I have this strange memory of being ten years old, standing at the bus stop with my friends huddled around me as I told them about this song I’d heard on my little portable radio the night before. Part of my excitement came from my having misheard the lyrics. I could have sworn that the gravel voice was screaming, “Fuck the casbar! Fuck the casbar!”
I was fairly hip for a ten-year-old. As I recall, for my birthday that year, friends gave me Led Zeppelin IV, Blizzard of Oz, and Rush’s Exit . . . Stage Left. But I wasn’t ready for The Clash, not even for Top 40 Clash. I thought I understood rock music, but Joe Strummer thought differently. I wasn’t ready.
I backed into The Clash again a few years later, when I worked at a sandwich shop. There, especially during the slow night hours, we would pop in our favorite tapes and talk and laugh until it was finally time to lock the front door. I can’t remember now who brought in their Clash tapes, but I remember the songs. It was tough to choose just one for the Song of the Moment, but I knew that it had to be from London Calling. “Death or Glory,” I hope, isn’t too obvious a choice.
The best coverage I’ve found of Strummer’s death is from The Guardian:
- Punk’s Rebel with a Cause Dies at 50 by Fiachra Gibbons
- God Bless the People’s Punk by Sean O’Hagen
- No Ordinary Joe by Henry McDonald
- Obituary by Adam Sweeting
And as the perfect tribute to Strummer, here’s an interesting piece from The Nation. In The Power of Music, Ann Powers (who seems to be everywhere these days, from MTV to NPR) sits down with Boots Powers, Eddie Vedder, Tom Morello, Amy Ray, and Carrie Brownstein to discuss the possibility of progressive political activism in popular music. Tom Morello, in particular, just fascinates me. Way too well-informed and articulate for a guitar player. When asked to boil down his opinions to a single message, he responded with:
You are a historical agent. History is not something that has happened in the past and that is made up of names and dates and places of kings and generals, history is what you make in your home, in your place of work, in the streets, in your community and in the world and your actions–your actions or your inaction is directly affecting the fate of the world that you live in and should be treated with that gravity.