Joe Strummer - Glastonbury 1999 (2024)

Following the disbandment of The Clash in the mid-1980s, for almost a decade (a period which Strummer himself described as the ‘wilderness years’) not much occurred in Joe Strummer’s career. A handful of appearances in certain cult movies was augmented by some soundtrack work, and Joe even joined The Pogues for a year. But in the mid-to-late 1990s, Strummer gathered top-flight musicians into a backing band he called The Mescaleros. Strummer and the band signed with Mercury Records, and released their first album in 1999, Rock Art and the X-Ray Style. A tour of England, Europe, and North America soon followed. Joe was later to comment; ‘This is my Indian summer … I learnt that fame is an illusion and everything about it is just a joke. I'm far more dangerous now, because I don't care at all’.

One of the finest live appearances The Mescaleros made during their ’99 tour took place on June 26th at that year’s Glastonbury Festival. Playing a set just short of an hour’s duration, the band performed a tight mix of new tracks mixed with Clash classics, which delighted an expectant crowd of fans, festival eccentrics and almost everyone in-between. Just over a month after Glastonbury, The Mescaleros were in Japan, and on 1st August played a stunning set at the Fuji Rock Festival in Yuzawa, Nigata. With both these appearances recorded for live FM radio broadcast, they now feature on this superb new CD.

Tracks 1-12: From a live FM Broadcast recorded at Worthy Farm, Pliton, England, 26th June 1999
Tracks: 13-20: From a live FM Broadcast recorded at Naeba Sk-jou, Yuzawa, Japan, 1st August 1999

Tracklist
Techno D-Day
2 London Calling
3 X-Ray Style
4 White Man In Hammersmith Palais
5 Tony Adams
6 Rock The Casbah
7 Yalla Yalla
8 Brand New Cadillac
9 I Fought The Law
10 Diggin' The New
11 Tommy Gun
12 Bankrobber
13 Diggin' The New
14 London Calling
15 White Man In Hammersmith Palais
16 Straight To Hell
17 Rock The Casbah
18 Brand New Cadillac
19 I Fought The Law
20 Tommy Gun