Ahead of what would have been his 70th birthday (August 21), Dark Horse Records has announced a new box set of albums by Joe Strummer and his post-Clash band the Mescaleros. Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years arrives September 16, and will feature remastered editions of all three of the band’s studio albums, plus 15 rare and unreleased tracks spanning the first demos Strummer wrote for the group. Today, Dark Horse has shared an animated visual for the previously-unrelesed track “The Road to Rock’n’Roll.” Check it out below.
Joe Strummer 002 marks the first-ever comprehensive collection of the Mescaleros’ work. The set features the band’s three studio LPs: Rock Art and the X-Ray Style (1999), Global a Go-Go (2001), and the posthumous Streetcore (2003). All of the albums are remastered by engineer Paul Hicks and are packaged with new liner notes, unreleased photos, and four reproduction lyric sheets and chord charts.
The set also includes outtakes and the single “Ocean Of Dreams,” which features Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones. The box set was executive produced by Strummer’s widow Lucinda Tait and produced by David Zonshine. It features new interviews with Strummer’s friends, collaborators, and Mescaleros band mates, as well as handwritten notes, lyrics, and drawings by Strummer taken from the Joe Strummer Archive.
“There’s so much great music that Joe left us in his archive,” Tait said in press materials. “We started this work with ‘001,’ so to focus on Joe’s work with the Mescaleros was the natural second step on ‘002’ because those songs he made with them just seemed to resonate so strongly and reinvigorated his connection with his audience at a level he hadn’t experienced since his days with the Clash.” She continued:
