According to Rolling Stone, a Joe Strummer box set is in the works that will feature a bunch of rare and unreleased Strummer tracks covering his solo career, his time with the 101ers (his pre-Clash band), the Mescaleros, and the first post-Clash songs he recorded with Mick Jones. The set, Joe Strummer 001, will be available in all of the standard formats, as well as a “deluxe limited edition” version that that includes pretty much all of the formats in one. It has a “quadruple heavyweight vinyl, seven-inch vinyl single, cassette, A4 book, enamel badge, art print, screen print, lyrics, and sticker sheet.” If they could throw in a wax cylinder and some kind of sky-writing, they’d have every base covered.
One of the previously unreleased tracks is a cassette demo of the 101ers’ “Letsgetabitarockin” that Strummer recorded in 1975. He had given the recording and a sheet of the lyrics to his friend Julian Yewdall, who mailed them to himself and deposited the envelope in his bank’s vault. Three decades later, he found the receipt the bank had given him and returned to get the long-forgotten demo out of the bank vault. The box set also has an unreleased version of “This Is England” and a Mescaleros song called “London Is Burning” that seems to be one of the last things Strummer recorded before his death in 2002.
You can pre-order the set at this link, and you can see the full tracklist on Rolling Stone.
