SATCH'S FORUMS 500 - THE JOE STRUMMER TRIBUTE ALBUM

So, where to begin? Upon completion of Satch's Forums 100 in celebration of the 100 membership of this forum, some discussion was had regarding what our next venture would be. Some suggested doing a best of live Clash II. I thought that was a great idea. However, the sudden death of Joe in late December, at which time the membership count had risen just over 200 and to today, well into the 700s, I shifted my focus to doing something related to Joe. Several years ago, I had done a compilation called "Strummer Covers", a single disc made up of live Latino Rockabilly War/Mescaleros tracks along with their original versions. They included such tracks as "Oye Como Va", "15th Brigade", "Sightsee MC", "V-Thirteen", "Love of the Common People". However, I knew that a single disc would not cover entire post-Clash career of Joe. Thus I decided to do a 2 CD set with the first one consisting of Joe's work with the Latino Rockabilly War, and the Pogues and the second disc, with the Mescaleros.

One of the lessons that I learned while compiling the SF100 was how to balance the selection versus sound quality. There were more than enough high quality recordings of the Mescaleros thanks to efforts of tapers such as Dan, Web Princess, Graham, Hisashi and others. If I have left out your name, I apologize up front! This was not the case when time came to compile disc 1. Although I had plenty of Joe & Latino and Joe & Pogues recordings, there just weren't that many quality recordings. Most of them tended to be in B- and lower (A+ being the highest, C being the lowest). There are some rumors that certain person has in his possession about a dozen of LRW's soundboard recordings, but who is to say when this will surface? I would rather have what's available out there now than wait another 20 years for them to surface. I will leave it up for the next generation of Clash City Rockers. In compiling disc 2, I faced another quandary. Do I add live versions of "Coma Girl", "Dakar Meantime" and other non-released (as of this writing)? At the end, I only decided to add "Get Down Moses" since there were not that many decent quality "Coma" and "Dakar".

Originally I had grand design of making this SF500 a more professional in quality. I had wanted to get the blank CDRs silkscreened, but the cost was way too high. I also contemplated charging $10 (US) per this 2 CD compilation and turning all proceeds to "Future Forests" project, but that went out the wayside too. I in all honesty cannot be asking for that sum of money, since only thing I did was to slap couple of tracks together to create this compilation. It would be akin to sampling in rap and yet not acknowledging the original sources! In the end I decided on an amount that I think is fair - $10 (US), but I am not going to hold my breath. If you would rather that we did a CDR trade for this, I would welcome that too, especially for you guys located in Europe! Here is another payment option - If you make a donation to "Future Forests" project, send me the email confirmation. I will give you a copy of SF500 in lieu of $4/$7 payment that is coming to me. Also, the amount covers cost of material and POSTAGE. There is no other extra charge. (MY SNAIL AND EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR ON THE BOTTOM)

Here is the track list:

MY ADDRESS:
Sukwoon Noh
473A Roff Ave.
Palisades Park, NJ 07650
USA

snoh@yahoo.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
Much thanks go out to Karl Carrier (eastside_jimmy) for allowing me to use photo of Joe's battered-up guitar on this page (The Palace, Bridwater, England - November 17, 2002).
The B&W image for disc 1 is from a Melody Maker.
The color image for disc 2 was taken by Shoghi Fret (Embarcadero Park Hootenanny Festival, San Diego, CA, USA - July 7, 2002).