JOE STRUMMER
Joe Strummer 002: the Mescaleros Years
Strummer’s last testament, still testifying.
By Damien Love
“ThistimeI’msure it’s gonnalast”
NOVEMBER 2022 TAKE 306
1 PINK FLOYD (P44)
2 CAN (P46)
3 DEXYS (P46)
4 THE CURE (P47)
5 JOYCE (P50)
REISSUES | COMPS | BOXSETS | LOST RECORDINGS
DARK HORSE
ANTON CORBIJN
LOOKING back 20 years later, it seems clearer now that Joe Strummer’s final three albums were each made under very different circumstances, for very different reasons; listening to them, it seems all the more remarkable how cohesive they sound, all shouting from the same street.
The group Strummer dubbed the Mescaleros began as a band in name only, but then rapidly evolved into the real deal, only to be stopped in their tracks in the worst way, just as things had started to fly. The music they recorded across their 1999–2002 lifetime – the albums Rock Art And The X-Ray Style, Global A Go-Go and Streetcore, which are collected together in this striking new set along with an album’s worth of outtakes, demos and orphaned tracks titled Vibes Compass – documents this process. You can hear it especially when you assemble it all back to back like this, as a testament of the time: a band mutating fast through different shapes, different tensions, different harmonies.
Still, despite the varying conditions that fed it, all this music identifiably comes from one single place: that unique zone instantly recognisable as Strummerville, a neighbourhood that can feel as intimate as the walk from your front door to the corner shop, yet stretches all around the world.