The third and final instalment of Craig Stephen’s look back at Joe Strummer’s post-Clash legacy:
Posthumous
albums are tricky items to evaluate: the quality all depends on how far the
artist went in recording the material, and how the people tasked with
completing it “interpreted” the work in progress.
Joe Strummer
and the Mescaleros’ third and final studio album was released about a year
after the former Clash man’s untimely death.
Whatever
twiddling was done in the studio in that preceding 12 months, both opening
tracks sound about as ripe and ready as could be. ‘Coma Girl’ is a rousing,
go-get ‘em boy, out of control carousel of a song that screams “gig opener”.
Coming across like a spontaneous world music festival meeting of Jimmy Cliff
and the Wolfe Tones, it’s a rock’n’roller revved up to 11.
‘Arms Aloft’ is
memorable for both being as energetic and as rousing as ‘Coma Girl’ and
including my “home” city (as in being 45 minutes away). “May I remind you of that scene/ We were arms
aloft in Aberdeen/ May I remind you of that scene/ Let a million mirror balls
beam/ May I remind you of that scene.” That’s Aberdeen, north-east Scotland, and
not one of the eight versions of it around the United States or those in places
such as Canada and Hong Kong.
‘All In A Day’
meanwhile travels through Montrose, but I may be stretching it a little bit to
assume that’s the same Montrose that’s less than an hour away from Aberdeen. As
often is the case with Strummer’s solo material, there’s some obscure
references:
“The armor ten, and the I-95/
Tupuolo Joe honey and his rhumba jive/ The look came out, and life broke out/
'It must be a hex'/ I swear the vinyl loaded right on the desk/ Hey, let's go
do this.”
Most of the remainder of the
album is set at a far more sedate pace: ‘Burnin' Streets’ could be a futuristic
follow-up to a famous Clash song: “London is burnin'; don't tell the Queen/
Somebody tried to speak garage and they burnt down Bethnal Green/ Piccadilly's
yearning, like a reggae beat/ Soon you're gonna be runnin' down”, with Strummer
bemoaning that there are “Too many guns in the damn town”.
And we’re taken back to 1979
once more on ‘Midnight Jam’ which begins with Strummer as DJ/ announcer: “All transmitters
to full/ All receivers to boost/ This is London calling/ This is London calling”,
before taking us on a worldwide journey that takes in the sounds of U-Roy and
The Indestructible Beat of Soweto as well as a jail in Germany.
There’s some bum notes: on ‘Long
Shadow’, Strummer appears to be trying to sound like Johnny Cash. Marley’s ‘Redemption
Song’ apparently was added on by a family member, and it really does not fit in
with the modus operandi of Streetcore. There is also a version of ‘Redemption
Song’ with Strummer and Johnny Cash and you’d be advised to check that one out.
As posthumous albums go this,
I’m certain Strummer would have given Streetcore the green light for go.
Craig Stephen returns
with another offering on Joe Strummer’s post-Clash legacy …
The magnus opus of
the trio of Mescaleros records was this immense and intense collection that, as
its title alone suggests, took a worldwide overview, stretching from Ukraine to
New Zealand. Get ready for a trip around the world in 80 minutes (or far less).
In ‘Bhindi Bhagee’,
Strummer meets a New Zealander on the high road of a diverse London community,
and is asked where he can get some mushy peas. A bemused Strummer replies that
they haven’t got any of that particular dish, “but we do got … Balti, bhindi,
strictly hindi, dal halal/ We got rocksoul, okra, Bombay duck ra/ Shrimp
beansprout, comes with it or without, with it or without.”
And he hasn’t
stopped there as there’s also: “Bagels soft or simply harder/ Exotic avocado or
toxic empanada/ We got akee, lassi, Somali waccy baccy” …
Strummer is making
clear to this colonial with a 1970s view of Britain that the city he’s just
arrived in has diverse culinary tastes reflecting the varied cultures of modern
Britain. Just as he’s finished his culinary spiel, the protagonist explains
that he’s in a band and reels off the different forms of music it plays, in the
same manner as above: “We got Brit pop, hip-hop, rockabilly, lindy hop/ Gaelic
heavy metal fans, fighting in the road.”
Meanwhile, on the
title track Strummer hails the universality of music: “Buddy Rich in Burundi/
Quadrophenia in Armenia/ Big Youth booming in Djkarta/ Nina Simone over Sierra
Leone.”
‘Cool ‘N’ Out’ is
a road trip across the States with Strummer’s typically obtuse lyrics: “Fix
that gauge or you run out of gas/ A cool operator can make it last/ Say, from
here to Indiana and across Illinois/ We're rockin’ the girls and a-boppin' on
the boys/ And I spot a little bitty on a little bam-bam/ That pill poppers
hopping on a city bound tram.”
‘Shaktar Donetsk’
reflects on eastern European migration to the west; a man from Macedonia pays a
shady character handsomely to truck him into the UK on a potentially perilous
journey in search of a new life: “If you really wanna go - alive or dead my
friend” … a line that seems prophetic given recent deaths in cold,
airless trucks.
Like ‘Tony Adams’
on 1999’s Rock Art and the X-Ray Style, the football connection isn’t central
to the tale but it does provide some background: the protagonist wears the
woolly scarf of Shahktar Donetsk (the official club name), inherited from his
father, one of the Ukraine-based exiles of the former Yugoslavia.
‘At The Border,
Guy’ is a wonderful, seven-minute epic, that builds and builds with its reggae
fusion. There’s the sound of a harmonica in the distance as percussion and bass
are used to effect for a track that gains strength to the very end.
Apart from a
rather pointless 18-minute ‘Minstrel Boy’ that rounds off the album this is a
magnificent effort from someone still sorely missed.
But while
Strummer’s name is prominent, credit needs to be given to the Mescaleros, who
were far from a session band. This was a tight unit, and Global A Go-Go is much
more of a cohesive group effort than the more song-based Rock Art.
Numerous
instruments were used but their usage didn’t come across as forced or to be
clever. These include bongos, wurlitzers, French horns, Spanish guitars,
witchdoctor bells, whistles and “live echo plating and sounds
destruction”. Strummer's lyrics are of
the metaphorical, socially aware style that he used in the Clash.
It’s by far the
finest effort of three by the Mescaleros and the best album Strummer was
involved with for about 15 years.
Craig Stephen
looks back at the three records Joe Strummer did with the Mescaleros, starting
with one that pretty much came out of nowhere.
The history of The
Clash is likely to be second nature to readers of everythingsgonegreen, but
perhaps the story of Strummer and his stop-start solo career may need a brief
reminder.
Strummer hadn’t
so much gone under the radar in the 1990s, he was lost at sea, a non-recording
artist only seen in brief doses. While Mick Jones had found a niche market with
hit-makers Big Audio Dynamite just two years out from his departure from The Clash,
Strummer had struggled to make his mark, despite some laudable efforts on
soundtracks and a solitary solo album, Earthquake Weather.
So, by the late
1990s there were modest expectations from a man whose recording output in the
ten years after Earthquake Weather were mere one-offs such as an England World
Cup anthem with Black Grape. But he’d gotten a band together, called them the
Mescaleros (the name of an Apache tribe which Strummer heard in a cowboy film) and
hit the studio and the road.
The original line up consisted of Strummer on vocals and
guitar, Antony Genn on guitar, Scott Shields on bass, Martin Slattery on
keyboards and guitar, Pablo Cook on percussion, and Steve Barnard (aka
"Smiley") on drums.
I caught them
at T in the Park in central Scotland in the summer of 1999 and was blown away by
a startling set that was dominated with several Clash tunes such as ‘Tommy Gun’,
‘Rock the Casbah’, and ‘London Calling’. The new material, like ‘X-Ray Style’
and ‘Tony Adams’ sounded fresh, and imaginative, but with more Clash than
Mescaleros tracks in the set I wondered what he had to offer in the final year
of the millennium.
What appeared
in the shops a few months after T in the Park, in the form of Rock Art and the
X-Ray Style, was a dazzling array of styles, moods and ideas that was typically
Strummer. He had again found a way to offer something exciting. This was Year Zero
part 2 for the Londoner. Fellow Mescalero Genn produced the album and co-wrote
several songs with Richard Flack “at the controls.”
Rock Art opens
with ‘Tony Adams’, which was named after the England and Arsenal defender, but actually
had nothing to do with Adams nor for that matter football. It also namechecked
Tony Bennett but Strummer clearly felt calling it after the crooner was less acceptable.
It is a mish-mash of influences, with a reggae backdrop and sax riffs, and an outpouring
of somewhat obscure lyrics, which Strummer spits out almost at random. But it has
an underlying theme of a natural disaster or man-made devastation that’s hit New
York and Strummer is surveying the endless damage: “The whole city is a debris of broken heels and
party hats/ I'm standing on the corner that's on a fold on the map/ I lost my
friends at the deportee station/ I'll take immigration into any nation.”
‘Sandpaper Blues’ contains
African chants and Strummer continues his long-time love affair with the Latin
world: “It's gonna boom Mariachi/ This really fine piece of madera/ And this
will be the counter/ Of the Pueblo Tabacalera.” I’m afraid I can’t tell you
what that last reference is about.
‘Techno D-Day’ relates
Strummer’s real experience with po-faced police at a summer festival as he spun
his beloved tunes: “Well it was a techno D-day out on Omaha beach/ I was a reserve DJ
playing Columbian mountain beats/ Andres Landeros, ay mi sombrero/ Hold onto
your hats, we gotta go.” Landeros is an obscurity to Western ears but not to
the former Clash man and he would feature on the soundtrack to the Strummer
film, The Future is Unwritten. The band make it clear who is right in this
stand-off: “And this is all about free speech.” It’s by far the rockiest
track on Rock Art, reflecting perhaps the anger Strummer felt at meddling cops.
‘Forbidden City’ is a standard rock track, akin to ‘Techno
D-Day’, while ‘The Road to Rock’n’roll’ and ‘Nitcomb’ bring the pace down a
little, as does the beautiful closer ‘Willesden to Cricklewood’, where Strummer
takes us on a wander between two largely non-descript London suburbs to meet
his dope dealer.
There’s a feeling by (penultimate track) ‘Yalla Yalla’ that
the album has done its dash and the treats have all been dished out, but that’s
immediately disbarred by the opening lines backed by a creative rhythm: “Well so long
liberty, just let's forget/ You never showed, not in my time/ But in our sons'
and daughters' time/ When you get the feeling, call and you got a room.” It has
multiple layers and there’s elements of ‘Straight To Hell’ (from Combat Rock)
in there too if you listen closely, and a rousing chant of “Yalla yalla, yalla
yalla/ Yalla yalla, ya-li-oo, whoa/ Yalla yalla, yalla yalla/ Only to shine,
shine in gold, shine” to fade.
One also has to mention the cover art which is reminiscent of the rock
art style (hence the title) of Indigenous Australians, with a kangaroo among
the figures on the front cover.
(Note: the cover art is a Damien Hirst creation – Ed)
