Great big Mini prize

Topper Headon is raffling his mini: Tickets are a tenner each, all proceeds to Strummerville. It's not clear how he's planning to get about now, though.

"The Ramones weren't punk" says Estate Agent

There's a strong piece on Stereogum this evening, which not only dissects John Lydon's tiresome "aaah! what a quixotic type I am" Spin interview (neither The Clash nor The Ramones were punk, apparently) but also digs out this:



Yes, that's Lydon on Judge Judy. Let's use that as our calibration point as we measure his words on The Clash:

I never liked any of the Clash stuff, though ... And I never considered the Clash punk. Joe was alright. He was very sweet-natured. But he came from a different music background. He'd already tried the pub-band circuit, so he hopped onto punk.

The best thing about the Judy piece is the caption which explains who Lydon used to be underneath his name.

It's as if Joe Strummer had two voices or something

Matt W emails us with news of Just Jack, who shared his passion for The Clash with readers of The Sunday Times, enthusing over Train In Vain:

I also love Joe Strummer’s vocal. It has the usual gnarly roughness, but is tempered with a more tuneful, almost yearning quality, carrying the theme of anger and hurt caused by a betrayal perfectly – which leads me to what I find most compelling about this song. Although the lyrics speak of some kind of huge injustice done to Strummer by a woman, there is no discernible malice in the music, no darkness or brooding. It is as if the song is a celebration of the pain and heartbreak, an all-embracing acceptance.

He loves it so much... and yet, oddly, no mention at all of Mick Jones.

Dead man does Hammersmith Palais

Thank you, Kit Brash, for the link to Sony BMG Australia's page flogging the Clash singles compilation they released last week. They've apparently arranged the comeback tour to end all comeback tours to promote it:

Love throws shoes at Dr Martens

Courtney Love is having an angry at Doc Martens, the shoe company, who have slapped Kurt Cobain in a shoe advert, featuring him sat in heaven wearing boots.

Courtney is outraged that anyone (other than herself) should be milking Kurt's corpse but she does have a point this time. The tacky little campaign also features Joey Ramone and, even more cheerfully, Sid Vicious. Doc Martens - the boot of choice for all your heroin-addled woman-murdering needs.

There's also a poster featuring Joe Strummer, apparently. Funny that they couldn't find an celebrity endorsement with a pulse.

There's been a bit of a stench coming from Martens for the last decade or so - when it's not using corpses in its advert, it's using them to excuse making penny-pinching decisions. In 2002, it blamed the US terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001 for throwing 140 people on the dole in Northamptonshire when, really, the motivation was to exploit cheaper Chinese labour.

Oh, those trees brought you the air that you are breathing

Apparently Joe Strummer loved trees (no, news to me as well) and so Future Forests are planting a memorial forest in his name.

Unfinished thing for me

Since he was once replaced by Joe, wouldn't it be fitting for the unfinished Strummer album to be completed by Shane McGowan?

Love, death and the whole damn thing

Despite the strenuous denials by Courtney Love's manager, the World Entertainment News Network (who they?) are still carrying their claim that Love caused a scene at Joe Strummer's funeral by "throwing herself on the coffin" and having to be pulled off by Mark Lamarr and Chrissie Hynde.

Their certainty in this story doesn't appear to be shaken despite the fact that none of the news organisations there seemed to have noticed, and, more significantly, that nobody in the congregation saw this event, either. Still, facts are often the death of a good story, aren't they?

"I don't want to look back, I want to keep going forward. I still have something to say to people"

1952 - 2002

[Image - updated 04/12/07; by Joe Kerrigan under Creative Commons licence]