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dpwolf
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Post by dpwolf »

Joe Strummer's last recorded concert

Joe Strummer's last recorded concert prompts an uncomfortable reappraisal of one of the so-called bad boys of rock
Chris Campling

I have always had an uneasy relationship with the bad boys of rock, the ones whose human frailties and inadequacies aren't just forgiven but somehow exalted. John Lennon? Lousy husband, terrible father, selfish and cruel, demigod. Iggy Pop? Pathetic self-harming junkie, poster boy for the X-generation. Keith Richards? A man whose greatest achievement, it seems, has been to survive himself - and doesn't he gloat about it.

In a way, Joe Strummer falls into their camp. The public schoolboy who reinvented himself as a man of the streets, who posed and postured and convinced a lot of people who should know better that he was somehow much more than a singer in a rock'n'roll band. But only in a way, as I say. Fraud he may have been, but he was also by all accounts a kindly man, concerned about others and quick to do well. And, for that, those who don't buy into the image can forgive a lot.

The reason for these dyspeptic musings is last Saturday's Radio 2 programme Joe Strummer's Last Recorded Concert, in which Mark Radcliffe paid far too much reverence to the man while playing a lot of poorly recorded pop stuff. The gig was at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 2002, and Strummer was appearing with his band the Mescaleros. Why was a rock band at a folk festival? Because the Mescaleros weren't just a rock band, they had elements of World Music in their sound. And a violin. And Joe Strummer.

The festival organiser made great play of the fact that Strummer was determined not to live off public nostalgia for his previous band, the Clash. The Mescaleros were where it was at. How best to explain away the fact that, on that never-to-be-remembered night, Strummer played several Clash songs? Well, they were songs that had been written by Strummer, and covers. So that was all right.

No, of course it wasn't. Strummer may have presented himself as a man who was looking to the future, but wouldn't it have been more honest - a big word in Strummerville - for him to admit to his successful past? Ah, but that wouldn't have fitted the image, would it? And as long as others colluded, Strummer was perfectly capable of having his cake and eating it.

He could even reinvent others. Interviewed by Radcliffe at the time, Strummer talked about going to a Cambridge Folk Festival, and taking the Clash acolyte Don Letts with him, despite, as Honest Joe put it, Letts complaining that he wasn't into “dat white man's ting”. Now, Letts, as anyone who has heard him on his frequent appearances on radio will confirm, talks like a sociology professor. The idea of him sounding like something out of Trenchtown is risible and kind of racist.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 979895.ece
:curses1:
then don't go killing all the bees

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