Joe Strummer

Latest Articles

Photos: All Tomorrow's Parties Festival at Asbury Park, NJ

Asbury Park, New Jersey | September 30-October 2, 2011
Bands perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival at Asbury Park, New Jersey on September 30-October 2, 2011.
By K. BONAMI | October 07, 2011

Playing Trial & Error by the Bonfire

Pilgrim's progress
Jesse Pilgrim and the Bonfire do a couple things pretty well on their debut record, Trial & Error , that are hard to do well: create an album with a sense of place, and create an album with something to say.
By SAM PFEIFLE | March 30, 2011

Review: Halloween Party at SPACE Gallery, October 30

Music seen
It's humiliating to admit this, but if you were at SPACE last Saturday you probably agree: a fucking cover band just restored my faith in rock and roll.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | November 04, 2010

Prep rally

Rock's rich history of boarding-school brats
Much of the early backlash that followed the Strokes' meteoric rise had to do with the idea that a '00s punk revival couldn't be spearheaded by a band of moneyed prep-school twerps — as if boarding school and rock stars didn't go together like marmalade and scones.
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | January 05, 2010

Group effort

Don't call Mark Lind's Unloved a solo project
If you're inclined to play punk rock, chances are you've got a self-esteem problem. It's not an æsthetic that attracts the well-adjusted. Exhibit A: Mark Lind. As bassist and frontman of the Ducky Boys, he's opened for Rancid, U.S. Bombs, and Flogging Molly.
By BARRY THOMPSON | November 19, 2009

Headstart at the beginning?

A is for attitude, antipathy, and fighting the good fight
Headstart have only been around for about five years, but especially with frontman Kevin Kennie's long history in the scene, begun with Shufflin' Tremble/Loud Neighbor, they are now decidedly mid-career artists.
By SAM PFEIFLE | September 30, 2009

The Irish rovers

The Pogues return to their other 'old main drag'
"The Pogues and Boston go together in ways that belong in the realm of the unexplainable."
By MIKE MILIARD | March 18, 2009

A flair for the drama

Great Scott, January 4, 2009
"There's not enough hype in the world for Glasvegas," old reliable hypemonger NME recently proclaimed. But that doesn't mean the magazine and the rest of the British music press aren't trying.
By WILL SPITZ | January 09, 2009

Photos: 25 years of WFNX music

Notable photos from WFNX's 25-year history
Notable photos from WFNX's 25-year history
By BOSTON PHOENIX WEB STAFF | December 05, 2008

Shirts off their backs

How To Dress Like a Rock Star
How To Dress Like a Rock Star
By JIM SULLIVAN | November 20, 2008

Choosing my religion

Letters to the Boston editor, October 24, 2008
There’s nothing that strikes me as heroic or important about Gregg Housh’s farcical jihad against Scientology.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | October 22, 2008

A smoker’s tale

Will Self’s The Butt
Somehow one is surprised — if one is a semi-conscious literary journalist like me — by the discovery that Will Self has continued to produce books.
By JAMES PARKER | November 26, 2008

Towns on the edge of darkness

The Hold Steady explore the shadows on Stay Positive
If 2006’s Boys and Girls in America was the Hold Steady’s Born to Run, Stay Positive is their Darkness On the Edge of Town , where the cocksure auteur grows older and less certain of his place in the world.
By MICHAEL ATCHISON | July 14, 2008

Geography lessons

Street Dogs remain Boston to the core
"You could put us in Anchorage or Alaska or Antarctica or even somewhere in the Himalayas, and at heart we’d still be from Boston.”
By MATT ASHARE | June 24, 2008

Turn up the Radio

Sidecar perform frequency modulation on Wave Principle
Three-piece rock bands are so much more interesting when the bass player and drummer aren’t just sidekicks for a big-time frontman/guitarist.
By SAM PFEIFLE | April 02, 2008

Grimace and nod

SPACE Gallery highlights 2007’s overlooked documentaries
A four-film series at SPACE Gallery highlights just the sort of cinematic and stylistically ambitious documentaries the Oscars annually ignore.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | January 09, 2008

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Temple talk

Julien on Joe
Julien Temple was one of the first filmmakers on the scene when punk erupted in the UK.
By MATT ASHARE | November 08, 2007

Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten

Well-done revelations
Temple captures the chaos of Strummer’s early years, with overlays of interviews with him and footage from the era.
By MATT ASHARE | November 07, 2007

Double visionary

The two sides of Joe Strummer
Joe Strummer was the embodiment of punk, up till his final day, December 22, 2002.
By MATT ASHARE | November 06, 2007

Gabel, Gabel, hey!

Against Me!’s new wave of political punk
New Wave ’s opening title track makes as much of its referential moniker as the Clash did of the phrase “London Calling.”
By FRANKLIN SOULTS | August 31, 2007

Punks find their inner Americana

The altered aesthetic of punks playing folk
Punk might have been swept along, cleaned up, dirtied again, then separated into a million different subgenres created to simplify things when really it only complicated everything.
By JON MEYER | August 31, 2007

Glastonbury

David Bowie returns
Julien Temple’s documentary traces the evolution of the world’s most iconoclastic music festival.
By PEG ALOI | April 04, 2007

Poor Nick

A folk legend’s brief life’s journey
His miraculous guitar technique was a protective force field shielding him from the sadness in his own songs.
By JAMES PARKER | January 09, 2007

Neo-new-what?

A year in national pop
The real album of the year is a disc that probably didn’t cross many people’s paths in 2006, a Rhino comp titled Future Retro that pairs various DJs/electronicists (Richard X, Tiga, the Crystal Method) with classic new-wave tracks by the Cure, Echo & the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, and New Order.
By MATT ASHARE | December 28, 2006

Historical fictions

Reliving the birth of the Clash
There are Clash fans, and then there are Clash fans . And three more boxes: Gift ideas for the music fan on your list. By Matt Ashare
By MATT ASHARE | December 12, 2006

Vinyl goes digital

Limited edition gems are now downloadable
Some of us still remember the famed Sub Pop singles club, and Simple Machines’ 1993 single-a-month series, which featured everyone from riot grrrls Bratmobile to slo-rockers Codeine.
By MATT ASHARE | November 20, 2006