“5”er Carolina Gonzalez’s own culture/cuisine blog, the always entertaining and informative Sound Taste, has a heartfelt entry from last week reminiscing about Joe Strummer. It includes a mention of the NYC screening of the Julien Temple doc on the late Clash frontman, The Future is Unwritten—which starts Nov. 2nd—and a video of his cover of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”, which depicts the making of the East Village mural dedicated to Strummer. The song is introduced by Strummer’s exhortation for people to take the reins of their world and do something.
We’re not going to equate these things necessarily but, these words are hard to swallow after hearing The Clash’s music knowingly and wilfully defanged by their use in shilling jeans and luxury cars (!) in recent years. (Nissan is currently featuring “Pressure Drop” in their latest ad campaign.) And now Fender Guitars has designed the signature Joe Strummer Telecaster (see above), a replica of the ’66 model the man himself played ‘til the very end. We don't really have a problem with this, and with a $900 retail sticker price it’s not the kind of rip-off the Peter Frampton Gibson Les Paul model is—that’ll set you back almost $6K—but we don’t know how Joe would feel about this. Then again, he was alive for a few of the above advertising-sell out moments, so…
We’re not going to equate these things necessarily but, these words are hard to swallow after hearing The Clash’s music knowingly and wilfully defanged by their use in shilling jeans and luxury cars (!) in recent years. (Nissan is currently featuring “Pressure Drop” in their latest ad campaign.) And now Fender Guitars has designed the signature Joe Strummer Telecaster (see above), a replica of the ’66 model the man himself played ‘til the very end. We don't really have a problem with this, and with a $900 retail sticker price it’s not the kind of rip-off the Peter Frampton Gibson Les Paul model is—that’ll set you back almost $6K—but we don’t know how Joe would feel about this. Then again, he was alive for a few of the above advertising-sell out moments, so…
