Are you ready to hear some blaspheming? Good. Here goes. I never much liked the Clash. I know. I might as well be saying I never cared much for the Beatles, which is also true. I always thought the Clash’s revolutionary shtick was a total shuck—so much posturing—and much preferred the wild-eyed nihilism of the Sex Pistols, which may have been posturing as well but was far more amusing. Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, and Company simply left me cold, because they talked the talk but talk is cheap, so cheap that any huckster can engage in it all day long.
But I love Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros, and especially 2002’s Global A Go-Go, the last Mescaleros LP released during Strummer’s lifetime (2003’s Streetcore was released posthumously). Global A Go-Go was a brilliant exercise in genre bending, with explorations grafting various types of world music with good old rock and folk. There’s a lot of exotic percussion and great violin, to say nothing of some gnarly fuzz guitar and all manner of cool beats from here, there, everywhere. Why even Roger Daltrey makes a guest appearance on the title cut, and how cool is that?
Global A Go-Go is great from beginning (the sublimely lovely “Johnny Appleseed,” which features one of the best choruses I’ve ever heard) to end (“Minstrel Boy,” the almost 18-minute take on the Irish folk traditional). Strummer was a sponge, absorbing all the music he heard coming out of the wild mélange of exotic stores and restaurants on the streets he walked down in what he called his “humble neighborhood.” This is especially noteworthy on “Bhindi Bhagee,” a cold dead brilliant shuffle dominated by one wonderful flute and an equally great violin. He’s walking down the road and runs into a third-world stranger looking for mushy beans, and Strummer says he may not be able to find mushy beans but goes into a wonderful and rushed description of the whole universe of foods available in the immigrant-crowded neighborhood he calls home. Meanwhile the percussion makes you want to dance, Strummer welcomes the stranger to his new home, and a very fierce guitar joins in, leaving you both euphoric and spent.
Both “Johnny Appleseed” and “Bhindi Bhagee” are contenders for the list of my fifty songs ever, and “Mega Bottle Ride,” while quieter and featuring one otherworldly acoustic guitar, is almost as good. This one is folk rock, but folk rock on steroids, thanks to the wonderful melody and nonstop percussion. “There’s no smoking anyway,” sings Strummer and the backing vocalists, which makes this one a protest song I guess, just as the title track, which opens with some synthesizer blips and violin, takes on a reggae edge as Strummer declares that this tune is going out “to all corners of the globe,” before the chorus explodes and Daltrey can be heard joining Strummer.
“Shaktar Donetsk” opens on a slow note, with Strummer muttering and someone whistling, and this one is as exotic as they come. Do I love it? Not really. Too laid back for my tastes. But I’ll still respect it in the morning. I have the same reservations about “Mondo Bongo,” which has a definite third-world flair and boasts some lovely vocals by Strummer, to say nothing of some great interplay between the percussion and violin, but again is a bit too laid back for my tastes. And the same goes “Gamma Ray,” a slow and admittedly hypnotic cut that goes heavy on the third-world percussion and a lovely violin, but just doesn’t do it for me.
“Cool’n’out” is more like it, with its badass guitar, sax blurt, and exotic and propulsive beat. Funky as Funkadelic, “Cool’n’out” boasts a stop-start that is enough to give you whiplash, to say nothing of that guitar and one Cecil B. DeMille spectacular of an ending, which features some of the coolest noise I’ve heard in a while. “Bummed Out City” is one cool and stripped-down number; I wish it had a little more vim and vigor, but it grows legs as it goes on, thanks again to the violin and the group vocals and a bright organ that lights the song up like a Christmas tree.
As for “At the Border, Guy,” it sounds like a strange hybrid of a reggae tune and the rave-inspired sound of the Happy Mondays, and boasts a hypnotic groove that will mesmerize you thanks to one fantastic organ, more percussion than you can shake a stick at. I love the guitar that comes in, and the humming of the backing vocalists, and shit I guess I love all of it, and the way it all comes together like we all should, all of us from everywhere, although we never will. As for “Minstrel Boy,” it opens with some martial drumming, a doleful violin, and some humming, and slowly lulls you into a delightful trance that goes on and on and on. As lovely as anything by The Pogues, “Minstrel Boy” tugs at the very same heartstrings as Strummer’s pal Shane MacGowan does, and my only disappointment is that MacGowan and Strummer do not appear together on the tune. A golden opportunity missed, but the song is great nonetheless.
Strummer’s early demise was a tragedy for everyone who admired his freewheeling spirit and commitment to social change, as well as his wonderful music. I’m probably wrong about the Clash. And I definitely owe it to them and myself to give them another listen. But the Strummer who fronted the Mescaleros was a lovely fellow and stand-up guy, one of the great good guys in fact. He liked a drunk and never slunk away from a fight, and bleeding Jaysus is his music lovely. As lovely as a walk down the multicultural main street of his humble neighborhood, in fact. Boyo, you are missed.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
