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Archive for November 2007
There would never come a chance in my life to see Joe Strummer perform live in any musical incarnation. The Clash were broken up by the time I would have gone to see them, The Mescaleros weren’t playing in a city near me. So I am left only with the memories of what The Clash meant to me as a young person, a feeling that it was my duty, in some small way, to work towards enabling the freedom and empowerment I personally enjoyed to be shared by everyone.
I walked in to see Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten knowing a great deal about The Clash and came out realizing I knew so little of its front man and principal songwriter. It’s easy, five years after his passing, to talk about him in hushed romantic overtones that are reserved for dead rock stars. But what is contained in Julian Temple’s poignant and unreserved biographical expose is a story of the struggle for a kind of salvation through music — a man who was so vehemently anti-rock star that he became driven to self-torture, forced to reject the trappings of his own fame for the sake of his humanity.
A picture is painted of a true journeyman, often in first person narrative by Strummer himself: one who was raised in a kind of privilege, slowly rejecting his upbringing and the privileges that came with it as he went to art school, becoming exposed to the fiery atmosphere of the late 1960’s and, by inclusion, the injustices of the world around him. Coming of age in the hippie culture of the late 1960’s, his experimentations with hippiedom could well have sealed Strummer’s fate in the years which followed. But Strummer came to embody the complete D.I.Y. ethos that fuels punk rock, and merely by turning a few odd corners came to recognize his place. While a handful of pundits of the punk era consider Joe Strummer to be an opportunist, even Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols (a band whose appearance at an early performance of Joe’s band The 101’s would change the course of punk music forever) calls Joe Strummer “…the real deal.”
Throughout the documentary, many friends, cohorts, former band mates and loved ones (including the likes of Bono, Jim Jarmusch, John Cusack, Matt Dillon, John Cooper Clarke, and Don Letts to name a few) are interviewed, and the majority of these interviews illustrate the positives. Here is a man whose works have served as inspiration to two generations of artists, musicians, performers and individuals seeking out ways to correct injustice and end hatred. The Clash and Joe Strummer’s gift was in how their musical world successfully melded a gritty, unbridled speed with Jamaican dub music and soul — and he did it organically from influences that were all around him. If some deemed him arrogant, it was because of his distaste for anything which reeked of a certain falsehood. Unlike many modern reinterpretations of punk, Joe Strummer’s punk rock ethic was far more than simply a cliched bored white punk on dope. His rebellion had purpose, he believed in what he was fighting for as deeply as he loathed the hypocrisies against which he fought.
In his arrogance, it would seem he brought down the house The Clash had built. He made more than his fair share of detractors and enemies in process. But the Joe Strummer which I took from this film was neither evil nor harsh. I see in this film a man so hellbent on a quest for human rights, so impassioned about what he stood for, so sincere in his beliefs about equality and global unity that he often found the need to push aside anything which stood in his way.
Joe Strummer believed, correctly so, that his music bore his message. He was both hero and anti-hero, populist and demagogue, loving father and deeply tortured artist. But the message of his music and his unabashed care with and for music from all corners of the world, from people of all backgrounds, races, and nationalities, is a message which should continue to be heard.
Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten is by far one of the, if not the, finest documentaries about the birth of punk rock and its aftermath from the vantage point of its most important voices. His untimely death left a void in the world of music that can never be properly filled. The story of his life is filled with the kind of lessons we can all use.
Listen to The Clash - The Magnificent Seven (12″ Version)
You can learn more about Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten by visiting the official site here. You can purchase “The Magnificent Seven (12″ Version)” as part of The Clash: The Singles Box Set from Amazon by clicking here.
Hi everyone. I’m sitting here on the beach getting a tan, sipping drinks that have umbrellas in them with stupid names blogging away because, after all, that’s what happens when you don’t update for a month. Everyone knows that bloggers secretly go to fascinating destinations and explore exotic regions of the world when they’re not updating. We like to go to the Bahamas and to the south of France, we explore caves and go underwater kayaking with large sea lions and polar bears and penguins and stuff. Ahh, this is the life.
Ok. Not exactly.
I think I owe my readers an explanation because, after all, you do read what I have to say & thanks to all of you. There have been a number of reasons why the last 1.5 months have been silent, and I hope you will use this useful guide to understanding how I see music blogs, my own music blog, and why I don’t just update every day for the sake of updating.
There are a lot of changes going on right now, some of which you probably could care less about and some of which affect our collective ability to disseminate information about good new music.
Over the last several years, music blogs have become more and more widely spread out. Where once there were a handful of bloggers who wrote music blogs, there are now literally tens of thousands. The whole thing has become much more than a way of reaching out to people to talk about the music that I love personally; for many, it has become the focus of a business based on posting press releases and blurbs from everyone who happens to hit your inbox. I have no problem with bloggers who do this. However, this blog does not do that and has no intention of doing that.
If you’re reading my blog and/or submitting to my blog believing that you have some sort of entitlement to have your press release or your music posted by virtue of the fact that you took the time to do it, I’m sorry. You’re not only incorrect, but you’re a bit full of yourself to presume any kind of entitlements. Because my musical interests are incredibly diverse, are not limited to a specific type or genre of music (except for Pop/Country music, you can really keep anything like that to yourself), I tend to make myself a target.
If I have written about a particular genre of music or a style, or even about a particular artist, there’s a likelihood I will write about it again. But if you haven’t even taken the time to read what I have written, then mass emailing or mailing me promos about things that don’t interest me is a waste of bandwidth and precious time.
People who know me will tell you: I listen to everything people send to me. I don’t always like what I hear. If I should find that I am interested in writing about you, your project, your artist, your band, or your song, I can assure you I’ll get back to you personally.
That leads me into part two of this.
I’m just like you. I have a life, my life is not my blog and I become easily distracted. People actually pay me money to do things from time to time, and when they’re paying me more to do for them what they cannot do for themselves than I would make from updating my blog, that takes precedence over this.
In particular, this last part of the year has yielded very little, if anything, worthy of musical notation or attention on my part. I gleefully express to you all that if being particular about what you expend effort writing about makes you a music snob, then please name me as such. I am not swayed by popular trends in music or by someone else’s idea of what is or is not good. I prefer to suggest that which interests me personally and, if other people pick up on it, I congratulate you on finding something special in the music that I have also discovered.
I am also very frustrated with the current climate of the music industry, with the people in charge of what is left of it, and the seemingly random sweeps that have been done on music blogs recently to “cleanse” anything which is “unapproved”. Threatening advances by hired guns have made it impossible to gauge what is and is not acceptable. Both the record labels and the people whom they hire to promote their works need to figure out what page they are on before they start writing to little ol’ me. I don’t need the headaches, and you surely don’t — you’ve got enough on your plate without having to police everything.
I don’t want to argue with you that so-and-so from Band X sent me a track and told me it was fine to post such-and-such track when you, Mr. & Mrs. Label or PR person, have never heard any such thing, only to have you find out a day or two days later that I was correct and apologize. You’re wasting my time and interfering with relationships that are long established, poking your nose in places where it might belong as a tenant of your position, but inevitably where your homework is as important to your job as your police work.
I say these things at the risk of sounding jaded and bitter about this blog of mine. I want you to know that I’m not, and I find it somewhat insufferable that my comments may be construed that way. In the final analysis, people like me are in the corner of the artist and only want to further encourage people to patronize and promote the works of those artist that they enjoy. Whether or not I enjoy something enough to write about it matters very little. Are you happy with it? Did you enjoy making this music? Do you want people to hear it and talk about it and come to your shows? That’s what really matters.
This little workbench, cluttered with CD’s and promo materials and random gifts from artists whom I’ve championed means a lot to me. I won’t sell out the intelligence of the people who read what people like me are writing.
My voice is only one out of thousands. I appreciate that you find my input, my reviews, or my insights into music valuable to you. I hope you will consider what I’ve said here and react accordingly.
While you wait, enjoy this track from Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings that comes from a Scion CD Sampler, Daptone Remixed featuring a ton of Daptone Records artists. This track, “How Long Do I Have To Wait For You”, was remixed by Ticklah and, I think you’ll agree, features some solid work from all involved.
Listen to Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - How Long Do I Have To Wait For You? (Ticklah Remix)
