Futura Music

I've been feeling a bit out of inspiration this week. In Pennie Smith's book of photos of her time touring with The Clash in 1979 the band members provided captions- in one Joe Strummer wrote 'to have output, you gotta have input' and maybe that's the problem, not enough input recently. Tying that and some of this week's posts together (Unkle, David Axelrod, DJ Shadow) brings me to Futura 2000, the New York graffiti artist who provided words and artwork for The Clash. On their 1981 European tour he would paint the band's stage backdrop live behind them. Coincidentally I found this magical clip recently, Mick Jones playing guitar while Futura raps with Fab Five Freddie at the Bataclan in Paris, Mick looking every inch the hip hop/ punk rock star. 

Futura did the lyric sheet on Combat Rock and the sleeve for This Is Radio Clash and was instrumental in kicking off the French graffiti and urban art scene. In the 1990s he hooked up with James Lavelle and alongside Ben Drury worked on the sleeve art for Mo' Wax and Unkle- his distinctive graffiti aliens adorned the front cover of Psyence Fiction and established a strong visual identity for the label. Mick has largely retired from music. Ten years ago he resurrected Big Audio Dynamite for a tour of the UK. I missed it due to being on holiday, something I still regret. Last year Mick came out of his retirement and appeared on The Avalanches multi- guest star album We Will Always Love You. The song We Go On was one of the highlights, a bouncy, optimistic piece of cosmic pop built around a Karen Carpenter sample and a rap from Cola Boyy- 'we go on/ hurting each other' Mick and Karen sing. 

Mick's friend and Clash bandmate Joe Strummer died nearly two decades ago but previously unreleased recordings still surface. A solo best of called Assembly has just been released, remastered versions of the pick of his post- Clash work and featuring a 'new' solo acoustic recording of Joe singing Junco Partner, a song he sung throughout his adult life from The 101ers to The Clash, from Latino Rockabilly War to The Mescaleros. Junco Partner, a 50s New Orleans blues written by James Waynes for and about users and dealers, appears on Sandinista! in both reggae and dub versions and it's one of the handful of Clash songs that I'm a bit ambivalent about, I can take it or leave it.

Junco Partner

This version though, just Joe, a guitar and some echo, shows the man in fine voice.  

We Go On

The new album by The Avalanches came out recently. I haven't heard it yet but the single they released back in the summer, Wherever You Go, was a firm favourite, space age exploration and the quest for peace set to appropriately modern music with input from Neneh Cherry, Jamie Xx and CLYPSO. Last week We Go On came out as part of the twenty five track album (We Will Always Love You), a song with Cola Boyy (not the early 90s pop- rave St Etienne offshoot sadly) and Mick Jones on board. 

Mick Jones seems to have been in semi- retirement for the past few years but his London tone, familiar from The Clash and B.A.D., is clearly evident among the helium chanting and twinkling melodies. The album has guests to spare, the sort of list that makes me wonder if it can survive the weight of all those names- Johnny Marr, MGMT, Vashti Bunyan, Tricky, Perry Farrell, Kurt Vile, Karen O- but on the evidence of what I've heard so far, it seems that it can. 

Today, 22nd December, is the eighteenth anniversary of the death of Joe Strummer, Mick's song writing partner in The Clash. This is a Christmas card Joe hand painted and sent to his friends in 2002. 

I don't know whether Joe would have guested on The Avalanches album had he lived but Mick might have cajoled him into it. Mick and Paul both played with Gorillaz a few years ago and I could see Joe having been drawn into that, his voice on top of that sound. The pressure for a Clash re- union would have grown greater, the clamour for a slog around the world's arenas and festivals would have been huge. There were times when he was alive when he was up for a re- union, it was talked about and they were almost ready to do it once but Paul was the one to say no, who wanted to leave The Clash as they were. Joe would certainly have had opinions about 2020. I'll be raising a glass to him tonight. 

This is an early version/ drum machine demo of the song that became Burnin' Streets on his last album Streetcore, which was completed by The Mescaleros after his death. RIP Joe Strummer. 

London Is Burning