01. Coma Girl

02. Get Down Moses

03. Long Shadow

04. Arms Aloft

05. Ramshackle Day Parade

06. Redemption Song

07. All In A Day

08. Burnin' Streets

09. Midnight Jam

10. Silver And Gold

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Epitaph > Artists > Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros > Streetcore

Streetcore
Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros

Streetcore: In Joe's words, "A distillation thru the mind bending coil..."

In November of 2002 Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros had been on an extensive UK tour, the "Bringing It All Back Home Tour", and were blending new songs into their set, which were recorded in December before Joe passed away and now appear on Streetcore.

Streetcore is a collection of new material, which reflected the Mescaleros' life on the road together, combined with distilling their collective vast knowledge of musical genres. His final gig with his newfound cohorts was a controversial benefit for the British Fire Brigades Union.

As band mate and co-producer with Scott Shields, Martin Slattery said, " I'll miss the inspiration more than anything. He wanted us to make music that we feel - it's such an alternative position these days to be able to work with a guy who is not only a legend, but is allowing you to do what you want."

With the release of Steetcore, the electric axes are back, with a c...

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CATALOG DATA

No: #80454

US Rel. Date: 10/21/2003

EU Rel. Date: 10/20/2003

Type: Full

Artist Page

Official Website

All Music Guide

Thom Jurek

Rating: 5/5 Like Muddy Waters, whose final albums were among the best in his catalog, Streetcore by Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros (Martin Slattery,...

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Rating: 5/5

Like Muddy Waters, whose final albums were among the best in his catalog, Streetcore by Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros (Martin Slattery, Tymon Dogg, Simon Stanford, and Scott Shields) sends Strummer into rock & roll heaven a roaring, laughing, snarling lion. Unlike the previous Mescaleros outings, which were rooted in various world and folk musics and tempered by rock, Streetcore anchors itself in rock & roll and deadly heavy reggae (and for anyone who needs a reminder, Strummer's former band, the Clash, played reggae in the late '70s and early '80s better than a lot of that genre's artists). From "Coma Girl," the album's opening track, there is no doubt that Strummer hits bedrock with this fusion of garage band wail and dread beat. "Coma Girl" uses lean and mean guitars and Phil Spector's 1960s girl groups, then crosses them rhythmically with rocksteady basslines and enormous backbeats. Yes, it does sound like a lost cut from London Calling. A love song for a wasted mascot who flirts and inspires the various gangs trying to rule the dawn of the end of the world, Strummer and band --- the Mescaleros, with their killer rhythms and over-the-red-line guitar and keyboard lines are as tight and tough as anybody out there --- truly find the flowers and divas in the dustbin of apocalypse. Writing like Bob Dylan at his most expressionistic, Strummer's urgency is beyond the warnings of the Clash's London Calling or Sandinista! This is the other side. Strummer is living on the other side of reality, where the worst has already happened.
Listening to the crunchy rocksteady thunder in "Go Down Moses," with its monstrous dubbed-out bass and lyrics about the sellout of the world wholesale, listeners can hear Strummer laughing in the face of all the darkness multinationalism can muster. "Long Shadow," with its minor-key structure and acoustic guitars played in pure American rambling style, was written for Johnny Cash but never recorded. Its protagonist crosses deserts and rivers, it haunts the places of desolation in order to speak with the voice of the Storyteller. The song's style and spirit evokes the ghost of Cisco Houston as Strummer sings: "I'll tell you one thing that I know/You don't face your demons down, you gotta grapple with 'em Jack/And pin 'em to the ground...And I hear punks talk of anarchy/I hear hobos on the railroads/I hear mutterings on the chain gangs/It was those men who built the roads/And if you put it all together/You didn't even once relent/You cast a long shadow/And that is your testament...." Other rockers include the burning revolution drama of "Arms Aloft," with a searing refrain that is among the most anthemic and raucous Strummer ever wrote. With wah-wah guitars, distorted bass, and crushing bass drums and cymbals, it is the hardest rocking track on the set. Also strong are "All in a Day," with its razor-wire Telecaster stomp, and the medium to slow heaviness of "Burnin' Streets." But there are no weak moments here anyway. There are two covers on Streetcore. First is a deeply moving reading of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song," played acoustically by Strummer, Smokey Hormel, and Benmont Tench, produced by Rick Rubin. This is the only cut that the Mescaleros don't appear on; it wasn't recorded for this set but is included by Luce (Strummer's widow) and the band as a hinge piece for the front and back of the album to hang on, and it works gloriously. The other is the closer, a cover of the Bobby Charles / classic "Before I Grow Too Old," retitled here as "Silver and Gold." It's a barroom song played in elegiac, Anglo country style --- think of the Mekons on Fear and Whiskey. Strummer's last line in the song is, "I've got to hurry up before I grow too old," before he speaks to us in his grainy Cockney voice, "OK, that's a take." It's almost as unbearabe as it is unforgettable. Streetcore is the sound of Joe Strummer hitting his stride with his own band on his terms both lyrically and musically, with collaborators who were second to none on this sessions. The fact that this is a final album for Strummer is beside the point; this is one of the best rock & roll albums of 2003, and truly the finest, most cohesive work he did after London Calling.

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Uncut Magazine

Gavin Martin

Rating: 5/5 The posthumous testament of Joseph Edward Mellor; a valiant and moving last hurrah from the Clash hero Joe Strummer's sudden death last...

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Rating: 5/5

The posthumous testament of Joseph Edward Mellor; a valiant and moving last hurrah from the Clash hero Joe Strummer's sudden death last December seemingly brought the career of one of our greatest rockers to an abrupt end. But what makes Streetcore, the album he'd all but completed at the time of his death, so thrilling and fulfilling is that it brings both closure and new meaning to the man's life and work.

Its ten songs - 7 Strummer originals, one co-write with Danny Sabre ("All In A Day") and two covers, Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" and Bobby Charles' "Silver And Gold" - embrace the full span of Joe's musical journey. There's the heartfelt folkie troubadour inspired by Dylan and Woody Guthrie ("Long Shadow"), the possessed missionary on the electric bush telegraph ("Midnight Jam"), the hippy dreamer, acid prankster and punk Godfather ("Ramshackle Day Parade", "Burnin' Streets") and the unrepentant, rocking tribal warrior ("Arms Aloft").

Streetcore negotiates a resolution between the ethnocentric beats that hallmarked the two previous Mescaleros albums and the classic Clash sound that remained pivotal to Joe's live performances. It also contains some of the most revealing songs and performances he ever recorded, making it an essential, if ill-starred, trip.

"Coma Girl", driven by his unmistakable engine-revving rhythm guitar, is classic Strummer, swept along by a Jamaican offbeat; bruising punk clatter collides with reggae-inflected prophesy on "Get Down Moses", presenting an activist call to arms ("Who's sponsoring the crack getthoes?/We got to take the walls of Jericho.")

Unsurprisingly, these songs are often informed by world weary experience and the battle-hardened wisdom of a rock'n'roll veteran.
"May I remind you of that scene/the spirit is our gasoline" is the rallying cry of "Arms Aloft" recalling the heyday of Clash City Rockers when anything seemed possible. But elsewhere that spirit is besieged and underfire. On the extraordinary "Ramshackle Day Parade" the funereal synthesiser and baleful chorus describe a post 9/11 march of flailed souls, a toast to "all those lost, unborn and unmade". "All In A Day captures an inspired mix of uncertainty, mania and exhilaration while on "Burnin' Streets" images of urban decay are suffused with outrage and sorrow.

Even greater is the Rick Rubin produced "Redemption Song", a magisterial reinterpretation, Joe's affinity with Marley's lyric absolute. The similarly sparse "Long Shadow" , originally written for Johnny Cash, is, as Strummer's biographer Chris Salewicz indentified, Joe's own "Redemption Song". This cowboy ballad is a righteous testament linking Westway anarchists and rocking desparadoes with US depression-era hoboes and chaingangs. It's a song as deep and lasting as "White Man In Hammersmith Palais" or any previous Strummer composition.

Of course there's a sadness here: a man is gone and no-one can take his place. But Mescaleros Scott Sheilds and Martin Slattery have served Strummer's memory well and Streetcore is something to celebrate, proof that right up to his death, Joe Strummer was working at the peak of his powers.

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Average Fan Rating: 5.00

Kevlar

02/05/2007

I never got to see Joe Strummer perform live, and I know I would have thoroughly enjoyed having witnessed that. Although Mr Strummer might be dead, he will continue to live on for generations more to come, through his brilliant music, with both the Clash and the Mescaleros.
WE LOVE YOU JOE!!!!!!

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StreetcoreJoe Strummer And The Mescaleros

StreetcoreJoe Strummer And The Mescaleros

LATEST NEWS

CATALOG DATA

MORE

All Music Guide

Thom Jurek

Uncut Magazine

Gavin Martin

Kevlar

02/05/2007

Streetcore
Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros

Streetcore
Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros