As the contemporary world sways between collapse and evolution, we must be vigilant in our awareness that history is not a static thing that happened in the past. We are agents of an evolving planet, and history is being made by our actions or our indifference. As we wrestle against complicity and conformity, creative response allows for the reimagining of everything around us. It permits us to take a snapshot of our lives but then see the entire history of the world we wish to occupy, balancing the particular and the specific so we can locate our aspirations for something real and tangible. Creative response recognizes that we must break down the illusory wall between those who watch and those who act. Where everybody gets a chance to participate. Where we celebrate excellence and recognize shortcomings not as weakness but as points of engagement. Where people can discover new interests and unknown proclivities, mining them for all they’re worth. That’s a world worth living in and a world worth fighting for. Creative response underlines the affinity between the frame (life’s outline) and the image (our shared humanity), which always asks the spectator (us) to see more, to grasp the point from which we must cooperate, to see anew, to meet. It supplies a language we can use to write our own story, with words that might be foreign, populated not by fantasies but by action and people. Even though we may come to the theater of life as individuals, once inside we join together as an audience.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Yrthya Dinzey-Flores and all our family, John Sherer and everyone at Perseus Books, Carl Bromley and all at Nation Books, Jonathan Gray and all at Gray Krauss Des Rochers, Mark Urman and the Paladin Films team, Wayne Kramer, Billy Bragg, Eve Ensler, Tom Morello, Shepard Fairey and all at Studio Number One and OBEY GIANT, Edwidge Danticat, DJ Spooky, Eugene Hütz, John Sayles, Jim Jarmsuch, Ian MacKaye, Hari Kunzru, Rob McKay, Margaret Saadi Kramer, William Clark, Hank O’Neal for his wonderful Ginsberg/Clash photos, Peter Hale of the Allen Ginsberg Estate, Adam Block of Sony Music, the Let Fury Have the Hour production team, all the past and current contributors, all the bookstores, universities, schools, community centers, theaters, and concert halls that invited me to share my work with an audience, La Lutta NMC, A Bricklayers Union Productions, and everyone else who provided support, insight, opinions, and love during the writing of this new edition.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION: THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN
1. Crass offered the only criticism of the Clash that has merit. The Clash inspired their political sensibility. Crass launched their own efforts to realize the non-compromise music-based militancy envisioned in the early days of punk. The American punk band Bad Brains also expanded the political activism of music during this time.
2. Strummer performed at the FBU benefit at Acton Town Hall, London, in November 2002, helping raise money and awareness for the Fire Brigade’s fair pay campaign.
3. Many critics hold that Sandinista!, the album following the monumental London Calling, was a missed opportunity for the Clash to expand on their groundbreaking prior recordings. Sandinista! is an important achievement that defined the Clash’s sound for the sheer breadth of influences, styles, and genres. Standout tracks include “Police on My Back,” “The Call Up,” “The Leader,” and “Washington Bullets.”
4. The Bobby Fuller Four was influenced by another rock ’n’ roll star from West Texas, Buddy Holly. Sonny Curtis, Holly’s lead guitarist, wrote “I Fought the Law.” In later years music influenced by the Bobby Fuller Four was recorded by such groups as the Clash, the Blasters, and Los Lobos.
5. Future Forests is a UK-based company with a global vision to protect the earth’s climate: “We recognise that to some degree we all contribute to global warming—but also that we can all do something to slow it down. That’s why we make it quick and easy for people and companies to find out how much carbon dioxide they produce; to provide them with straightforward ways of reducing those emissions, and interesting options for ‘neutralising’ what can’t be reduced. Those options include tree planting, and investments into climate friendly technology.”
6. The program was recorded every Saturday afternoon at the BBC Studios at Bush House, London, and was broadcast around the world. The first program consisted of American folk, reggae, African rock, and German techno. Global Boom Box, the pilot, was filmed and directed by Dick Rude, and was going to be a series on MTV2.
7. From Joe Strummer’s press release for his second album with the Mescaleros, Global A Go-Go.
THE REBEL WAY: ALEX COX, JIM JARMUSCH, AND DICK RUDE ON THE FILM WORK OF JOE STRUMMER
1. Earthquake Weather was released in 1989. The album hints at the work that Strummer would produce in the mid-1990s and early 2000s with the Mescaleros. A strong and interesting record, Earthquake benefits greatly from Joe Strummer’s impassioned charisma, his trademark musical experimentation and exploration, and his unique voice. The album is highlighted by the conviction of a musician who always gives a passionate and engaging performance.
2. Dick Rude, interview, April 20, 2004. Go to www.dickrude.biz/_lets_rock/_lets_rock_intro.htm to find out where you can see Let’s Rock Again.
3. Strummer made this T-shirt for an Anti-Nazi League performance and then wore it for many years. Brigade Rosse refers to the radical Italian political group Red Brigade. In 1978, they kidnapped and killed ex-Italian prime minister Aldo Moro. They are still politically active in Italy today.
4. The Clash would be part of the “MTV revolution” as well. The video for “Rock the Casbah” was a big hit for MTV, as it was played in heavy rotation in the early days of the network’s rise to video dominance.
5. See my chapter in this book, “White Riot or Right Riot: A Look Back at Punk Rock and Antiracism.”
6. Stacy Thompson, Punk Productions: Unfinished Business (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 164–168.
7. Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ’n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (New York: Touchstone, 1999), 392.
8. It would take Scorsese another two decades to bring Gangs of New York to the screen. The King of Comedy is a stark examination of the American obsession with celebrity and fame. It stars Robert De Niro as the obsessed fan of Jerry Lewis’s TV show host character.
9. Clash on Broadway is an enjoyable historical record of the Clash’s Bond residency. The film captures the emerging hip-hop scene from break dancing to rap to grafitti. Even more interesting are the scenes filmed outside of Bonds, where the Clash had to contend with a fire marshal who ordered the venue shut down, an intimidating police presence, and a constant crush of fans.
10. Strummer produced the film with his wife, Lucinda Strummer.
11. Repo Man was the directorial debut of Alex Cox. The film is an innovative mix of science fiction, punk rock, and postmodern satire. It takes on 1980s Reagan America with sharp and humorous dialogue, as few films have done before or since. Cox elicits great performances from Stanton as a hardscrabble repo man, Estevez as an antagonistic young California punk, and Rude as a maniacal nihilistic hooligan. The score includes Latino punk band the Slugz with music by Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies, and Fear playing throughout the film.
12. Alex Cox, interview, April 2004. For more information on Alex Cox, please go to www.alexcox.com.
13. As Cox explains: “William Walker was an American soldier of fortune who in 1853 tried to annex part of Mexico to the United States. He failed, though his invasion contributed to the climate of paranoia and violence which led to Mexico surrendering large areas of territory shortly thereafter. Two years later he invaded Nicaragua, ostensibly in support of one of the factions in a civil war. But his real intention was to take over the country and annex it to the U.S. He betrayed his allies and succeeded in making himself president. He ran Nicaragua, or attempted to run it, for two years. In the U.S. he had been an antislavery liberal, but in Nicaragua he abandoned all his liberal pretensions and attempted to institute slavery. He was kicked out of Central America by the com
bined armies of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras. Walker tried to go back twice and was eventually caught by the Hondurans and executed. He is relatively unknown today, but in his day he was fantastically popular in the United States. The newspapers wrote more about Walker than they did about Presidents Pierce or Buchanan.”
14. Released by Virgin/EMI, the soundtrack has been deleted from the catalog.
15. Bill Flanagan, “The Exile of Joe Strummer,” Musician, March 1988.
16. Marcus Gray, Last Gang in Town: The Story and Myth of the Clash (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 467.
17. Ibid.
18. Directed by Marisa Silver, Permanent Record (1988) deals with teen suicide and stars Keanu Reeves. Strummer recorded several songs for the soundtrack under the name Joe Strummer and the Latino Rockabilly War. Some of these songs appear on Earthquake Weather.
19. Missteps along the way included using Strummer’s cover of the Celtic ballad “Minstrel Boy” on the Black Hawk Down soundtrack. The film is based on the October 3, 1993, U.S. raid on Somalia, where eighteen soldiers were lost and Black Hawk helicopters were shot down. Directed by Ridley Scott, the film does not seem like something Strummer would support, particularly in light of his political activism around globalization, imperialism, and racism. Many leading American movie critics took umbrage at the film’s obvious manipulation of the truth by failing to tell the Somali side of the story while whitewashing the U.S. role in the military operation. Troublingly, the character Ewan McGregor plays as a war hero is currently serving a prison sentence for raping a twelve-year-old girl, and there is evidence that U.S. troops shot and killed women and children during the mission.
20. The video was released October 21, 2003. “Redemption Song” was the second single following “Coma Girl” off the album Streetcore. The mural appears outside of Jesse Malin’s Niagara bar in New York City. Malin, a close friend of Strummer’s, is the lead singer of D-Generation, the group spearheading the revival of garage rock.
21. In the 1990s, Strummer performed with the Pogues for a time, contributed songs to soundtracks including When Pigs Fly and Grosse Point Blank, and appeared in the films I Hired a Contract Killer and Docteur Chance.
CLASH AND BURN
1. Stathis Kouvelakis, Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx (London: Verso, 2003), 3.
2. Ibid., 4.
3. Maynard Mack, ed., The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, 6th ed. (New York: Norton, 1992), 2:340.
4. Ibid., 642–643.
5. Kouvelakis, Philosophy and Revolution, 281.
6. Ibid.
7. David Quantick, The Clash; ed. John Aizlewood, (New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 2000), 14.
8. The illusion of the entire country bowing before the Queen, celebrating the monarchy, was echoed early in the Reagan administration when “the Great Communicator” proposed putting up decals of a thriving South Bronx visible from the highways in order to conceal the systematic looting and burning of the area by landlords and developers.
9. The album is on the verge of recognizing that in the post-Fordist regime the concept of the weekend will soon be obsolete. The new “flexible pattern of accumulation”—originally presented as flexible hours—is simply that we all work all the time.
10. Quantick, The Clash, 4.
11. This is a far cry from the post-gentrification image of Notting Hill as a pristine playground for the rich where Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts frolic, in the Hollywood film of the same title.
12. Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979), 64.
13. Ibid., 65.
14. Quantick, The Clash, 25.
15. John Harris, “The Bland Play On,” Guardian, May 8, 2004, 16–17.
16. Hebdige, Subculture, 67.
17. Antonino D’Ambrosio, “Let Fury Have the Hour: The Passionate Politics of Joe Strummer,” Monthly Review, June 2003, 43.
18. Tony Mitchell, Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001), 9.
ALWAYS PAYING ATTENTION: JOE STRUMMER’S LIFE AND LEGACY
1. Jason Gross, “Interview with Joe Strummer,” Perfect Sound Forever, www.furious.com/perfect/joestrummer.html.
2. Shawna Kenney, “Joe Strummer: Still Punk After All These Years?—Interview,” Unpop, www.unpop.com/features/int/strummer.htm.
3. Greil Marcus, Ranters and Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music, 1977–1982 (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 29.
4. Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (New York: Vintage, 1988), 239.
5. Ibid., 233.
6. Judy McGuire, “Interview with Joe Strummer,” Punk, www.punkmagazine.com/morestuff/joe_strummer.html.
7. “Interview with Joe Strummer,” www.strummersite.com/Joe%20Strummer%20interview.html.
WHITE RIOT OR RIGHT RIOT: A LOOK BACK AT PUNK ROCK AND ANTIRACISM
1. Joe Strummer, interview, April 2002. All Strummer quotes are taken from this interview unless otherwise noted.
2. On December 1, 1976, the Sex Pistols appeared on Thames Today; Bill Grundy interviewed them a week after the release of the single “Anarchy in the UK.” The interview was “designed to investigate the blossoming moral abyss, which was punk.” The show featured an allegedly drunk Grundy goading the Pistols into what became a profanity-laden conversation.
3. The most memorable Rock Against Racism event was Carnival Against the Nazis in April 1978. A huge rally of 100,000 people marched the six miles from Trafalgar Square through London’s East End—the heart of National Front territory—to a Rock Against Racism concert in Victoria Park. This would be the largest crowd the Clash would perform in front of. Also on the bill were X-Ray Spex, Steel Pulse, and Tom Robinson. Today the Anti-Nazi League is campaigning again in the name of Love Music Hate Racism—a demonstration of the positive energy of the music scene against the hate-fueled beliefs of the British National Party, National Front, and Combat 18.
4. Strummer was a diplomat’s son and spent time in countries like Turkey, where he was born. Simonon grew up in Brixton, a poor section of inner-city London largely populated by Afro-Caribbeans, and witnessed terrible instances of police and state-instigated violence against them.
5. Marcus Gray, Last Gang in Town: The Story and Myth of the Clash (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 319.
6. “I Won’t Let That Dago By: Rethinking Punk and Racism,” in Roger Sabin, ed.,Punk Rock: So What? The Cultural Legacy of Punk (London: Routledge: 1999), 213.
7. The National Front was formed in Westminster, England, in 1967. Among their basic principles is that multiracialism and immigration are wrong and must be stopped. All current racial and ethnic minorities must be removed by any means necessary. It continues to be a social and political force not only in England but also in other countries, including France and Germany. Presently, the National Front in England has morphed into the British National Party.
8. Skrewdriver was one of the first and the most successful white supremacist groups in not only the punk scene but also the music scene in general. Violent and vicious, they believed in “racial purity” and the “need for a race war.” Ian Stuart, the leader singer/songwriter, is considered the founder of the racialist movement. Bulldog, September 1993.
9. “I Won’t Let That Dago By,” 210.
10. Music history, not just punk, is rife with fascist and racist ideology used to strike a dangerous, sinister pose. Here are a few examples. When Joy Division reformed after Ian Curtis’s suicide, they used a term associated with the Hitler era, “new order” (Hitler’s plan for controlling the world). Other instances in English rock include David Bowie’s “thin white duke” phase, which was his self-proclaimed “fascist period.” Eric Clapton addressed a crowd in a concert hall, asking them to stop Britain from becoming a “black colony” and adding that “he’d like to get the foreigners out.” In March 1979 in Columbus, Ohio, Elvis Costello told an interviewer that James Brown was “a jive ass nigger” and Ray Charles “a blind, ignorant
nigger.”
11. There were notable exceptions. For example, the epic strike by Asian workers at Grunwick in North London was a huge catalyst for solidarity from left groups and white and black trade unionists.
12. “I Won’t Let That Dago By,” 216.
13. Ibid.
14. Mailer’s fascination with black masculinity in The White Negro is indicative of his fixation on machismo. For another example, see his novel The American Dream.
15. James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name (New York: Dial, 1961), 182.
16. Norman Mailer, “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster,” in Advertisements for Myself (New York: Putnam’s, 1959), 348.
17. Ibid.
18. James Baldwin, “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,” in Nobody Knows My Name, 182.
19. Ibid., 181.
20. Thomas S. Hibbs, “Angst, American Style: A Review of Existential America, by George Cotkin,” Claremont Review of Books, September 22, 2003.
21. Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, 275. Ivan Julian was the guitarist for Richard Hell and Voidoids.
22. Ibid., 279.
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