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 JOE STRUMMER & THE MESCALEROS
STREETCORE
HELLCAT/EPITAPH

LINKS:

strummersite.com
Listening to this posthumous release from Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros is like listening to one of the many radio shows that Joe dj’d over the years. Much the way he would take his listeners around the world and into his influences with the records he played, Streetcore is a trip through musical styles and eras and the recesses of Joe’s mind, which, at the point of this recording was still anchored firmly in his working class ethos and global citizenship.
While some tunes such as “Long Shadow” (originally penned for Johnny Cash to record) and the 1952 Bobby Charles classic “Before I Grow Old,” which is renamed here “Silver and Gold,” are thoroughly folk in the Guthrie/Baez/Dylan vein, his cover of Marley’s “Redemption Song” is a poignant version of the Jamaican “folk” better known as reggae. It was part of Joe’s mission to remind us that “folk” just means people, after all, and although our musics sound different, it is the fact that we all make music that binds us together, no matter its harmony or dissonance. I personally gravitate to the dub/reggae influenced rocker “Get Down Moses” and the uptempo ‘60s R&B-tinged “All In A Day”, but that’s not to discredit the rest of the compositions here. The ethereal “Ramshackle Day Parade” and liquid “Midnight Jam” are definitely righteous as well. His Mescalero buddies have done a fine job of putting some cohesion and closure to the 10 tracks they had already recorded together, which had to have been a hell of a job considering they were grieving for the loss of their bandmate at the time. It goes without saying that Joe Strummer will be sorely missed.

----Christine Natanael