Clash of the Cultures

When the television was yet to feature a fourth channel, when a TV remote control was called was teenager, London called and I answered, it somehow catapulted me into a place of disharmony that I wanted to be as a teenage soul.

Thay had they oozed street cred, they did triple albums that perhaps in hindsight should have been double albums, but we appalud the spirit. They were the Clash. Their leader was Joe Strummer although the other Guitaist seemed to be an able deputy who went onto a classic one album band "Big Audio Dynamite", who were BAD before Mr Jackson and who remembers them bar me, and who remembers them as classic bar me.

And then they were interviewed, Joe was interviewed, an opportunity to understand a hero, instead was a man who wrote grafitti on walls and says its OK. The fact that in my parallel life, my Saturday morning chore is cleaning off the grafitti of some hooli had thought was ok too, from the end of terrace wall of your home, you somehow start to question. I am not suggesting my wall was personalised by an amateur Banksy called Joe. But some average Joe with a brain in reverse was causing harm for no reason to a nobody he did not know and it was not ok.

Then urbanisation of myths brought rumours of a Joe Strummer less than working class hero upbringing. The mythology changes. So a clash of cultures with a working class soul was worn on a sleeve that once rested under a public school blazer.

But still, like it or lump it, I liked the music and they rocked.

Joe Strummer was another who died a tad too early.