Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years

Dark Horse Records is celebrating what would have been Joe Strummer’s 70th birthday today with Fantastic, available now on all streaming services. The previously unreleased track stands as one of Strummer’s final recordings, with vocals recorded in December 2002 at the famed Rockfield Studios in Monmouthshire, Wales, mere weeks after Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros played their last ever live show at Liverpool University on 22nd November 2002.

Continuing the celebrations around Joe’s 70th birthday this weekend, longtime Strummer fan Eddie Vedder has covered Long Shadow from the posthumous Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros album, Streecore. “I just think that what Joe did with the Mescaleros and those records, and those songs, and those words, it was a very communal sound,” said Vedder. “I think when you have a communal sound, the listener feels like they can be part of that community.”

Fantastic heralds Dark Horse Records’ upcoming release of Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years, the first-ever comprehensive collection highlighting Strummer’s work with his post-Clash band, The Mescaleros, arriving everywhere on 16th September on 4 CD w/72-page book and 7 LP w/32-page book, special edition packaging and exclusive 12”x12” art print. Pre-orders are available now here.

Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years includes remastered editions of all 3 of The Mescaleros’ studio albums, plus 15 rare and unreleased tracks spanning the first demos Strummer wrote for the band to outtakes from their final recordings together, as well as songs like Ocean Of Dreams, featuring the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones on guitar. Executive produced by Strummer’s widow, Lucinda Tait, and produced by David Zonshine, the richly curated boxset also includes exclusive new interviews with Joe’s friends, collaborators and Mescaleros band mates, plus never-before-seen handwritten notes, lyrics, and drawings by Strummer taken from the Joe Strummer Archive.

Details via Big Mouth Publicity

21st August 2022