Thursday, October 28, 2010

Joe Strummer memory

I saw Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros twice in Tokyo when I lived in Japan - both times at the Akasaka Blitz. I'm very glad I went to both shows, but as sometimes happens with concerts, my memories are a bit vague; specific performance details are forgotten in favour of peripheral oddities that stood out, snapshots that summed up the night. It occured to me to mention one of them, because the clearest image and the most delightful moment at either concert was when, during the first Mescaleros tour of Japan, the band struck up "Pressure Drop," and this young Japanese kid in a pork pie hat zipped his way past me through the crowd so he could dance up front, springily skankin' along as he cut his swath... His enthusiasm was so palpable and so in line with the joy that that song channels that I felt a moment of great uplift, perhaps bouncing along a little in place myself... It wasn't even, musically, the better of the two shows, but....

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