rai singing and his fusing of the North African and arabic world with everything from punk to dance, to rock to techno has seen him become a hero in his adoptive home and throughout the Arabic disapora.
Through the 1990's his relationship with British producer Steve Hillage saw him produce some excellent music, the albums Olé Olé, Barbès, Rachid Taha, Made in Medina and the single Voilà, Voilà which appears on the brilliant 1997 album Carte Blanche on the cover of which he looks uncannily like Joe Strummer cira-London Calling.
The Clash link is important to the understanding of Taha because much of his music treads the punky esoteric line of the British band's Sandinista album. Taha met the Clash before a 1981 show in the Paris theatre, the Mogador which has become legendary in the country - French music's equivalent of the Pistols at the Free Trade Hall.
Taha is an awkward, radical punk at heart, a champion of the underdog and a natural heir to his great hero Strummer. This Socialist Worker interview sums it up.
Taha and Strummer never met again, but there were plans afoot for them to get together at the time of Strummer's untimely death nearly seven years ago. Taha's real overground breakthrough would be his Arabic cover Rock El Casbah (from Tékitoi) which appeared in the Strummer documentary The Future is Unwritten.
Taha's real breakthrough album in the English speaking world came with 1998's 'Diwan' which featured a trio of his calling card songs, Ya Rayah, Habina and Menfi.

He has gone on to make great albums in the 2000s, Tékitoi, Diwan 2 which is perhaps the greatest example of Rai music committed to vinyl/ CD/ digital format. He also released the tremendous best of Rachid Taha: The Definitive Collection which contains a bonus disc beautiful 30 minute documentary following Taha back to Algeria produced and presented by Andy Kershaw - his strongest advocate in the British music media.
His new album Bonjour was reviewed today in the posh papers, we'll reserve judgement before we review it at GM.
FOLLOW FRIDAY 10 on Spotify

The Hold Steady Live: Acoustic and at full throttle

WOULD you like to hear the best rock band on the planet playing acoustic for free? Then you are in the right place.
This is another great podcast featuring The Hold Steady, this time from Chicago Public Radio's briliant Sound Opinions programme and what an archive it has. Please look at its offerings here.
The highlights of the show below see lyricist Craig Finn discuss his literary influences, what it's like to sing Rosalita on stage with Springsteen, why Joe Strummer's musical knowledge was encyclopaedic as well as Finn, guitarist Tad Kubler and pianist Franz Nicolay playing two songs acoustic.
I shudder to say this, but: enjoy.

Lyrical Influences

Springsteen, Dylan and Joe Strummer

Magazines & Daddy Issues (acoustic)

One for the Cutters (acoustic)

And go here to see the band playing well tight and loud for Yahoo's The New Now portal.