Armagideon time for Joe Strummer

Lost somewhere in the news over the weekend was the word that Joe Strummer of The Clash had died of a heart attack. He was 50 — or, for those who keep track of such things, eight years older than I am. Okay, John Entwistle was no surprise, really, though one would think the boys would slow down after a few decades of drugs. Joey Ramone was hard to take, but he had been sick for a while. DeeDee, again, was no surprise, except perhaps that he had lasted this long. But now, Joe Strummer? Who’s going to be left?
At a time when I was very ambivalent about New Wave, hated the music of the ’70s, and was still focused on some of the music of the ’60s, The Clash were like a flash of lightning. I already knew and loved The Ramones, but they did what they did and that was it. It was brilliant and exciting and took people back to the roots and a little bit beyond. The Clash then took that and went all over the map with it — since The Beatles there hadn’t been a more musically inventive band, and I think they surpassed The Beatles in some ways. They combined ska and dub into rock ‘n’ roll and made it all make sense. They did hard-driving rock and deep, slow-tempo dubs. Nearly every song sounded different, and there was always something interesting going on. The big, triple-disc mess that was Sandinista goes through more musical ideas in one album than most bands do in their entire careers.
Like all the good ones, The Clash were a band. They captured the restless, unsettled Thatcher years for England, and a lot of that spoke to the Reagan years here. (“A lot of people won’t get no justice tonight” — “Coke adds life / where there isn’t any”) Once they were done, they were done. After they came apart, Big Audio Dynamite had some success and was certainly fun to listen to; Joe’s Mescaleros didn’t make much of a ripple. It was the band, the time, the energy.
Remember . . . to kick it over . . . no one will guide you . . . it’s Armagideon time. . . .