Joe Strummer - The Future Is Unwritten

The past is rewritten

Whether this is a soundtrack in the purest sense is rather a moot point. Collating all the music from Julien Temple’s biopic of the same name was hardly going to fail, given the wide range of top quality musical influences in the Clash frontman’s life and career. So, 25 tracks here, inspired by songs played by Strummer in his three-year stint as presenter of his own BBC World Service radio show, range from early Clash demos to Strummer solo projects – Willesden To Cricklewood being a lovely ending to a rather schizophrenic disc.

It’s none-more-schizo, especially in Strummer’s often stilted introductions to the songs, which range from Tim Hardin’s Black Sheep Boy and Nina Simone’s To Love Somebody, right through to Crawfish, the much underrated duet between Elvis Presley and Kitty White, from the soundtrack to The King’s greatest celluloid effort, the sharp-edged King Creole.

With smatterings of additional speech audio (Topper Headon also pops up), the result is rather a jumble when divorced from the pictures. It may have been somewhat better to have a couple of the shows themselves offered up in their entirety as subscription podcasts: surely the future for iffy ventures such as this.

SonyBMG | 88697088322

Reviewed by Joe Shooman
<< Back to Issue 337