Joe Strummer RIP

Joe Strummer was, by all credible accounts, a sincere gentleman and a decent chap. He practiced what he preached. His music frequently evinced the sort of nuanced understanding and appreciation of the subtleties of Jamaican music that was so obviously lacking in the ham-fisted efforts of such lesser contemporaries as The Police.

Joe Strummer also killed punk rock.

Punk was a big fuck you to all the self-satisfied ideology of hippies. This included their politics. For one profound moment in the late 70's, The palpable obscenity of punk rock was something to behold. Identifying oneself as a punk invited the same degree of opprobrium (and violence) as would identifying oneself as a child molester.

I remember the day I knew that punk was dead. I saw someone at a show sporting a badge bearing a slogan so touchy-feely, so saccharine, so HIPPIE that it made me want to rip it off the wearer's leather jacket and shove it up his puckered rosebud. The message, derived from a Clash song, was "Stop Hate and War!"

Remember punters, "Hate and War" was a song from the FIRST Clash album. Punk was, with the release of that album, pretty much stillborn. Quite simply, by grafting hippie political ideology onto the carcass of punk, The Clash made punk safe for the pompous secular piety of University students. The pioneering pillheads, sociopaths and glue sniffers soon found that they were no longer welcome. I am not the first to notice that, very early in the 80's, punks became just another subspecies of hippie. Vegetarianism and patchouli oil, anyone?

For that matter, Joe Strummer deserves primary blame for the the preachy drivel of U2. Check out the CNN.COM obit. Quoth Bono, "The Clash were the greatest rock band. They wrote the rule book for U2."

If you want to waste your short life getting preached to by a moral philosopher, read some crap by the likes of Jeremey Bentham or Immanuel Kant. If, on he other hand, you like punk rock; do as I do, and crank up The Ramones, The Vibrators, The Buzzcocks, Fear, The Anti-Nowhere League, The Stooges, Flipper, or Radio Birdman.

Zaikesman, I think that there is a messy problem with semantics here. Punk rock was something that happened in the 70’s. I t was pretty much over by 1980. The US hardcore/underground scene of the 1980’s, though it was strongly influenced by punk, was something else entirely.

Temperance, Seriousness, Responsibility, Political Correctness, and Benevolent Intentions were all absolutely antithetical to the Spirit of 77. I find it interesting that you would cite Ian as an authority on punk. I always thought of him more as an agent of its demise. After all, this is a man who, wrongly or not, has been credited with (or blamed for) kick starting emo, for Christ’s sake.

No feelings, mate.

Punters younger than I have sometimes asked me what early punk gigs were like. I always found it hard to put into words. However, while (literally) soaking up the atmosphere at one of G.G. Allin’s legendary gigs at The Exit in Chicago (it must have been 1989), I observed with glee the random fornication and unnatural acts, the pill popping, the fights, the painted Whores of Babylon, and the Dionysian frenzy. This, I thought to myself, THIS is what the punk shows used to be like.