The final Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros album, titled Streetcore, will be released this fall. Martin Slattery and Scott Shields of the Mescaleros are currently in the final stages of mixing the set, recorded in a Wales studio only weeks before Strummer's death last December.

Streetcore, the follow-up to 2001's Global A Go-Go, will include eleven tracks, including a cover of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" Strummer recorded last year in a one-off session with producer Rick Rubin. "I want it to be as close to what Joe wanted as possible," Slattery said of the set earlier this year.

Last November, in one of his last interviews, Strummer told Rolling Stone that his top priority was getting the new batch of songs on tape while they were still fresh. "We've gotta record them straight away," he said. "Bang into the studio and knock them down. Musicians memories are very short."

Strummer, a punk rock icon who fronted 2003 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees the Clash from 1976 to 1984, died last December 22nd of congenital heart failure. "We feel like the rug has been pulled from under our feet," Clash bassist Paul Simonon told Rolling Stone after his death. "Joe was really healthy."

At this year's forty-fifth Grammy Awards, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Steve Van Zandt and Tony Kanal paid homage to the influential rocker, playing a rousing version of the signature Clash anthem "London Calling." The Clash have also recently been the subject of a two-disc compilation and DVD The Essential Clash.

JOHN D. LUERSSEN
(June 20, 2003)