Today would have been Joe Strummer's 69th birthday had he lived. We'll celebrate that with a song from his back catalogue, a favourite one of mine and one I've posted before. Generations was recorded for a CD compilation album called Generations 1: A Punk Look At Human Rights. In the 90s Joe seemed to flit between living in Hampshire, London, Somerset and Los Angeles. While in L.A. Joe bumped into Rat Scabies of The Damned at a Ministry gig and went backstage where they met a very frail Timothy Leary and then went out on the lash with Al Jourgensen. In the morning Joe and Rat decided to form a new band with Segs from The Ruts on bass, called themselves Electric Doghouse and recorded one song- Generations.
There's a live, one take feel about the song, the energy flowing between the three punk veterans. It's messy, the meters being overloaded and the needles in the red. The drums, bass and guitar all bleed into each other. Joe's voice has a ton of reverb on it and the words are pure Strummer-
'Back in the day/ Even circles were squares/ Radio waves/ Like pollen in the air/ When there ain't no water/ And there ain't no trees/ Just a dry wind singing/ Through the telegraph keys
And generations/ Leave resonations/ From demonstrations/ To all the destinations
Let's go burning down the road...'
3 comments:
Great late period Joe song. There's a real argument to suggest that in his later years he was at his best when he was at his most spontaneous.
Agreed Nick- I remember a part in the Chris Salewicz biography where 2 members of the Mescaleros try to get him to do take after take of a vocal. Joe doesn't turn up at the studio the following day. When they track him down (in a pub inevitably) he tells them he's a one take guy and that's the way it is.
Love it! What a refrain!
It has the sound of a band who just convinced the engineer to run to the corner liquor store for them and they quickly put the track down the way they wanted to.
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