Alaska Employment Law

Rummaging through my music library lately, I came across The Clash, a big hot pink coffee table book written, in the style of The Beatles’ Anthology, by the band members, with very good photos, discographies and most of all, detailed gigographies – one of the best books of the genre.  Next, I discovered that I owned A Riot of Our Own: Night and Day with The Clash, by Johnny Green and Garry Barker, the beleaguered and excellent roadies for the band in their late 1970s heyday.  Green’s observations are especially keen.  He was older and taller than anyone in The Clash, and just as crazy as anyone in the punk movement.  A Riot of Our Own documents how lunatic touring could be, particularly with a band that was not so much after money as statement and style.  And in turn Riot led me to Passion Is A Fashion: The Real Story of The Clash, by Pat Gilbert.  This is the definitive biography, eclipsing the many editions of Marcus Gray’s Last Gang in Town because Gilbert, a better writer in any case, actually interviewed the band members.  I recommend Green’s and Gilbert’s books.  Now, who were those band members again?

Well, there was co-founder Mick Jones, and his buddy the handsome and stylish Paul Simenon, a lover of Jamaican music before it was fashionable, unmusical when he met Jones – Simenon with the thunderous bass, the smashing of which, executed spectacularly on stage at The Palladium in New York, as roadies fled, gave us perhaps the iconic rock and roll photo of all time:  which is Simenon on the cover of London Calling with graphics in the manner of Elvis Presley.  The busted bass now hangs on a wall at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.  Simenon is now a successful painter-artiste.

Drumming was Topper Headon, the best pure musician in the band, a vulnerable man, kicked out of the group for drugs, destined to wage a 20-year war with heroin addiction, who came up with the riff for “Rock the Casbah.”

And then, finally, Joe Strummer f/k/a John “Woody” Mellor, born in Turkey to British foreign service parents, an alchemist of music, a man at home with almost any style and culture, a man finally at home with himself.  I could say a lot more about Mr. Strummer, whose comeback with a band he called The Mescaleros in 1999-2002, before he died of a heart defect of which he was unaware, turned out to be a parting gift to music fans.  There is a wonderful little documentary on DVD called Let’s Rock Again about a 2002 US tour by Joe and The Mescaleros, great concert footage but mostly great footage of Joe, literally passing out hand-made flyers on the Atlantic City Boardwalk, promoting Global A Go-Go, the band’s then current album, and being the decent, gregarious, patient thoughtful man he turned out to be.

In April 2002, The Mescaleros played five nights at a club called St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn.  These excellent but “unofficial” concerts turn up in record store bins in the West Village from time to time.  I can hardly single out any particular Joe Strummer to recommend; even the bad stuff is good.  The Mescaleros used to play the brilliant Clash song “White Man In Hammersmith Palais,” a sort of reggae-meets-rock anthem.  Adoring audiences at St. Ann’s would sing the first verse before Joe even got going.  I do wish I had been there to sing along.