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Joe Strummer was a great guy, who made some great music, but he was also very human in that some of his output didnt appeal to me either.
I got into the Clash later on in their career, in the early 1980s. Sandinista is a great album, and opened my eyes at the time to other musics. I remember reading interviews with Joe where he not only came across as a committed activist and campaigner, but as a true eclectic as far as music is concerned. I didnt like Combat Rock though.
Joe did many other things after the Clash split, and my abiding memory of him, was when he played in a small club in Bradford in about 1990, with the early Mescaleros. He did a barnstorming set of both recent and Clash material, and looked to be thoroughly enjoying himself too.
I love his Mescaleros stuff, though on the album I have he doesnt play any guitar, he just sings.
Joe, like a few others was was above many of his punk peers, mainly because he had been playing for a while before the Clash, and I think that you can sort of tell which so called "punk" musicians were destined for better things, partly because of the guitar they chose to play.
I count Joe in with others like Hugh Cornwell, Keith Levine, Robert Quine, all of whom seemed to have the Tele as their guitar of choice.
Joe was ace, and the music world is a lesser place without him.
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