this is your conscience speaking

What’s this? Two posts in a single day? Yeah, because I felt the anniversary of Joe Strummer's death deserved more than a couple of lines appended to a hastily written clarification of intent.

I don’t gush about much of what I post here. For one, I’m a WASP, and as Mystery Science Theater so eloquently put it, “emotions are for ethnic people.” Another reason is that I am painfully self-conscious that distinctions between good and bad, great and awful ultimately rest in the eyes and ears of the beholder. I don’t care much for Morrissey or The Smiths, but their music means the world to some people. Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” evokes strong feelings of wistful nostalgia in me whenever I hear it, while others only hear the epitome of bland corporate 70’s rock.

It’s not a conscious rational process, for the most part. I can give reasons why I think White Heat’s “Nervous Breakdown” is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, but none could ever fully explain the chills I get down my spine when the chorus starts. It’s what makes music mean so much to us, that visceral connection between the work and the listener. The best I can hope to achieve is to trace the outlines of the Platonic shadows the songs cast….

…and make fun of songs and performers I can’t stand with gleeful abandon.

When folks ask me, “What’s you’re favorite band?” I usually respond with “Right now I’m listening to…” and leave it at that. Being a novelty junkie means that my tastes are in a perpetual state of flux. There is one constant though, and that is The Clash.

It was my punk rock mentor, the cook at the hospital I worked at in high school, who convinced me to pick up the band’s first album instead of another LP of the standard hardcore dreck I was listening to at the time. It was the best music purchase I’ve ever made. From the opening chords to “Clash City Rockers” (lifted, I later discovered, from The Who’s “Can’t Explain” to the abrupt cutout at the end of “Garageland,” I was completely blown away by the mix of killer hooks and indignant sense of conviction delivered by the band. It was the music I had been waiting to hear, but didn’t realize existed. It seemed so perfect…

…until I purchased a copy of London Calling and got schooled all over again.

While he shares credit with Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, and the various drummers who cycled through the band for making The Clash “the only band that mattered” (for a short time, at least), Joe Strummer will always be, in my mind, the soul of the band. You can see it in the live performance footage. The conviction he radiated was tempered by a trace of uncertainty in his facial expressions, as if he was considering the meaning of each line as he sung them, or wondering if the message was being obscured by the medium.

He lost the thread for a good while, and paid the price for his arrogance, trying to rekindle past glories while Jones (through Big Audio Dynamite) kept up with the now. Others copped onto Strummer’s rebel rocker formula and rode it to massive success, while he was left on the sidelines to mutter and rant to an audience that long since moved on.

In the years just prior to his death, Strummer seemed reenergized. He was more humble, willing to acknowledge his past mistakes, and prepared to go forward with his new band. It was a welcome return to form, cut short by his tragic passing on this day in 2002.

The Clash – Safe European Home (from Give ‘em Enough Rope, 1978) – Fuck “Planet of Sound.” My anti-Pixies bias aside, this track outrocks that noisy excuse for a song by a good dozen orders of magnitude. The opening alone, which swoops down on the listener like a Spitfire on a strafing run, is proof positive of my claim. Any piker can throw a cat on a fretboard and call it art, but I’ll take airtight precision and killer hooks over that nonsense any day of the week.

Here’s The Clash performing the song at the 1983 US Festival: