But he was very proud of his work, and I think it’s relevant to hear today, especially some of his more political lyrics. “But so much of it is funny, too, that it makes me laugh and it makes me smile. “I can still choke up when I hear his voice-especially when he’s in the studio and he’s just talking-it hits me, absolutely,” Tait tells me of revisiting Strummer’s late-career work. It also includes fifteen rare and unreleased tracks, spanning the first demos Strummer wrote for the band, as well as “Ocean of Dreams,” featuring Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols on guitar, and outtakes of some of Strummer’s final recordings with the Mescaleros. So, while the collection includes remastered editions of all three of Strummer’s late-career albums with the Mescaleros-1999s Rock Art and the X-Ray Style, 2001s Global A Go-Go, and the posthumous Streetcore, from 2003-which boasts deep dives into the rock and roll, rockabilly, reggae, hip hop, electronica and EDM Strummer loved so dearly, they also feature a healthy helping of the world music one of the true giants of punk rock was so enthralled by, from Celtic to, you guessed it, Cumbia. It was both beautiful and chaotic, much like Strummer himself. The blend of Latin sounds, rhythmic and enchanting, featuring flutes, horns, maracas, accordions and percussion, behind vocals that blended Latin, African, Native American and European stylings, was unlike anything I’d ever heard. I was trying to make sense of what I was listening to, and why Strummer wanted me to hear it. When I got home later that sunny afternoon, I listened well into the night. It was covered with his own fantastical song titles and artists in his unique, exclamatory scrawl, and with hand-colored artwork by the man himself. The next time I ran into Strummer at the East Village watering hole we frequented during weekday afternoons, he pulled a cassette out of his leather jacket pocket. In some of our first meetings, already almost a decade before, he’d turned me on to everything from Charlie Parker and Woody Guthrie to dub reggae, but that music was relatively easy to find in my local record stores and library. “What the hell is Cumbia?” I didn’t dare ask, but in those pre-internet days, I didn’t even know where to look, or if I’d even heard Strummer right. “You’ve really got to check out Cumbia,” Joe Strummer insisted, his intense stare burning a hole through me after one too many pints.
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