On the anniversary of the death of Joe Strummer.

Raise your hand if you pogo’d to Train in Vain.  Or bounced your head and shoulders when you heard the opening riff of Should I Stay or Should I Go. Or got that thrilling feeling when you heard the sirens at the beginning of Police on My Back? 

Today is the anniversary of Joe Strummer’s death so I decided to revisit The Clash on Spotify.  Oh. My. God I forgot how absolutely fucking amazing they were.  A combination of punk, reggae, ska, rock, rock-a-billy.  Thrilling.  Exciting.  The adrenaline.  The power. The message. Listening to The Clash forty plus years ago made you feel like you were a revolutionary, made you a rebel.  My friends and I had a very healthy distrust of adults and authority.  We admired the anti-authoritarianism legacy  of the Hippies and so it was just a natural progression to be drawn to the punk rock attitude of the late 70s and early 80s with songs like Clampdown, Guns of Brixton, I Fought the Law.  We liked the music first and then realized the power of the lyrics later.  Combat Rock was probably the coolest album I ever bought.  I got it for my brother for a Christmas gift in 1982.

 All the “cool” kids in high school listened to The Clash back in Gen X world.  I was no punk, but  was kind of adjacently friends with the punks in my high school.  To be punk all you needed was an attitude, black eyeliner, black combat boots, a long black coat, dyed black hair and an earring.  And oh yeah, to be in a band. I crushed hard for a couple boys I considered punks.  I did my middle class clueless girl best to attempt a punk look on occasion by getting myself a long black coat at Salvation Army, putting a safety pin in my ear, and wearing lots of black- mini skirts, fishnet stockings, etc.  I wore those on the days opposite the days I wore Fair Isle sweaters. Lol!

I feel like in the modern digital music world, where there is so much dreck, we seem to have forgotten the raw power of actual real music performed by actual musicians to send messages about real issues.  Music was such a powerful tool at one time to shine a light on injustice and inequality, on frauds and liars and hypocrites.  Not junk curated and crafted for mass consumption, all fluff and illusion. I know there are artists out there somewhere doing the dirty work, but as I wrote in a previous post, it’s much harder to find than it used to be. Listening to all of these songs again today made me wish I could go back and listen to these songs with young, tender, impressionable ears again.

I have a theory that growing up Generation X was the absolute best time in which to be a kid regarding popular music.  We were exposed to music from the 50s through Happy Days and American Graffiti and Dick Clark’s 25 Years of Rock and Roll. We were awed by Motown and the British Invasion, the Beach Boys, Woodstock, the singers and songwriters of the early 70s, the emergence of punk, the explosion of popular artists in the 80s, grunge and alternative and rap and hip-hop.  We were exposed to and experienced all of the absolute best music that spanned a fifty year time period.  We listened to it in analog. At concerts. On the radio. On record players.  It was a gift and we were so, so lucky. Maybe it’s time to get back to that place where we were motivated and felt like everything was urgent. If ever there was a time to revisit the punk perspective about power structures, it feels like that time is now.