Remembering Joe Strummer

Today, 2002. The day we lost Joe.

Twenty goddam years we’ve missed him (and Lord he would have had a lot to say in that time).

I heard the news on NPR while driving to Virginia to visit family for Christmas. I drove straight past my exit to the nearest town with a record store (Staunton). I hadn’t included any CDs from the Clash on that trip, surely a rarity. In the record store, I found a London Calling cassette (and NO CDs, wtf?). I jacked that in and backtracked to my family’s house 30 minutes away.

That tape didn’t leave the tape deck in my car for months. It was all I listened to that trip and for many subsequent commutes.

This fucking hurt. Especially since I had only recently began exploring music again for real and discovered the Mescaleros.

It still does.

All of Joe’s music has played a central art in my life since I discovered The Clash in the early 80s (London Calling). At every step, it was there. In college, a conduit to bond with one of my best friends (who may love the Clash more than I do). Fucking around slacking in my college town post graduation, London Calling again (specifically “Clampdown,” which is prescient).

Rediscovering Sandinista and Give ‘Em Enough Rope when I moved to Atlanta.

And then, out of the blue, The Mescaleros. I can’t separate these sounds from the courtship and life since with my wife.

We saw The Future Is Unwritten on a date early on, and late to the party, she still arrived. A few years later, Minstrel Boy was the recessional at our wedding. And Joe has been a constant musical presence in our lives. His entire body of work really has a song to meet every task or occasion.

I often wonder what Joe would make of our current times. I’m confident he have railed against Brexit and Trump. Punk rocker Antifa to the end. Fuck the Tories (and Republicans too) all the way through. He told the truth to power. Elon would tremble.

And he missed the greatest heights Chelsea FC has ever seen, though I’m not sure how he’d process the Abramovich era. Football does funny things to your brain.

It still hurts.