Hoping to expand upon this over the weekend with a lot more info from Mark Matthews the man behind the project. If you’re new to the blog Shatter The Hotel is a project in conjunction with Strummerville to create a CD of Clash songs performed in a dub / reggae style. The disc itself is brilliant and benefits the Strummerville  charity – if you haven’t bought it then you can do so and learn more on the site. The UK launch event took place last night at Inn on The Green in Ladbroke Grove. By all accounts it was a great event with a smashing vibe and hopefully I can furnish more info over the weekend. Pete was their with his camera and has captured some lovely images – starting with Dubmatix beneath:

Dubmatix at The Shatter The Hotel event - courtesy Pete Stevens

I’ve been listening to the disc a lot recently and as opposed to other ‘Clash cover compiliations’ this is a really cohesive piece of work and makes for a worthwhile sit down and listen (or drive…or skank). The disc has liner notes from Chris Salewicz and features among others Don Letts, Dubmatix, Chomsky All Stars and of course Prince Blanco (Mark) himself. You can get a flavour of the album on the MySpace page. Back later tonight…

Strummerville Merchandise - image courtesy Pete Stevens

Hello everyone – I’m pleased to share all of the updates surrounding the Shatter The Hotel Project as it’s getting nearer to kick off!! Mark Matthews has kindly put together the following information. I hope you’ll join me in supporting this project. Now over to Mark….(I also want to cheer him up…he supports Portsmouth)

Greetings friends of the Shatter The Hotel project!

We are very pleased to announce that all the tracks have now been submitted and we’re now taking a bit of a break to recharge as the ‘real work’ will shortly begin, pre-mastering, manufacturing, looking for distribution, promo, promo…etc. As you may know, we had a little setback last month as Universal Music Publishing (who represent Nineden Music) were unable (or unwilling?) to donate us mechanical licenses for the tracks that we are planning to use on the CD. This means, we will have to cover the cost of licensing the tracks (for North America anyway), effectively upping our project start-up costs and eating into initial proceeds that could have been donated to Strummerville.  Anyway, we’re over it, let’s move on to some good news…

The CD artwork is underway and being lovingly put together by our good friend and fellow Clash fan, Candice Craig over at Sparkly Pear Design (Candice painted the picture of Joe Strummer that partly inspired this project and that you see featured on our various sites). The audio compiling side of things will be ably handled by Associate Producer, Dubmatix and we will have a downloadable audio EPK available to those in ‘the biz’ in the next week or so and don’t worry, we’ll make sure everyone gets a sneak preview! We should have a video EPK available at some point soon as well.

Joe Strummer’s friend and biographer Chris Salewicz has donated his writing talent to us in the form of some fantastic liner notes for the CD project which we have just received (check out Chris’ most recent book ‘Bob Marley:The Untold Story!) – thanks Chris!

Photographer Adrian Boot, who has chronicled The Clash as well the reggae music genre extensively, has donated two rarely seen early photographs of Joe Strummer, made possible through his Urban Image organisation – thanks to Adrian and Richard.

We’re currently in the middle of putting together a show to celebrate the release of the CD around mid to late January in west London, most likely at Inn On The Green which is very appropriately situated under the Westway. London based Shatter The Hotel contributors Dubcats and Creation Rockers are onboard to provide live sounds, hopefully along with Chomsky Allstars who may be able to make the trip down from Scotland to join us for the event. As well, it looks like we’ve got DJs Don Letts, Citizen Sound (from Canada) and Wrongtom on the decks in between all that! Proceeds from the event will go to Strummerville. More on this later as well as an event for Toronto. Oh yeah, Prince Blanco will be making the trip back over the pond as well, obviously!

And now to the ‘name change’ – something that’s been weighing a bit heavy on us recently.

The original intention of the Shatter The Hotel project has always been to pay a musical tribute to the late Joe Strummer, recognising among other things, his incredible lyrical contribution to great songs by The Clash and The Mescaleros while aptly benefiting the charity set up in his name, Strummerville.

We have recently come to the realisation that as this release is essentially supposed to be ‘in dub’ or more accurately, ‘dub-inspired’, it features a great number of tracks that are either partially or entirely stripped down to just instrumentation and/or basic melody. It is due to this that we feel we’d be doing Mick Jones a great disservice by continuing to subtitle this compilation as ‘The Songs Of Joe Strummer’. Mick after all is the man behind pretty much all of the great music that gave Joe’s amazing lyrics the melodic vehicle on which they were delivered. Adding to this is the fact that all contributors to the project have now submitted Clash songs as opposed to any of Joe’s post-Clash work gives me further reason to make a name change to Shatter The Hotel.

Moving forward, the project will be titled as follows:

SHATTER THE HOTEL: A Dub Inspired Tribute To Joe Strummer
(rewired & dubbed-up tracks from the Strummer/Jones catalogue!)

Hello, freshly awake from a nap (is this what getting old is about?) I realised that I’ve got a growing pile of Clash related scraps to share with you. I can’t believe how close the vote is on the Clash Cup – final poll closes overnight (9am PST) so who knows what I’ll wake up to? As for the other poll on the prior article it looks like a closed affair.  Speaking of Joe’s appearance he certainly didn’t look like a punk rock figurehead in 1974-6 before he was ‘sourced’ by Bernie Rhodes into the existing fold of The Clash. As I’m sure most readers are aware Strummer had by that time spent better than 2 years as the front man of the 101′ers. I learned about the 101′ers in backwards order (read – long after the fact) but two resources I’d recommend are this site – the official 101′ers resource and also the Chris Salewicz book about Joe – Redemption Song. Both provide so much information about Joe ‘pre-Clash’ that I’d consider them a vital resource if you have time. The reason this is on my mind tonight is this review of Elgin Avenue Breakdown; although now 4 years old it’s the best document (in my opinion) of the band. Investigate it if you’re still filling in your Clash catalogue and seeking complete archives.

101 Elgin Avenue, turn left out of the tube station

Here’s something that made me laugh out loud. When I was 14-16 if I saw a girl bedecked as a Clash member it would have been love at first sight. All these years later and for just under 3,000 quid you can get the costume to be a Jo(anne) Strummer. Can you believe these bloody prices?? Brilliant looking jacket though I have to say and it’s suede! I had a black suede jacket back in those days that I still miss daily, almost makes me well up thinking about it. Whatever happened to hitting your local Oxfam and making your own clothes?

Two things I didn’t expect to write about in a post were CNN and Islamic Punk Bands. However both birds are killed with this stone if you want to read more, it’s an interesting article that’s given me more to do on my list of music to check out based on the sentence beneath (sounds like Joe would have approved)

Blending traditional South Asian rhythms with punk rock beats, they sing in both English and Punjabi. (Kominas means “scum-bag” in Punjabi, according to the band.) Their songs can be at once political, serious, satirical and insinuating.

The Kominas

More info about The Kominas is here. Right then, that’s about my lot for now – coming up soon I’ve got part 2 of ‘A drummer’s tale’, Clash Cup Results, news about more exclusive interviews, some great guest writing about guitars, Mick Jones haircuts, Clash artwork and buckets of other things. Don’t forget I need your ideas for the Ray Gange interview coming up. I also had a few more emails about the Joe Strummer BBC archives – links are here.

Night….