With apologies (I’d been sitting on this contribution in error for a few weeks) I wanted to post this great piece earlier. Mark Hagen from London was another who was lucky enough to get to the opening event of Mick’s Rock n Roll Public Library – his kindly submitted summary follows:
It was a top event, & the actual installation is brilliant – bigger & better than the previous version. It’s taken over a suite of offices right under the Westway. The rooms are divided up thematically – there’s a DVD room (playing Westway To The World last night), a video room (where you can pick any of Mick’s tapes to play; my 14 year old son enjoyed “Killer Clowns From Outer Space”), a magazine room, a book room, Mick’s office, a working studio, a kind of games room, an American themed room and evrywhere you look tons of, well, stuff…
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We’re delighted to share our Summer Sessions Compilation album. The album features tracks from the 14 artists who performed at our Summer Sessions Showcase on 30 May 2009. To get your copy of this album please send a SAE to: Summer Sessions CD |
| Album Track Listing:
Good Times Good Times – Love Nat Jenkins – Message Dan Smith – Daniel In The Den Bill Coleman – Your Hands Were Made For Working Cheka – The Fool Wild Wolves – Honey Dekay – The Estates Illegitimate Sons of the King – I’ll Do It The Wutars – Oh La La La Paper Plane Pilots – Reign In Your Applause The Penny Black Remedy – 95 Charing Cross Road Handshake – Lockdown Jamie Lay – Goodbye Beans On Toast – I’m Not That Old Sunshine |
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New Strummerville merchandise out now. Click on any of the images below to be taken directly to our secure online store …
We are very proud to announce that The Soundcarriers are now signed to Melodic Records. Their album ‘Harmonium’ will be released on 25th May 2009, through Melodic, and will be available on CD, Double Gatefold Vinyl and Digital Download.
Congratulations guys, good luck and loads of love.
Strummerville x
“Come out of the cupboards, you boys and girls,” said the invite. Just a handful of revellers turned up to toast Joe Strummer and support Strummerville (the charity set up by his family and friends), but for those lucky few that packed into The Tabernacle on Sunday night, it was an evening to cherish.
Among those who filled the intimate venue were filmmaker Julien Temple, Carbon Silicon bassist Leo Williams, the Rude Boy movie’s Ray Gange and infamous Clash mate Robin Banks. All were set to enjoy performances from three bands connected with the Strummerville cause. First up were the Savage Nomads, fronted by Cole Salewicz, son of veteran journo and Strummer biographer Chris. It could have been disconcerting playing to an empty dancefloor, but the group piled into their angular psych-flavoured post-punk commentaries with disarming confidence. These Arctic Monkeys-esque rascals were followed by Dan Smith‘s one-man band routine. An electric piano, assorted percussion, surreal lyrics and a homemade instrument fashioned from what looked like a detergent bottle were all used to bizarre effect.
Before taking the stage, Alex Thompson of The Riff Raff was basking in semi-disbelief that Mick Jones had borrowed his guitar for tonight’s gig. He talked of how his band had come on leaps and bounds since Strummerville had secured them rehearsal time at Camden’s Roundhouse and studio slots at Notting Hill’s Sarm West. Onstage, the six-piece group, including a besuited cellist, whipped up a joyous storm shot with the kind of diverse musical strains which seem integral to artists affliated with the Strummer camp.
The Rotten Hill Gang were something of a revelation, coming on like Dickensian wide boys transplanted into Notting Hill’s yuppie-besieged artists’ community, flying the neighbourhood’s tattered flag with a splash of old school South Bronx vigour. Bassist Gary Stonadge and guitarist Andre Shapps were in later incarnations of Mick Jones’ post-Clash sonic foragers Big Audio Dynamite, but it still must have come as a bit of shock to see their old boss saunter onstage with a beer and a Telecaster, primed and ready to play. Fronted by rabble-rousing street rapper Reds and propelled by the stunning operatic range of Krystin Cummins, the group powered through a fearsome hybrid of thunderous hip-hop-funk grooves, scathing guitar racket and ingenious vocal interplay (think everything from P-Funk chorale to Music Hall).
In 32 years of seeing Mick Jones take stages everywhere, from New York’s Roseland Ballroom to London’s Roxy, I’ve rarely seen him look so relaxed as he did tonight. Swapping his old Clash strut for a relaxed, syncopated stroll, he smiled his way through the set. I first encountered Mick in Mott The Hoople’s dressing rooms and here he is, 37 years later, joining in a raucous update of Mott anthem All The Young Dudes (‘If Beyoncé can do it…’, he reasoned afterwards). For the finale, the ex-Clash man brought out a guest whose reaction mirrored that of the very surprised crowd. Fun Lovin’ Criminals’ Huey Morgan, in town following a tour of Russia and now roped into a take on Andy Williams’ Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, tore the roof off as The Tabernacle was suddenly gripped by that indefinable, electric Strummer vibe, the atmosphere redolent of Joe’s legendary camp fire singalongs.
The festivities were set to continue through the night at the nearby Globe, another old Strummer haunt, at which point MOJO made its excuses and skipped jauntily into the night, bathed in the sort of positive energy glow that came with every one of those old Strummer encounters. You really should have been there.
The Tabernacle, London
Sunday, December 21
http://www.mojo4music.com/blog/2008/12/strummerville_christmas_benefi.html
Damien Hirst and other friends of the late Joe Strummer are helping young bands to get started.
by Ed Potton, The Times Online
Joe Strummer was known, in his later years at least, as one of rock’s most hospitable men. But Strummerville, the musical charity set up by family and friends after the death of the Clash frontman in 2002, is based in one of the least welcoming places in Christendom.
To get there, you have to negotiate a maze of concrete and barbed wire. Overhead, traffic thunders along the Westway, the flyover that hangs over this corner of West London like a long grey cloud. Next door is a miserable-looking camp of Gypsies, one of whose dogs sinks its teeth into my leg as I walk past. Wiping the blood off, I finally locate, with considerable relief, Strummerville HQ, a bohemian oasis in the apocalyptic gloom.
The charity has been kept afloat by fundraisers, including a Christmas bash this Sunday and all-night summer parties on this sport attended by the likes of Kate Moss and Lily Allen. But a crucial boost was a £960,000 donation from Damien Hirst, from a specially commissioned painting he sold. “After Joe died we wanted to create something that he would have approved of,” explains Hirst, himself inspired to become an artist by Strummer. “We set up Strummerville as a way of continuing what he believed in and offering opportunities to budding musicians who otherwise have little chance of getting their music out there.”
On this December day the doors of a small auditorium are flung wide open. Five young men and one woman are belting out fine, ska-inflected tunes against a backdrop of leopardskin sofas, glitterballs and Native American ornaments. They are Riff Raff, one of a growing number of young British bands who have benefited in these tough times from facilities and advice provided by Strummerville.
“It’s meant the world to us,” says Alex Thompson, their singer-songwriter, clambering off the stage. “Without it we were struggling, especially in the credit crunch: we have no money, we’re all on the dole.” Strummer, he says, was “massively inspirational” for him, growing up in Coventry. “This whole area of the Westway has Joe’s name written all over it. How can you not be touched by the Clash?”
The stage and adjoining offices belong to Jason Mayall, the son of the guitarist John Mayall and a good friend of Strummer, who used to be a regular visitor here. The charity itself is based in a Portakabin that is plastered with Clash set lists, photographs of Strummer and quotes from the man himself: “Be keen, be eager”, “Be mythic, be prolific”. It’s run by Trish Whelan, a veteran of the music industry. “It’s so London-centric that it’s quite scary for bands who are from out of London,” she says, putting the kettle on and examining my dog bite.
Riff Raff first heard about Strummerville from the London musical community and their regular stage at Glastonbury. Thompson had been sending Whelan demos for several years, and the band had tweaked their style following her feedback. Then, three months ago, the charity began helping them out with rehearsal costs, including the use of their room at the Roundhouse in North London, where musicians can borrow instruments and practise for £1 an hour each.
Whelan also used her contacts to get the band a weekend at Trevor Horn’s legendary SARM West Studios in Notting Hill. “Grace Jones recorded there,” Thompson smiles. “I think Stairway to Heaven was recorded in the top room; Prodigy and Basement Jaxx are in there at the moment, so it’s a buzzing little hive.”
As well as providing bursaries for rehearsal and recording, Strummerville also offers help and advice from mentors including musicians such as the former Clash drummer Topper Headon, agents, managers and top-line producers, including Nellee Hooper (Massive Attack, Björk). “Instead of saying, ‘Here’s your 500 quid, go off and we’ll never talk to you again’,” Whelan explains, “we’re saying, ‘Here’s your 500 quid and you can have an hour on the phone over the next six months with one of these people’. ”
Strummer’s widow Lucinda is on the board of trustees, alongside Hirst and Strummer’s two daughters from a previous relationship. “There was such an overwhelming reaction to the sad loss of Joe and so many people who wanted to make a contribution to charity to honour the impact he had on them,” she says. “So in a way Strummerville gave birth to itself.”
Although the Clash remain icons for many, some have doubted the punk credentials of Strummer, the son of a diplomat who was as much of a canny opportunist as he was a counter-cultural firebrand. But his commitment to socio-political causes was unarguable, from his work for the antiracism movement and his support for Aids charities to his major role in setting up the CarbonNeutral Company, dedicated to planting trees in various parts of the world.
Strummerville continues to champion causes that would have captured his imagination, such as the fight against new legislation requiring music promoters to provide detailed information about the type of music their acts are playing. It is “ultimately racist”, says Whelan, an attempt to target basement and garage events that often have large black and Asian audiences. “The important thing is that Joe would have said: ‘Wicked, that’s a good idea, let’s help them’.”
Another supporter is the film-maker Julien Temple. For his 2007 documentary Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, Temple interviewed his subjects beside campfires, a setting reminiscent of Strummer’s all-night gatherings at the Glastonbury Festival, where guests included Hirst, Keith Allen, Temple and his wife Amanda. Strummer’s worldview, more hippy than punk in many ways, is especially apposite in today’s troubled times, Temple believes. “As time goes by, Joe’s ways of seeing things just seem to get more and more relevant,” he says.
Indeed, Strummer’s famous campfires form the basis of another Strummerville project, a series of music therapy events to be held outside various British cites in 2009. Whelan hopes to bus out disadvantaged kids to the countryside, plonk them down next to campfires, give them instruments and let them jam away. For anyone pondering the wisdom of letting wayward kids loose with fire, Whelan promises that wardens will be on hand.
Monday will be the sixth anniversary of Strummer’s death, from a congenital heart defect, at the age of 50. “All of us try to keep his memory alive in some way,” Temple says, “but it’s great to know that Strummerville exists out there in the wider world and is working to turn people on to those things that Joe stood for.”
For Whelan, a moment of vindication came when she heard Riff Raff’s latest demo. “I thought to myself, ‘God, you’re starting to sound really good’.” The band have a series of gigs lined up for the new year, and hope to release their debut single, My Blood is Brave, in February. “Strummerville has grabbed us up by our bootstraps and pulled us into 2009,” Thompson smiles.
It’s a heartening thought as I wander off in search of a tetanus jab.
