Review: Joe Strummer The Future is Unwritten by Julian Temple

It is very easy to put Joe Strummer up there in the top 10 most influential list of Rock History. Julian Temple's movie The Future is Unwritten, really captures Strummer's enigma and beginings from a hippy squater, to his punk, to world traveler. The one thing that lasted, besides the band is his Punk Icon status up there with the like of Che, the Man in Black, Elvis, John Lennon and dare i say Bono. Temple uses a campfire for all the people in his past to talk about him and people he influenced or knew (Flea, Johnny Depp), which was one of Strummer's things near the end of his life where he was inspired to put the Mescaleros together and perform. Bono's sentiment said it best "...there is no reason why The Clash are still not a band today, they were victims of some classic mistakes", he and the Edge obviously learned. One of the reasons I love The Clash still today was completely illustrated in the movie in the way they completely embraced all kinds of music(disco, Rega, Rap, etc) and also how relevant his words are still today even with their mega hit that put them on the global map and ironically destroyed them in the end.

Rock the Casbah

.
Now the king told the boogie men

You have to let that raga drop

The oil down the desert way

Has been shakin to the top

The sheik he drove his cadillac

He went a cruisnin down the ville

The muezzin was a standing

On the radiator grille




The shareef dont like it

Rockin the casbah

Rock the casbah

The shareef dont like it

Rockin the casbah

Rock the casbah




By order of the prophet

We ban that boogie soundv
Degenerate the faithful

With that crazy casbah sound

But the bedouin they brought out

The electric camel drum

The local guitar picker

Got his guitar picking thumb

As soon as the shareef

Had cleared the square

They began to wail