December 22nd, 2012 marked a decade since Joe Strummer (born John Mellor) passed away. My best friend (the one who initially broke the news of his passing to me) sent me a text message that morning. “Still makes me sad, even though it’s been ten years,” she said. It still makes me sad, too, and probably always will.
Though I have written about The Clash and Joe Strummer many times before, I will continue to write about them - because The Clash has been my favorite band since I was 15, because nearly everything Joe has done musically remains important and relevant to my life, because he left behind an amazing body of work and sharing it with others by writing about it is one thing that eases the sadness just a bit.
Though some of my very favorite Clash songs are Mick Jones songs, this is a Joe Strummer-focused column, so I stuck with Clash tunes that Joe sung lead vocals on. There is a notable lack of some of Joe’s musical projects: you will find no songs from Cut the Crap here; I also have not included anything from Joe’s brief time with the Pogues (I love the Pogues, but they weren’t Joe’s band, y’know?), and there is nothing here from the album Earthquake Weather. Which leads me to say...
Tune into Mix Tapes from the Midwest: The Podcast to hear songs from Earthquake Weather, as well as a number of other Clash and Mescaleros songs that didn’t make it into the column.
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