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If you haven't been buried under a rock for the last month, you undoubtedly know that Joe Strummer, the Clash's legendary frontman, died of a heart attack shortly before Christmas. If I were writing the standard Strummer obit, I would, at this point, launch into a four paragraph discussion of exactly what the Clash meant to me -- which songs were playing when I lost my virginity, which concerts blew my mind, what tracks got me through my first horrible job, the sunburn I got listening to the entire three discs of Sandinista on a tar roof for the first time -- you get the idea. Let's just leave it at this: The Clash was important to me, as it was important to nearly everyone who was listening to music when the band burst onto the radio waves. Even now, when I hear that Clash ah-ah-ah-ah-ah -- half rebel yell, half tropical bird cry -- it is as if no time at all has passed. But it has, and Joe Strummer understood that better than anyone. His last two albums, 1999's Rock Art and the X-Ray Style and 2001's Global A-Go-Go, show a seasoned musician at the height of his powers, still trying new things, still incorporating new influences. "You've got to live in this world, diggin' the new," he sung, and that was exactly what he did.
Rock Art and the X-Ray Style appeared after nearly ten years of silence from Strummer, as he extricated himself from Epic following the commercial flop of his first solo effort, Earthquake Weather. In the interim, Strummer guested with the Pogues and Black Grape, acted in a series of independent films, listened to a lot of records and did very little writing at all. He met up with Pulp veteran Antony Genn in 1995 at the Glastonbury Festival (where Genn got everyone's attention by dancing naked on the stage with Elastica) and, a couple of years later, Genn convinced him to give music another shot.
Ten years of music was dammed up in Strummer's head, and with a new collaborator and a more receptive label, it all started coming out. In one interview, Strummer said once the words started flowing, every available surface -- bits of paper, cigarette packages, and tissues -- was pressed into service. The result was as eclectic and socially engaged as Sandinista, and as catchy and melodic as London Calling, but with a couple of new elements thrown in.
First, Strummer had mellowed in an indefinable way. The strident shout of "Police on My Back" was gone. Strummer's voice had taken on a gentler, more elegiac quality, which peaks in the boyhood reminiscences of "Willesden to Cricklewood". The politics, too, seemed softer. They were still there -- "Forbidden City" is a meditation on Tiananmen Square -- but more nuanced and adult.
Second, there's a whole range of new influences on Rock Art and the X-Ray Style -- the rave heat of "Techno-D-day", the African drums of "Yalla Yalla" and "X-Ray Style". Even in his Clash days, Strummer was not afraid to go outside the mainstream in search of new sounds; he mined rockabilly and reggae before almost anyone else. But here, he seems to broaden the palette even more, while tuning in to the relaxed musicality of world styles. The album is not quite as extreme as its globe-hopping follow-up, but it shows an imaginative musician grappling with new ideas.
There's not a bad song in the bunch. "Techno D-Day" rocks the hardest, its syncopated "Columbian mountain beats" breaking up a wall of heavy guitars; it's a gleeful anarchy of sound taking potshots at the "noise inspectors with the sound detectors". It's kind of the same idea as "Rockin' the Casbah", but this time it's us sneaking shots of forbidden rock and roll against a totalitarian backdrop.
"The Road to Rock and Roll", by contrast, is a quieter kind of rebellion. It casts a weary eye on the past, viewing the damage "on the road to rock and roll" and instructing us to "ask the music what it means". It's the kind of song you could probably only write after the two-dozenth reporter asked you to explicate a lyric you wrote when you were 20, but there's nothing bitter about it. It has that "been a good run" feeling to it that makes you feel good about all the experiences you've had, positive and negative, and what you've learned from them.
My favorite track, though -- the one that's getting me through an unexpectedly hard time dealing with the fact that Strummer's gone -- is "Diggin' the New". It is both wistful and triumphant, remembering what's gone and urging us not to get too hung up on it. THere's a ruminative sense in the verse -- "I can see we're really close to something / it's feeling so near / I've got no time for Luddites / always looking back down on the tracks and can you spot one more detail, Jack" -- and a throw-back-your-head exhilaration in the chorus, "You've got to live in this world, diggin' the new."
So let's do Strummer justice. Let's not bog down in Clash trivia or mud-sticking hopes for some kind of truncated reunion. Let's not fixate on how nerdy or cool or hopeful we were in 1979 (for those of us who were here in 1979). Instead, let's all listen to something completely out of character and try to appreciate it on its own terms. Joe would like that. That's what he did.
-- Jennifer Kelly
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