“The Future Is Unwritten” and “Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer” Coming To A Theater and Store Near You

Posted by Myrna the Minx on December 27, 2006 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

After 2006’s Clash Rock and Roll Hall of Fame exhibit and Rick Rude’s documentary, Let’s Rock Again, the march to immortalize Joe Strummer continues in 2007 with The Future Is Unwritten, a new documentary by Julien Temple that will debut in January at the Sundance Film Festival, and in a new biography by Chris Salewicz titled Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer. Salewicz’s book was delayed for over a year in the United States (I pre-ordered my copy several months ago), but has gotten good very good reviews from the English press. Temple’s film features interviews with several musicians and celebrities, although I have to say that I don’t really care what people like Johnny Depp have to say about Joe Strummer. Yeah, he was in a band too (The Kids)–they looked like ABC for god’s sake. Still, I am looking forward to both the book and the film–Temple’s Sex Pistols documentary, The Filth and The Fury, was excellent, and from what I’ve read, Salewicz offers a perspective on Strummer that has yet to be seen.If you hadn’t noticed, “punk rock” is “back.” So says GQ, and you can see it in the men’s fashion being produced by designers like Alexandre Plokhov and in the skinny jeans seen everywhere these days (Levi’s actually makes a pair called “Strummer jeans“). Many have noted the similarities of the political and social scenes in the late 1970s and the early 2000s, but I think the comparison only goes so far. There is a sense of social irony and awareness now that we take for granted, and I think punk rock, particularly British punk from that era, was unseen and undone and unexperienced before that time. What happens now, with a few exceptions is a postmodern “punk rock” which is very aware of recreating (and modifying) what’s been done before. The Sex Pistols took it all too far, but groups like The Clash rescued punk from losing itself in nihilism and irony. That’s the difference. Strummer as an artist was never ironic. He may have been an ironic person, but not an ironic artist. And our culture is so steeped in irony, earnestness is approaching extinction. There are still a few artists out there fighting the good fight. The rap group The Coup comes closer than any I’ve seen or heard to bringing the punk attitude (as defined by Don Letts) to today’s music industry. It can’t be a coincidence that The Coup is also on the Epitaph label, the same label that signed Joe Strummer’s last band, The Mescaleros and is home to Rancid. There is hope for the music industry when a label like Epitaph will still nurture and develop independent artists–even when their first and second albums do little better than break even.

What’s particularly interesting about Temple’s film is that it will feature Strummer in his other chosen role–radio DJ. For a particularly interesting and scholarly read on Strummer’s dual roles as DJ and commodified rock star fighting to define the nature of his commodification, take a look at “The Cultural Offices of Joe Strummer” by Brady Harrison in the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies. You gotta love it when someone uses Fredric Jameson to explicate Strummer’s approach to capitalism. Inspiring that kind of cultural inquiry guarantees that Strummer’s legacy will continue to be strong decades from now.

One of my favorite moments in Dick Rude’s documentary captures Strummer telling a journalist that one of the most important things people can do is to search out good music. Don’t allow yourself to be spoonfed by the big labels and radio conglomerates. Find the strange stuff that sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before and support local artists. Yeah, let’s do it.