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Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 26 Aug 2016, 6:08pm
by Wolter
Marky Dread wrote:
101Walterton wrote:Yep would make a great Joe solo comp. No surprises in that list.
Just needs a free ep of Boogie with Your Children remixes.
Why do you hate fun?

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 26 Aug 2016, 6:18pm
by Marky Dread
Wolter wrote:
Marky Dread wrote:
101Walterton wrote:Yep would make a great Joe solo comp. No surprises in that list.
Just needs a free ep of Boogie with Your Children remixes.
Why do you hate fun?
It always ends in tears.

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 27 Aug 2016, 6:16am
by Carpentologist
No Gangsterville??!!!

My vote is;
1.Gangsterville
2.Trash City
3.Tropic of No Return

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 30 Aug 2016, 11:23am
by NoMoreHugh
You know i wish Joe had gone completely against the clash sound like Mick did as i think it would have been a lot better for him and he wouldn't have found himself chasing his own tail trying to compete and prove himself when he is good enough not too. At the end of the day the best song writers cant compete with the clash so he had no chance on his own. I think Mick sussed this too.

I agree with an earlier comment that Walker may have had something with singing. For me it could be a kind of Paul Simon Project but for Spain instead of Africa. :twitch:

I think someone commented that his best songs were better than anything BAD did - not to me, but i agree that those handful of songs may hold that argument in some respect. The problem for me comes when i listen to BAD on shuffle and i can sit and absorb all the music for hours but in contrast if i do that with Joe Strummer its bloody annoying to keep having to get up and press skip all the time long to find a decent song.

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 30 Aug 2016, 1:08pm
by Wolter
NoMoreHugh wrote:You know i wish Joe had gone completely against the clash sound like Mick did as i think it would have been a lot better for him and he wouldn't have found himself chasing his own tail trying to compete and prove himself when he is good enough not too. At the end of the day the best song writers cant compete with the clash so he had no chance on his own. I think Mick sussed this too.

I agree with an earlier comment that Walker may have had something with singing. For me it could be a kind of Paul Simon Project but for Spain instead of Africa. :twitch:

I think someone commented that his best songs were better than anything BAD did - not to me, but i agree that those handful of songs may hold that argument in some respect. The problem for me comes when i listen to BAD on shuffle and i can sit and absorb all the music for hours but in contrast if i do that with Joe Strummer its bloody annoying to keep having to get up and press skip all the time long to find a decent song.
I disagree. I hardly ever skip Joe songs (other than Boogie) but I skip about 45% of BAD songs. Even the ones I like often get tiresome about 3/4 of the way through.

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 30 Aug 2016, 3:08pm
by Low Down Low
NoMoreHugh wrote:You know i wish Joe had gone completely against the clash sound like Mick did as i think it would have been a lot better for him and he wouldn't have found himself chasing his own tail trying to compete and prove himself when he is good enough not too. At the end of the day the best song writers cant compete with the clash so he had no chance on his own. I think Mick sussed this too.

I agree with an earlier comment that Walker may have had something with singing. For me it could be a kind of Paul Simon Project but for Spain instead of Africa. :twitch:

I think someone commented that his best songs were better than anything BAD did - not to me, but i agree that those handful of songs may hold that argument in some respect. The problem for me comes when i listen to BAD on shuffle and i can sit and absorb all the music for hours but in contrast if i do that with Joe Strummer its bloody annoying to keep having to get up and press skip all the time long to find a decent song.
I think for Joe the unravelling process after the break up was a lot more complex than for Mick, a lot more guilt there, a lot of "wreckage in the ravine" as he'd say. He's so confused and directionless one of the first things he does is wander off to find Mick and plead with him to get back together again. Of course, Mick was smart and savvy enough to realise that boat had already sailed.

I look on the wilderness years as basically an extended rehearsal for the final, glorious years of the Mescaleroes. It just took him that long to find his true voice again, to piece himself back together, bit by painful bit. Of course I understand that's really only gonna work if you rate the Meskies era as highly as I do. I don't know did he write anything as brilliant and timeless as White Man or Straight to Hell in his later years, but I reckon he hit the bullseye more often than not.

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 30 Aug 2016, 3:28pm
by matedog
NoMoreHugh wrote:You know i wish Joe had gone completely against the clash sound like Mick did as i think it would have been a lot better for him
Image

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 30 Aug 2016, 4:27pm
by 101Walterton
Tony Adams
Yalla Yalla
Road To Rock'n Roll
Bhindi Bhagee
Johnny Appleseed
Cool'n Out
Shaktar Donetsk
Coma Girl
Get Down Moses
Willesden To Cricklewood

One hell of compilation album.

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 30 Aug 2016, 4:38pm
by msza2
101Walterton wrote:Tony Adams
Yalla Yalla
Road To Rock'n Roll
Bhindi Bhagee
Johnny Appleseed
Cool'n Out
Shaktar Donetsk
Coma Girl
Get Down Moses
Willesden To Cricklewood

One hell of compilation album.
Solid choices, but no X-Ray? That's one of my favorite songs of all time!

Here's the Joe mix I've been blasting based on this poll and the Meskies poll from a couple years ago.

Coma Girl
Island Hopping
Unknown Immortal
Trash City
X-Ray Style
Get Down Moses
Bhindi Bhagee
Johnny Appleseed
It's A Rockin' World
Burning Lights

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 30 Aug 2016, 4:39pm
by Silent Majority
101Walterton wrote:Tony Adams
Yalla Yalla
Road To Rock'n Roll
Bhindi Bhagee
Johnny Appleseed
Cool'n Out
Shaktar Donetsk
Coma Girl
Get Down Moses
Willesden To Cricklewood

One hell of compilation album.
Yup. I'd swap Cool n Out for X Ray, though.

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 30 Aug 2016, 5:01pm
by 101Walterton
Silent Majority wrote:
101Walterton wrote:Tony Adams
Yalla Yalla
Road To Rock'n Roll
Bhindi Bhagee
Johnny Appleseed
Cool'n Out
Shaktar Donetsk
Coma Girl
Get Down Moses
Willesden To Cricklewood

One hell of compilation album.
Yup. I'd swap Cool n Out for X Ray, though.
I have no argument with that. I wanted to keep it to a 10 track comp (could easily have added a few more).

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 30 Aug 2016, 5:27pm
by Marky Dread
I think "Forbidden City" to be vastly underrated.

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 30 Aug 2016, 5:29pm
by Wolter
Marky Dread wrote:I think "Forbidden City" to be vastly underrated.
GREAT SONG.

Honestly, though I do prefer Global, I think Rock Art gets unfairly judged against it, because of the latter being a cohesive work. I think pretty much all of the songs on Rock Art are at the very least solid, with some being outright great.

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 30 Aug 2016, 6:27pm
by Low Down Low
Marky Dread wrote:I think "Forbidden City" to be vastly underrated.
Definitely not by me, one of my fav songs on Rock Art and technically a wilderness song too or partly at least.

Re: Wilderness Years - vote your top 3

Posted: 30 Aug 2016, 8:05pm
by msza2
Wolter wrote:
Marky Dread wrote:I think "Forbidden City" to be vastly underrated.
GREAT SONG.

Honestly, though I do prefer Global, I think Rock Art gets unfairly judged against it, because of the latter being a cohesive work. I think pretty much all of the songs on Rock Art are at the very least solid, with some being outright great.
Rock Art has always felt lesser than the sum of its parts for me. I think some of it is due to sequencing, but a lot of it is the songs and the production.

In fiction there's a concept of 'psychic distance,' or how much the writer lets you into the mind of the characters. Big jumps in psychic distance are jarring (ie, "He was a tall, quiet man, with a bushy moustache and a big hat, and he had panic attacks any time he remembered his mother). I think Rock Art suffers from this. Sandpaper Blues has this big, spacious quality to it, and I feel like I'm jammin on a busy beach with all my friends, then I'm in Joe's living room for X-Ray, then back out on the beach for Techno D-Day, except now a fire has broken out. Later I'm diggin the new, then mourning China for a few minutes, then back to partying on a bayou. There's no consistency to the storytelling, not so much in setting, but scope.

Global is a big sprawling mess, but it still feels like it's of a specific time and place, because it was. There's that vague concept of 'album integrity' that Rock Art just doesn't have. Paradoxically, it also isn't quite shambolic enough to have the pleasing scrapbook feel that a nice compilation has. It's in some middle ground -- an album that just took too long to make.