You Can't Pull A Hold Up With A Be-Bop Gun

X-Ray Style is one of the key tracks off Joe Strummer's 1999 comeback album, Rock, Art and The X-Ray Style, recorded with his band The Mescaleros. It's a stripped back song, just some low key guitar, some bongos and Joe's vocal. Piling on typical Joe imagery (CB radio, Sub Sahara, the Mississippi, murder mile, the financial district,the Nile, a rockabilly train) he then adds 'You can't pull a hold up with a be-bop gun' but couples this piece of wisdom with 'There's people living now who ain't got no heart and ain't never had one'. The lump-in-the-throat payoff comes with 'I wanna live and I wanna dance a while'. I'm not sure he ever sounded better.

X-Ray Style

At The Top Of The Dial

Poking around the internet I found this, the lead track from a tribute to Joe Strummer album called Shatter The Hotel, all the tracks being reggae and dub versions of Clash songs. It's actually pretty good with several standout versions and worth tracking down if Clash covers are your thing. You can get it at emusic and on Amazon. The album's proceeds go to Strummerville which supprts several worthwhile Strummeresque causes. If you like the Easy Allstars cover albums of Pink Floyd and Radiohead chances are you'll like this too and many of The Clash's songs take easily to dub and reggae-isation. This one is London Calling, covered by Dubtronix ('Dubstep, future garage and beyond' his website says, and hopefully 'weddings, parties, anything, and bongo jazz a speciality' as well), with the great Don Letts and Dan Donovan (currently playing keyboards in reformed Big Audio Dynamite) guesting. Skanking.

London Calling [feat. Don Letts & Dan Donovan].mp3 - 4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download

You Are The Last Of The Buffalo

There are records on my mental wishlist which I've been looking for for years and this is one of them- Burning Lights by Joe Strummer. It was released on the soundtrack to the film I Hired A Contract Killer in 1990, deep into the midst of Joe's wilderness years. The 7" is said to be the rarest of Joe Strummer records (said by the people who know these things). The B-side is Afro Cuban Bebop, with Joe backed by The Pogues (hiding as The Astro Physicians).

Burning Lights is one of Joe's best songs of any period, and recently I found a download of it. Isn't the internet great? I was stupidly pleased to get this and at least now I own an mp3 of it, if you can actually own a string of digital code. It's taken directly from the film with Joe performing it in a bar, just voice, guitar and congas with some film noise leaking in at the start and the end, and it's a wonderful little song with a heart wrenching vocal, by a man who knows his time has gone.

'Some dreams are made for children
But most grow old with us
And when the air can hope to hold on
To the ground from dust to rust

Burning lights in the desert
Such a sign only you would know
Your running tyres, they're out of pressure
Such a sign only you would know

I've been a long haul driver
Moving things but the cops don't know
Now I can see the writing
You are the last of the buffalo

Burning lights in the desert
Such a sign only you would know
Your running tyres, they're out of pressure
Such a sign only you would know

Now I've been to California
And I've been to New South Wales
Sometimes I pull over
When I realise I've left no trace

Burning lights in the desert
Such a sign only you would know
Your running tyres, they're out of pressure
Such a sign only you would know'

I think, ladies and gentlemen, those words are honesty, beauty and poetry.

burning-lights.mp3#1#1

In The Key Of A

Eight years ago today Joe Strummer died.

On the 15th of November he'd played a benefit gig for striking firemen at Acton Town Hall. During the encore Mick Jones, watching in the audience, asked his companion to hold his coat and joined Joe and The Mescaleros for run throughs of The Clash's White Riot and London's Burning. It the first time Joe and Mick had shared a stage since 1983. Mick has since said it was totally unplanned and spontaneous. Although Joe went on to make two further live appearences (Liverpool and Bridgwater) legend has it that this reunion was the last before Joe's untimely death, and as Anthony H Wilson always said, if in doubt print the legend.

This is White Riot, live from Acton Town Hall on November 15th 2002 with Mick Jones on guitar, in the key of A. If you're having a glass or two of anything tonight raise one to Joe Strummer, 1952- 2002.

Strummer Jones White Riot.mp3

Lorca's Corpse Just Walked Away

I had a 'when did I put this on my mp3 player?' moment in the car this morning-The Pogues' mournful, stirring and elegant (not a word usually associated with the Pogues) tribute to Federico Garcia Lorca. Starting with a military drum beat and building slowly, while Shane sings about Lorca's murder at the hands of Genral Franco's falangists during the Spanish Civil War. Lorca was an internationally acclaimed poet and playwright, outspoken critic of Franco and fascism, and a leading light of the Spanish Generation of '27. Franco's men took him at some point in August 1936 from a friend's house and along with three others shot him at Fuente Grande on the road betweenViznar and Alfacar. His body was buried somewhere in the vacinity, and despite recent attempts has not been found.

In Shane's hands the lyric is full of drama and symbolism, and some insensitivity ('the faggot poet they left til last, blew his brains out with a pistol up his arse') but there's no doubt where Shane's sympathies lie, and at the end when the killers come to mutilate the dead and terrorise the town, Lorca's corpse gets up and walks away. History lesson over- Lorca's Novena is from The Pogues' Hell's Ditch album, produced by Joe Strummer.

The Pogues - Lorcas Novena.mp3

There's A Light, A Certain Kind Of Light

While we're on the soul-train, here's Nina Simone's To Love Somebody from 1967. It's a cover of a Bee Gees song you know. I don't own too many songs with Gibb, Gibb in brackets after the title. This is taken from the Joe Strummer compilation The Future Is Unwritten, so features Joe introducing the track on his BBC World Service show, with the words 'Let Nina Simone rule the world...'. Two greats for the price of one. Four if you include those pesky Gibb brothers.

23 To Love Somebody.wma - 4shared.com - music and mp3 sharing - download

Hey Joe Where You Going With That Gun In Your Hand?

Bagging Area favourite Joe Strummer again, to follow the previous post. This is an instrumental song, War Cry, which Joe Strummer contributed to John Cusack's hitman rom-com Grosse Point Blank. It was recorded during Joe's briefish songwriting partnership with Richard Norris of The Grid (which gave us the fantastic Yalla Yalla). This is dancey, and listening to it I think you can work out which bits are Joe and which bits are Richard Norris. Interesting to contrast it with the lyrics and tone of The Minstel Boy, both songs being in some way about war.

War Cry.mp3

In The Ranks Of Death You'll Find Him

Out of nowhere I thought about Joe Strummer earlier today and realised it's nearly eight years since he died, and felt a pang of sadness. I've never felt as affected by the death of any famous person as I did by Joe's. I've featured several Clash/Strummer oddities and rarities here at Bagging Area but there's a few more to go round.

Joe's post-Clash back catalogue is pretty messy. Some stuff is out of print, some hard to get hold of, some pretty much unknown. Before his three albums with the Mescaleros and his late 90s comeback Joe got involved with several soundtracks. He worked with director Alex Cox providing the drum machine heavy Love Kills to Sid And Nancy, wrote the score for Walker, and several songs for Straight To Hell (among them the excellent Evil Darling and Ambush At Mystery Rock). Joe contributed a song to the soundtrack of Grosse Point Blank, several to Permanent Record, and an unreleased score for When Pigs Fly.

The track here is The Minstrel Boy, an Irish folk song based on the events of the failed 1798 rebellion, and came from the film Black Hawk Down. Those readers who own Joe and the Mescaleros' Global A Go-Go lp will know that the album closed with an eighteen minute instrumental version of this song. This version is over in just under six minutes and features possibly the best vocal he ever got on tape in his solo years. Stirring stuff.

Excuse me, I think I've got something in my eye.

The Minstrel Boy.mp3

Joe Strummer 'Island Hopping'

A week ago Davy H from The Ghost Of Electricity posted Joe playing Glastonbury. I ventured the opinion that Earthquake Weather, Joe's first solo album from 1989, was a great album. I've listened to it again tonight. It isn't. Drew, my Scottish blogging amigo from Across The Kitchen Table thought his vinyl copy was buggered when he ripped Sleepwalking and then realised it wasn't his copy, but the whole album actually sounded like that. He's right.

Earthquake Weather is a deeply flawed album, but it's not without it's merits and has a real hazy charm in parts. Joe's got his Caribbean influences going on, and knocks out some good songs, but too often they're ruined by awful production. Some parts sound like they were recorded in a wheelie bin two streets away. Then guitarist Zander Schloss lets rip with an loud FM radio guitar solo, over the top of some potential great understated backing tracks. Lead track Gangsterville illustrates it perfectly- muddy production, some good Joe vox, nice piano chorus part, screaming twiddly guitar. It's never been re-issued on cd, and maybe someone should do something I don't normally approve of- go back, remix the whole thing and see if they can make a silk purse out of a pig's ear. To finish, the last song Sleepwalking is actually really good, and so is this one, Island Hopping. The rest is hit and miss. Still worth a listen though, and it did give us that great cover shot.

A3 Island Hoping.mp3

Joe Strummer 'It's a Rockin' World'

After Earthquake Weather, his 1989 solo album Joe Strummer spent by his own admission many years in the wilderness, returning in 1999 with The Mescaleros to some success and acclaim, right up to his untimely death in 2002. In no particular order, he played with The Pogues after they kicked out Shane McGowan, wrote several low-key film scores (Walker, Straight To Hell, Sid and Nancy), finally appeared on Top Of The Pops with Black Grape on their Euro 96 song England's Irie, and had an eight year long dispute with Epic, his record label. Joe claimed he bored them out, eventually him releasing him from his contract.

In 1998 he popped up in, of all places, the South Park Chef Aid album. Joe is drawn faithfully in South Park style on the inner sleeve, but you can't see it as my scanner's on the blink and the picture doesn't seem to be on google images. The song is a little rock 'n' roll ditty, over in a couple of minutes, and can't have taken much longer to record than it does to listen to it. It also features, cock-rock alert spoiler, Flea from the loathable Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Tom Morello from Rage Against The Machine. Thankfully it sounds like neither of those bands, more like a lost rockabilly track Joe discovered and sung over. There's some typical Joe surrealism 'we got a surface module and a ... belly dancer', and some good Joe lyrics alongside a dumb chorus. It's not got the hazy charm of Earthquake Weather or the all fired-upness of The Mescaleros stuff but it's OK. One for the completists I suspect.

19 It's a Rockin' World.wma