Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years [Deluxe Boxset)

Product Information

All albums are remastered by three-time GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer Paul Hicks (The Beatles, John Lennon, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie) especially for the release and are packaged with extensive new liner notes, unreleased images, and four reproduction lyric sheets and chord charts from the Strummer archive. He was so excited to work with the Mescaleros and the reception he got from the press and fans was incredible, it gave him a whirlwind of energy and confidence and he was creatively fulfilled and happy. Those lyrics from the late Joe Strummer have probably never had more genuine resonance in our lifetimes than within the current social climate, which makes the new ‘Joe Strummer 002 The Mescaleros years’ box set, a timely and important release. The band’s 3 albums ”Rock Art and the X-Ray Style”, ”Global A-Go-Go” and the posthumous ”Streetcore” are platformed via extensive re-mixing from Paul Hicks, renowned for his work on Beatles material and award winning documentary scores with creative partner Dhani Harrison, son of Beatle George.

A routinely great artist, much of Sufjan's universal appeal comes from his skills as a gifted narrator, pairing personal musings on love and devotion with commentary on American culture, whilst welding folk and electronica, the ambient and existential. It features new interviews with Strummer’s friends, collaborators, and Mescaleros band mates, as well as handwritten notes, lyrics, and drawings by Strummer taken from the Joe Strummer Archive.Coming in both CD and vinyl packages, the liner notes come with many glossy photographs and a lengthy essay that collects quotes from Strummer and those who knew him late in life. It’s a period still to be fully assessed, but track down the fugitive recordings – the collaboration with Jones’s BAD; the defiantly trashy Latino-Rockabilly War band; his 1989 Earthquake Weather LP; assorted soundtrack work; the partnership with The Pogues – and you find Strummer developing his love for Latin, Jamaican, Irish and African styles, while checking out hip-hop and electronica, and holding fast to his belief in gutbucket rock’n’roll and beat-jazz ruminations, all elements that fed the Mescaleros vision. The world may well have not yet heard the last from Joe Strummer and in my book, that’s a damned good thing.

Like Rock Art’s“Willesden to Cricklewood”, Global a Go-Go ends with the band at their most British, with sighing fiddles ringing out over some Celtic glen. What it did unquestionably do, however, was pull Strummer into sharper focus than he had been in years. That said, the ultimate delight for Strummer fans is the final album ”Vibes Compass”, which as Henry Rollins rightly points out in the accompanying video review, delivers in ways which many similarly heralded releases often fall short. The artwork collects all sort of Strummer scribblings, drawings, random thoughts, notes about how he wanted the artwork and the credits on the sleeves to play out (even on the CD label.His words are so beautiful and honest and together with the Mescaleros some fantastic tunes were created and to listen to some of the tunes recorded as outtakes for me was really special. Through his art, Joe Strummer played his part in shaping the musical landscape of the world and with it left an unrivalled and timeless legacy. Thus, despite the musical professionalism of the Mescaleros, many of them sound like pale versions of the official thing.

The show will be aired ‘live’ on the PORTOBELLO RADIO platform in West London, with an accompanying podcast to be released shortly afterwards. Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years is the first comprehensive collection highlighting this intense period of creativity and brings together the albums Rock Art And The X-Ray Style (1999), Global A Go-Go (2001), the posthumous Streetcore (2003) and Vibes Compass, a brand-new compilation of 15 B-sides and rarities, including never before heard tracks like Ocean of Dreams (featuring Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols on guitar) and early demos of some of the Mescaleros best-loved tracks ( The Road To Rock ‘N’ Roll, X-Ray Style and more), through to some of the original recordings from Joe’s last sessions — Coma Girl (Outtake), Fantastic and Get Down Moses (Outtake) — all in one complete boxset. Both the four-CD and seven-LP boxes include four reproduction lyric sheets and chord charts, and the LP box includes an exclusive 12”x12” art print.What an impact, what an amazing musician, what an amazing human being, a great artist, and this boxset perfectly captures the man, the music and the moment.