Pitchfork

Joe Strummer lived just long enough to see his luster fade. You can't read a Strummer profile nowadays without a snide mention of his privileged upbringing, backhanded accusations of opportunism, or some sneaky assault on his revolutionary man-of-the-people credentials. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that Strummer was a secret admirer of Margaret Thatcher, or at least a politically ambivalent populist.

If there's anything Joe Strummer made clear right up to his untimely death, it's that he loved life and loved the world, and all it had to offer. He was an idealist who embraced diversity in art with the same arms that embraced diversity of opinion-- the same arms he sometimes raised to defend the things he held sacred and assail the things he found offensive. Strummer fought the good fight not as a rigid dogmatist or a didactic preacher but as an optimist who at his heart hoped for everyone to feel the enthusiasm he radiated on record, on stage, or on the radio.

Strummer himself best sums up his appeal in an interview excerpted on The Future Is Unwritten, a soundtrack tribute to Strummer by way of his songs and the songs he liked, timed to a new Julien Temple documentary of the same name. "Joe, we're going to have your name up on screen," goes the TV producer. "Would you like anything under your name? Would you like 'Mescaleros' or 'The Clash' ...?" he asks, trailing off. "I'd like you to write 'Punk Rock Warlord,'" deadpans Strummer in response, without missing a beat. "With 'Warlord' being one word."

Joe Strummer didn't care what anyone thought of him-- probably punk's most basic, honest position, though one unlikely to endear him to all. "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members," quipped Groucho Marx, a man as likely a hero to Strummer as that other Marx. And, as The Future is Unwritten attests, he was a complicated man, if not necessarily conflicted, something this disc points out by way of several jarring juxtapositions.

A ragged demo of "White Riot", which opens with Strummer's a cappella shouting, rubs up against Rachid Taha's recent cover of "Rock the Casbah", only to be followed by two of Strummer's favorite songs: Elvis Presley's "Crawfish" and Tim Hardin's "Black Sheep Boy". After a soundbite in which Strummer explains the epiphany-like effect of the 1968 cultural revolution and a spin of the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams", the disc shifts to his own pre-Clash response to changing musical trends: "Keys to Your Heart", an innocent little number performed by his pub-rock band the 101ers.

From here the compilation shifts to the Clash era, which any fan of the always-evolving band knows drew from wildly disparate ends of the musical spectrum, and didn't stay stereotypically "punk" for very long. To whit, The Future Is Unwritten includes tracks from U-Roy and Ernest Ranglin, Bob Dylan doing "Corrina, Corrina", Nina Simone covering the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody", and Eddie Cochran's "Nervous Breakdown", all simmering somewhere in the Clash's gumbo.

As a full portrait of the band, however, the selection is naturally less rounded than, say, MOJO's "Radio Clash" freebie from a few years back. But as a snapshot of Strummer's particular influences-- which in turn rolled into the Clash-- it at least provides a little perspective. For example, the Clash's cover of "Armagideon Times" (included here) may not be as iconic as Willie Williams' original, but it's certainly credible, in no small part due to Strummer's enthusiastic delivery.

The tragedy of Joe Strummer, of course, is that little of his post-Clash work stood up to his previous high-water marks, and that goes for the various soundtrack, Mescaleros, and Latino Rockabilly War tracks included. For that matter, the unreleased Clash track "(In The) Pouring Rain", recorded live in 1984, isn't one of Strummer's best, either, but both it and his subsequent band work shows even average Strummer material to be of value.

Is The Future is Unwritten essential listening? No. Is it educational? A little. Is it entertaining? Definitely. Four and half years after his death, the world's changed a lot, but Strummer's rightful place in it remains the same. "Without people, you're nothing," declares Strummer in one final clip. "People can change anything." Well, we can't bring Strummer back. But with discs like The Future Is Unwritten we can at least pretend he's still here.