last thoughts on joe strummer
what really hurts now is joe strummer's death, which saddened me about two weeks ago when i heard about it.
my eyes got wet with tears as i watched a special program on MTV2 called 'clash and the western world.' joe strummer appeared before the camera and said, 'when i was young, before i started playing in bands, it was very obvious to me that you have two choices...you either became a power -- or you got crushed.'
i wanted to give some expression to my feelings about that value of joe strummer's contribution to rock and roll, but it took a few days for my thoughts to form themselves. now i am ready. to those among you who would reject joe strummer and the music of the clash, i would say that you are being too quick to judge. why am i posting this on rec.music.dylan ? the truth is, as i was scanning thru this newgroup last week, i got real worked up by the casual dismissal of joe strummer, who i consider to be even more important than dylan in terms of his ability to address the intellectual social and political poverty of the working class.
as recently as last week, people are apparently still up in arms about the death of hattie carroll, even posting william zan zinger's phone number out of spite. i read a few appraisals of strummer's art, too, from other posters pretending to be learned critics; the compliments were all backhanded: "let's raise a glass to joe strummer who was real important to me when i was in college etc."
let me tell you folks something. dylan is a moron who wanted to be rich and famous, and then when got that going he just wanted to sing songs like copper kettle and belle isle. the only two things he will be remembered for are everybody must get stoned and how does it feel? compared to strummer, his art sucks and his politics sucks too. dylan can't even read a newspaper article correctly. he was dead wrong about hurricane carter and to cover it up he went into jesus mode. strummer tells the truth and he was never so weak as to implore his audience to be born again. he told us that we we are alive now and that we should KNOW OUR RIGHTS in the here and now.
a warning to those readers out there who would dismiss joe strummer withoutlistening to his music: if you like dylan, you would like strummer, too. they share the same set of basic core beliefs, 1) that it is the function of the artist and the intellectual to step on toes, to be 'impolite', to create an irrational disturbance in civil society, 2) that the social world can be altered and even truly changed by reaching out for and by speaking to power, and 3) that it is the unique position of the artist in the social world to both become a power -- and to be crushed into nothing.
January 11, 2003
my eyes got wet with tears as i watched a special program on MTV2 called 'clash and the western world.' joe strummer appeared before the camera and said, 'when i was young, before i started playing in bands, it was very obvious to me that you have two choices...you either became a power -- or you got crushed.'
i wanted to give some expression to my feelings about that value of joe strummer's contribution to rock and roll, but it took a few days for my thoughts to form themselves. now i am ready. to those among you who would reject joe strummer and the music of the clash, i would say that you are being too quick to judge. why am i posting this on rec.music.dylan ? the truth is, as i was scanning thru this newgroup last week, i got real worked up by the casual dismissal of joe strummer, who i consider to be even more important than dylan in terms of his ability to address the intellectual social and political poverty of the working class.
as recently as last week, people are apparently still up in arms about the death of hattie carroll, even posting william zan zinger's phone number out of spite. i read a few appraisals of strummer's art, too, from other posters pretending to be learned critics; the compliments were all backhanded: "let's raise a glass to joe strummer who was real important to me when i was in college etc."
let me tell you folks something. dylan is a moron who wanted to be rich and famous, and then when got that going he just wanted to sing songs like copper kettle and belle isle. the only two things he will be remembered for are everybody must get stoned and how does it feel? compared to strummer, his art sucks and his politics sucks too. dylan can't even read a newspaper article correctly. he was dead wrong about hurricane carter and to cover it up he went into jesus mode. strummer tells the truth and he was never so weak as to implore his audience to be born again. he told us that we we are alive now and that we should KNOW OUR RIGHTS in the here and now.
a warning to those readers out there who would dismiss joe strummer withoutlistening to his music: if you like dylan, you would like strummer, too. they share the same set of basic core beliefs, 1) that it is the function of the artist and the intellectual to step on toes, to be 'impolite', to create an irrational disturbance in civil society, 2) that the social world can be altered and even truly changed by reaching out for and by speaking to power, and 3) that it is the unique position of the artist in the social world to both become a power -- and to be crushed into nothing.
January 11, 2003
posted by Andrew B. Noselli at 3:55 PM
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