Over the holiday I missed out on posting about the 14th anniversary of Joe Strummer’s death from an un-diagnosed congenital heart defect on December 22, 2002. I celebrated The Clash’s 30th birthday with a slew of posts this last summer and I wanted to revisit this Joe-centric notice to recognize his passing last week. Here’s a bit about the documentary Viva Joe Strummer – The Clash and Beyond followed by the film…

Here’s another post celebrating The Clash at 30: Viva Joe Strummer – The Clash and Beyond documents the British rocker’s childhood as as diplomat’s son, his rock ‘n’ roll initiation with The 101ers, his storied history with The Clash to Strummer’s overlooked later career music which was cut short by his untimely death in 2002. Here’s the word from Open Culture…

Viva Joe Strummer gives us loads of concert footage and interviews with band members and close friends like the Sex Pistols’ Glen Matlock. The focus remains on Strummer, a frontman with tremendous charisma but also, paradoxically, with a tremendous amount of humility. One reviewer of the film says as much:

Joe Strummer always projected himself as a humble man. Even at the height of The Clash‘s megalomania, when he fired guitarist Mick Jones, Strummer came across like a better read, more worldly Bruce Springsteen. The everyman image has made eulogizing the singer difficult.

This suggests that Strummer’s everyman persona may have been part of his showmanship, but even so, he was respected and admired by nearly everyone who knew him. And his proletarian politics were genuine. As one interviewee says above, “he always had a corner to fight in. He always had someone to stick up for.”

Here’s Viva Joe Strummer…

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One last Clash post to finish off the week and to remind readers that I’ll be on Edward Brinson’s Eigthties/Schmeighties show on WXNA radio in Nashville today to celebrate Joe Strummer’s birthday. We’ll hit the air this morning at 11 AM Central Time.

Tune in here, and enjoy a fun look back at Joe and the band. We’ll be playing songs from The Clash, from Joe’s post-Clash career, and from other bands that influenced the boys while we chat about the impact of punk from the 1970′s until now.

Warm up here with this full concert featuring The Clash live from Japan in 1982…

Stay Awake!

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Music posts.

Here’s another post celebrating The Clash at 30: Viva Joe Strummer – The Clash and Beyond documents the British rocker’s childhood as as diplomat’s son, his rock ‘n’ roll initiation with The 101ers, his storied history with The Clash to Strummer’s overlooked later career music which was cut short by his untimely death in 2002. Here’s the word from Open Culture…

Viva Joe Strummer gives us loads of concert footage and interviews with band members and close friends like the Sex Pistols’ Glen Matlock. The focus remains on Strummer, a frontman with tremendous charisma but also, paradoxically, with a tremendous amount of humility. One reviewer of the film says as much:

Joe Strummer always projected himself as a humble man. Even at the height of The Clash‘s megalomania, when he fired guitarist Mick Jones, Strummer came across like a better read, more worldly Bruce Springsteen. The everyman image has made eulogizing the singer difficult.

This suggests that Strummer’s everyman persona may have been part of his showmanship, but even so, he was respected and admired by nearly everyone who knew him. And his proletarian politics were genuine. As one interviewee says above, “he always had a corner to fight in. He always had someone to stick up for.”

Here’s Viva Joe Strummer…

Stay Awake!

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Music posts.

I recently found Straight to Hell with Spanish subtitles on YouTube. Like Blue Velvet and River’s Edge, Straight to Hell was released in 1986. Three decades haven’t dulled this whacked-out western which married MTV to the wild west with a cast of rockers including the Pogues, Joe Strummer, Courtney Love, Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones, Elvis Costello and Jim Jarmusch. This one was directed by Alex Cox who helmed both Repo Man and Sid and Nancy. This one takes Repo‘s bizarro irreverence and cranks it to eleven with its punk disassembling of cowboy film tropes. Straight to Hell is more of an experience than a story, and it’s one of those instances where the style delivers the substance

Here’s a brief but pretty thorough plot summary from IMDB…

A gang of bank robbers with a suitcase full of money go to the desert to hide out. After burying the loot, they find their way to a surreal town full of cowboys who drink an awful lot of coffee. The townspeople are hostile to the outsiders at first, but seem to accept them once they’ve killed a couple of people. After a while, a mysterious man named Dade arrives, who seems to have unpleasant business to settle with the robbers. A free-for-all shoot-em-up ensues.

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It’s hard to believe, but Jim Jarmusch’s film Mystery Train debuted at Cannes 25 years ago in the spring of 1989. The first of the director’s anthology films, Mystery is also the first film Jarmusch shot in color. The film features three separate but interconnected stories about foreigners who find themselves crossing paths at the dilapidated Arcade Hotel in Memphis, TN.

Here’s the Wiki…

Mystery Train is a 1989 independent anthology film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch and set in Memphis, Tennessee. The film comprises a triptych of stories involving foreign protagonists unfolding over the course of the same night. “Far From Yokohama” features a Japanese couple (played by Youki Kudoh and Masatoshi Nagase) on a blues pilgrimage, “A Ghost” focuses on an Italian widow (Nicoletta Braschi) stranded in the city overnight, and “Lost in Space” follows the misadventure of a newly single and unemployed Englishman (Joe Strummer) and his companions (Rick Aviles and Steve Buscemi). They are linked by a run-down flophouse overseen by a night clerk (played by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins) and his dishevelled bellboy (Cinqué Lee), a scene featuring Elvis Presley’s “Blue Moon”,[3] and a gunshot.

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I’ve sang the praises of Withnail and I on the blog before, but I was recently reminded of another, great, bizarre British comedy that also debuted in 1987. I’m not sure what was in the water that year, but it was something compellingly strange and relentlessly absurd.

Looking at DVD’s online, I came across a two-disc deluxe edition of Straight to Hell that I wasn’t aware of. I love this movie, but hadn’t seen or thought about it in years. By the time I had read this outrageous Amazon description of the flick, I’d fallen into strange love all over again:

Four hapless bank robbers bury their loot and attempt to hide out in a deserted desert town. But the town is not deserted. Feasting, song, sexual tension, and inevitable deaths ensue. Featuring digitally improved violence and cruelty, six missing scenes, A new 5.1 stereo soundtrack by Academy Awardr Winner Richard Beggs, and a new color design by cinematographer Tom Richmond. Norwood (Sy Richardson), Sims (Joe Strummer) and Willy (Dick Rude) are three black-suited killers-for-hire. Paid to murder one Mr Greenburg, they oversleep and miss their target. To escape the wrath of their employer, Mr Dade (Jim Jarmusch), they head for the desert, robbing a bank en route. When their car dies in a ravine, the robbers bury their money and head for a lonely town to hide out “till the heat blows down”. A dead man in an overturned car greets them. Next morning, a horde of bandits, the McMahon clan (The Pogues), descends upon the town. A showdown between the hitmen and the outlaw gang is averted by the arrival of Rusty Zimmerman (Ed Tudor-Pole), who attempts to arrest Bruno McMahon (Shane MacGowan) and his brother Angel Eyes (Spider Stacey). The killers dispatch Rusty and his fellow bail-bondsmen, and are befriended by Frank (Biff Yeager), the leader of the McMahons. An uneasy truce lasts for a couple of nights. Sims and Willy fall in love with two of the local beauties, Fabienne (Jennifer Balgobin) and Louise (Michele Winstanley). But when Sabrina McMahon (Kathy Burke) murders the family patriarch (Jem Finer), a series of deadly events is set in train. Mr Farben (Dennis Hopper) and his lovely wife Sonia (Grace Jones) provide the killers with a suitcase full of high-tech weaponry. George, the hardware store owner (Miguel Sandoval) kills Angel Eyes. And Mr Dade arrives, offering a bounty for the heads of Norwood, Willy and Sims. Willy and Sims flee the ensuing gun battle, abandoning Norwood and Fabienne to certain death. Velma, teaming up with Frank, outsmarts all three and makes off with the money. But Frank, an amateur mechanic, has failed to properly maintain his clutch and brakes, and he and Velma meet a fiery demise. Norwood and Fabienne miraculously survive the destruction of the hardware store, and kill Mr Dade and his henchmen. Norwood leaves town with the women, bound for an uncertain but interesting future. Meanwhile, a skeletal hand emerges from the smoking ruins of the store…

Sounds like a winner, no?

Watch this great behind the scene’s featurette to find out more. If you’ve never seen Hell, this will serve as a great primer. If you are a long-time fan, this will wind you up all over again.