This year, more than any year since his death in 2002, I've thought, "We need Joe Strummer now more than ever." Joe sang with a righteous anger, but he always sang with a fierce love of humanity. We could use Joe's wisdom, goodness, and anger in these days of war and civil disturbance, and Ukrainian punk band Beton, operating on that principle, reworked London Calling into a call for aid from the world:
For his part, Joe called for peace, for soldiers not to heed to call-up, to see the wheatfields over Kyiv and down to the sea. Beton, under shelling from the Russian army, has issued the call-up, asking for the world to intervene. I'm not saying that Joe never had to live in fear of bombing, but his sort of sainthood is hard to achieve when the ordnance is flying.
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