Strummer 001, a recently released two-hour compilation of Joe Strummer rarities, confirms what I’d already knew. The man who died in 2002 did his best work with the Clash. Even so, hearing Strummer working out new ideas before and after his contributions to the seminal band is fascinating. I hadn’t heard half of the 32 punk, folk, pub-rock and reggae tracks on Strummer 001. The previously unissued selections make it clear that Strummer was striving to become a modern-day Woody Guthrie. He succeeded.
Four Fists’ 6666, a collaboration between underground hip-hop luminaries P.O.S and Astronautalis, is a de facto tribute to Strummer. Not only is the sixth selection titled “Joe Strummr,” the opening track “Nobody’s Biz” references the Clash’s “White Riot.” The snippet of a Strummer interview that opens “Unjinxed” highlights Four Fists’ embrace of Strummer’s mandate to create protest music.
With the exception of the title track of Four Fist’s album and a version of Strummer’s garage-band classic “Keys To Your Heart,” all of 6666 is better than anything on 001. The vitality of Four Fists’ fusion of rap, rock and electronic music honors Strummer’s legacy. The only thing P.O.S and Astronautalis get wrong is their lament that “Joe Strummer has been dead for too damn long.” Strummer lives in 6666.
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I reviewed Ed Sheeran’s concert at Arrowhead Stadium.
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My most recent concert previews for The Kansas City Star are here and here.
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I reviewed performances by the Vijay Iyer Sextet at the Gem Theater and Ramsey Lewis and Urban Knights at the Folly Theater for Plastic Sax.
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Jazz saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett has died.
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The opera star Montserrat Caballé has died.
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The experimental musician Takehisa Kosugi has died.
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Angela Maria has died. My fellow music obsessives will appreciate this documentary about the Brazilian star.
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Ambrose Akinmusire’s Origami Harvest has replaced Kanye West as the subject of the most heated music-related altercations I'm having with my family and friends. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm for the probable album-of-the-year.
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Zinc City is a fever dream in which saxophonist David Binney and pianist Manuel Engel give free reign to their most psychotic impulses. RIYL: Karl Stockhausen, nightmares, John Cage.
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The avant-garde bluegrass of Nathan Bowles’ Plainly Mistaken occasionally sounds like a mashup of Earl Scruggs and Philip Glass.
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Spider Bags’ scuzzy Someday Everything Will Be Fine is my kind of rock and roll album. RIYL: Tav Falco, stage-diving into the abyss, Deer Tick. Here’s “Oxcart Blues”.
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Lovely or fussy? Artful genius or pretentious twaddle? Past his prime or a lion in winter? I won’t argue with either set of assessments of Paul Simon’s In the Blue Light.
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Donny McCaslin’s concert at the Folly Theater in 2017 was transcendent because the saxophonist’s trio played jazz with the energy, volume and showmanship of a rock band. McCaslin loses the plot on Blow, a rock album that resembles a forgettable solo venture by a David Bowie sideman. RIYL: Adrian Belew, miscalculations, Reeves Gabrels.
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Prodded by a pal, I reluctantly listened to the Midnight’s Kids, a nostalgic love letter to mid-’80s suburban America in which synth-pop and video games were ascendent. RIYL: Howard Jones, synth-wave, Yazoo.
(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)
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