Joe Strummer

Re "Founder of the Clash Propelled Punk Rock Into the Mainstream," Dec. 24: I had the privilege of seeing Joe Strummer fronting the Clash at the Roxy in Hollywood, which was rock 'n' roll at its finest: intimate, genuine, no facades, no rock star attitude, no MTV hype, no chasm between star and audience -- just pure passion. Every raspy word Joe forced out came directly from his heart. There are a lot of talented musicians currently out there, but there will never be another Joe. His passing leaves a permanent void in the rock world, and a lump in my throat.

I've long considered Ellen Willis something of a hero. I hope I live longer than she did (Willis died in 2006, at 64), but otherwise, it's an exemplary life. She was the first pop music critic of the New Yorker, writing 56 pieces for the magazine from 1968 to 1975 that trace her relationship with "music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated ... [and] challenged me to do the same. " In the mid-1970s, she began to focus less on music and more on feminism and her own stunning brand of liberation politics, becoming an editor and writer at the Village Voice and later founding the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at NYU. Her writing is rigorous, unrelenting, in your face: not in the sense of mindless provocation but because she was so smart.

"Rock the Casbah" is on the list of "inappropriate songs" circulated by the nation's largest radio conglomerate after the events of Sept. 11. And there's renewed relevance to other, older Clash songs, such as "Tommy Gun" ("You'll be dead when your war is won") and "Hate and War" ("The hate of a nation a million miles from home").

Over the 72 hours of the 12th Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, which took place this weekend at the Empire Polo Field in Indio, Times writers for the Pop & Hiss music blog roamed the grounds chasing music, talking to fans, artists and organizers, and recording the moments that captured the essence of the festival. What follows are snapshots. For complete Pop & Hiss coverage, visit http://www.latimes.com/coachella. Party favors from Arcade Fire If Woody Allen's orgasmatron (from "Sleeper")

Joe Strummer may have a reputation for being a flinty sort of fellow, but he is willing to take a pat on the back. Actually, being honored for having put out the best album of the 1980s is more like a luxuriant massage than a pat. The editors of Rolling Stone magazine recently cited "London Calling," the 1980 double album by Strummer's old band, the Clash, as the decade's finest. Strummer, who plays at the Coach House tonight on his first U.S.

As leader of seminal punk band the Clash, Joe Strummer established himself as one of the greats of rock 'n' roll. A musician of uncommon dignity, intelligence and humor, Strummer left the Clash in 1985 and went on to appear in several movies, score two films, and tour with the Pogues. This, his solo debut LP, should satisfy longtime fans. Mind you, the musicians currently backing him aren't quite as galvanizing as his old band mates, but they get the job done.

Joe Strummer wrote "The Road to Rock 'n' Roll" with Johnny Cash in mind, but the country titan took a pass. That's fine, because it's hard to imagine a truer rendition of the stately, reverent anthem than Strummer's own. "On the road to rock 'n' roll, there's a lot of wreckage in the ravine," he sings with a blend of weariness and determination, placing his own long haul in an archetypal landscape where Robert Johnson pacts with the devil and the wind blows off Mose Allison's Parchman Farm.

Julien Temple was hanging around Clash shows in 1976, filming the band's explosive emergence on a borrowed 16mm camera, when he dropped them as a subject in favor of the Sex Pistols and "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle." More than 30 years later, the footage would find its way into "Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten," a tribute to the Clash's frontman and lyricist, Joe Strummer, who died suddenly of congenital heart failure in 2002 at age 50.

Julien Temple never planned to make a film about Joe Strummer. But after the co-founder of pioneering British punk band the Clash died almost five years ago, the English director counted himself among the singer-guitarist's many friends and fans "very deeply and badly affected" by his sudden demise. "It's partly because it was unexpected," Temple says by phone from his home in Somerset, England, "but also because he was such a life force."

A year after Pol Pot declared "Year Zero," England's punk rockers set their own at 1976 -- the point when all that came before was deemed irrelevant. Like the Jacobins, the punks also had a thing for renaming. Thus a nice-looking kid from Surrey named Christopher became "Rat Scabies," while a scrawny Simon from East London was rechristened "Sid Vicious," after his friend John Lydon's pet hamster. Lydon, of course, became Johnny Rotten.

Arianna Forster, better known to her fans as Ari Up of the influential punk band the Slits, died of an undisclosed illness Wednesday in Los Angeles, her stepfather, John Lydon ? a.k.a. Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols ? announced on his website . She was 48. Born in Germany but raised in London, Forster was exposed to influential musicians at an early age. Her mother, Nora Forster, was active in London's bohemian scene in the 1960s and '70s, and as a result, the younger Forster's upbringing was flush with music.

Despite its influence, the Clash has inspired only a handful of books. There's Marcus Gray's group history "Return of the Last Gang in Town," tour manager Johnny Green's memoir "A Riot of Our Own," Pat Gilbert's "Passion Is a Fashion" and Chris Salewicz's biography of Joe Strummer, "Redemption Song."

Julien Temple was hanging around Clash shows in 1976, filming the band's explosive emergence on a borrowed 16mm camera, when he dropped them as a subject in favor of the Sex Pistols and "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle." More than 30 years later, the footage would find its way into "Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten," a tribute to the Clash's frontman and lyricist, Joe Strummer, who died suddenly of congenital heart failure in 2002 at age 50.

Julien Temple never planned to make a film about Joe Strummer. But after the co-founder of pioneering British punk band the Clash died almost five years ago, the English director counted himself among the singer-guitarist's many friends and fans "very deeply and badly affected" by his sudden demise. "It's partly because it was unexpected," Temple says by phone from his home in Somerset, England, "but also because he was such a life force."

A year after Pol Pot declared "Year Zero," England's punk rockers set their own at 1976 -- the point when all that came before was deemed irrelevant. Like the Jacobins, the punks also had a thing for renaming. Thus a nice-looking kid from Surrey named Christopher became "Rat Scabies," while a scrawny Simon from East London was rechristened "Sid Vicious," after his friend John Lydon's pet hamster. Lydon, of course, became Johnny Rotten.

As a work of drama, Tim Robbins' "Embedded," now playing at the Actors' Gang in Hollywood, is something of a work in progress. It's sketchy and sometimes seems semi-focused, with too many cardboard cutouts being passed off as characters and the kind of energetically slapdash staging that your kid brother might've cooked up in the basement on a rainy afternoon. But as a piece of theater, "Embedded" is as snarlingly eloquent as a garage-rock guitar solo.

On behalf of impressionable children and music lovers everywhere (Calendar Letters, Feb. 21, 14 and 7): Next time you have Joe Strummer in a refrigerator, just close him in. FRED KEPLER Hollywood

After a lengthy period out of the pop spotlight, former Clash member Joe Strummer returned to a Southland stage last July and showed he can still rock with the muscle that made the Clash arguably the best thing ever to emerge from the original British punk wave. He and his new band, the Mescaleros, will delve into their new album "Rock, Art & the X-Ray Style," Strummer's first rock album in a decade, on a tour that stops Friday at 8 p.m. at the Sun Theatre, 2200 E. Katella Ave., in Anaheim.

Friends and family toasted the late punk pioneer Joe Strummer at the launch of his last album. Mick Jones, Strummer's former bandmate in the Clash, was among guests at the event at London's White Cube Gallery on Thursday night to mark the release of "Streetcore." Strummer's widow, Lucy, helped launch the Strummerville charity, which aims to help youth groups, organizations and individuals buy instruments and studio and rehearsal time. Strummer died Dec. 22 after a heart attack. He was 50.

Two versions of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" sung by Joe Strummer are expected to surface by the end of the year. One will be on the late Clash frontman's final solo album, "Streetcore," due Oct. 7. The album's other nine tracks will be Strummer originals. Before he died in December, Strummer also recorded a duet version of Marley's song with one of his heroes, Johnny Cash, while Cash was working on his "American IV: The Man Comes Around" album.