It almost seems hard to remember, but in the immediate and intermediate years after the Clash self-destructed, Mick Jones sold millions while at the helm of Big Audio Dynamite, versions I and II. And it is clear throughout Redemption Song that Jones more than Strummer was the creative mastermind behind the Clash. And Strummer knew it, as his ill-fated decision to kick Jones out of the band in 1984 haunted him for the better part of the rest of his life, which, as we all know, was tragically cut short more than five years ago, just as he was getting his mojo back.

Although Salewicz could’ve used an editor–there’s really no need for the book’s length–he paints a vivid picture of Strummer as a troubled, haunted man saddled with depression and dependency. He was dependent on a handful of enablers and yes men who propped his ego shortly before and well after Jones was kicked out of the band. He made several bad decisions and not enough records. He simply lost all of his confidence after Cut the Crap, the one and only Clash album after Jones’ departure, landed with a deafening thud across the music industry.

According to Salewicz, Strummer’s first solo album, 1989’s Earthquake Weather, sold 7,000 copies. 7,000 copies!!! This directly on the heels of Rolling Stone naming The Clash’s London Calling as the best album of the 1980s. This should’ve been the beginning of a profitable solo career, or possibly even a Clash reunion, but instead, Strummer could barely fill a small

It took another 10 years, a marriage, and a clear desire to make amends before Strummer was back on his feet with 1999’s Rock, Art, and the X-Ray Style, his first of three albums with the Mescaleros, which set the course for a career-redeeming run that turned out to end all too quickly.

All the while, Mick Jones soldiered on in Big Audio Dynamite, and although he maintained a passing interest in reforming the Clash, Jones was clearly happy being in charge–and in front–of his own band. BAD sold consistently well, scored a few hits, and served as a viable and powerful outlet for the former punk rocker. Just do a search on You Tube for any BAD videos–particularly the live shots from the band’s original incarnation–and you will see a powerful performance.

As it turns out, Mick and Joe were breathtakingly close to reforming the Clash on a few occasions, most notably just before the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In fact, at one point, Joe himself backed out of a reunion in the late 1990s, and bassist Paul Simonon, perhaps rightly, refused to play the Hall of Fame show. Had Strummer lived, there seemed to be a very good chance that the Clash may have performed at the induction ceremony–but without their bass player.

But Strummer didn’t live, and all this reunion talk became purely hypothetical after Joe died suddenly at his home in England. Thankfully Mick Jones hasn’t completely abandoned the spotlight, even if the light is getting smaller and smaller. He’s struck up a new band with former Damned member Tony James called Carbon Silicon, and the group has taken to the Internet, doling out free downloads of new tunes and albums at their website, http://www.carbonsiliconinc.com/.

While its a far cry from playing in front of tens of thousands with the Clash and Big Audio Dynamite, it is somewhat comforting to see Mick still out there.

The Good

1. Nick Mason Modern kids who are used to the ridiculously computer-perfected, steroid-pumped drums of modern corporate rock records probably recoil the first time they hear Pink Floyd. Founding drummer Nick Mason was never a particularly powerful player, and adding to the confusion, he tends to play slightly behind the beat at all times. Further examination proves that this wasn’t a sign of poor chops but rather a deliberate choice — Mason is able to consistently maintain the same slightly adrift, slightly slack feel that gives Floyd’s high psychedelic work, particularly Meddle and Dark Side of the Moon a lot of its unique, floaty feel. When the Floyd spaceship came back from outer space, Mason’s style became far less complementary — Animals and The Wall in particular could have used a lot more heft and immediacy, one of the reasons the band began to employ studio drummers with increasing frequency as they moved into the 80’s and 90’s. The change in sound wasn’t Mason’s fault, though — you’d have to take that up with Roger Waters.

2. Charlie Watts Watts’ jazz chops are unquestioned — from a musical training perspective, he’s the best instrumentalist in the Rolling Stones — but he’s always had a very clear idea of what the role of the drummer in a rock band is, and he hasn’t varied from it on his records with the Glimmer Twins for 40 years. Despite using essentially the same rhythm pattern on every Stones song from “Jumping Jack Flash” to “Start Me Up,” Watts has a knack for picking his spots (the ratatatatatat fills in “Get Off My Cloud” rank as the best car steering wheel-pounding bits in rock history) and his extramusical importance as the only Stone who’s not either an egomaniac or drug addict or both can’t be understated.

3. Maureen Tucker The classic example of the less-is-more percussionist, Mo’s importance to the Velvet Underground has been described as underrated so many times now that she might even be slightly overrated. Nonetheless, the cowbell pattern on “Some Kinda Love” (clank… clank… clank… clank…) alone justifies her placement on this list. Her pregnancy-enforced absence from the Velvets’ last album, Loaded, is a tragedy, but also allows you to hear by negative example just how vital Tucker’s minimalist approach was to the band’s sound.

4. Chris Frantz Say what you will about his songwriting or, heaven help us, his singing, the Talking Head might never have been much for lightning-speed pyrotechnics, but he began as the cleverest of the first-wave New York punk drummers (just listen to how much Frantz’s shuffle beat adds to “Thank You For Sending Me an Angel”) and evolved into the rock-solid centerpiece of a huge, complicated performing beast. The most difficult thing a drummer has to learn is how to stay rigidly on meter and yet not seem stiff at the same time. Since the film Stop Making Sense was edited together from multiple performances, Frantz had to play each song at the precise same tempo each night and execute changes flawlessly. By all accounts, he nailed it every time.

5. Stephen Morris Joy Division’s Morris had so perfected the mekkanik beat by the time of his first band’s last album that when Joy Division became New Order, Morris transitioned so comfortably from live drummer to electronic drum programmer that many fans didn’t really notice the difference. However his sensibilities as a real live drummer have always kept New Order firmly grounded as a rock band, and back in the day, his Tucker-like playing on “Dead Souls” was simply brilliant.

The Bad

1. Bill Berry Most of the time, when a successful local band starts making the transition to a national act, the members that aren’t really pulling their weight fall away in short order. Ask Pete Best. For whatever reason — perhaps they were mesmerized by his unibrow — Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills never got around to firing Berry, who continued to drag the band down with his leaden hands well into the 90’s. When he finally retired in 1997 to concentrate on farming (???) , R.E.M. didn’t even bother finding a permanent replacement for Berry, at last indicating the microsopic creative role the drummer had always played in the band. On the plus side, the complete lack of any shading whatsoever in Berry’s beats probably led directly to Mike Mills’ becoming one the most of the most wonderfully fluid bass players since McCartney in his heyday.

2. Janet Bean Sometimes a musician has a value to their band quite apart from what it is they do with their instrument. There were plenty of guitar bands in Chicago in the early 90’s, so would Eleventh Dream Day ever have gotten signed to a major if the lithe, blonde Bean wasn’t their drummer? No going back now. You can’t really hold it against frontman Rick Rizzo for not firing the woman who was at the time his wife, but Eleventh Dream Day’s albums Beet and El Moodio are hugely compromised by Bean’s lean skills, particularly the latter. Just listen to the massive kick the fantastic rocker “That’ s the Point,” for which Rizzo enlisted Matthew Sweet’s bandmember, Ric Menck, has and then imagine what the rest of the E.D.D. songs from the period might have sounded like with a real drummer in the fold. The story does have a happy ending though — Bean proved herself as a mandolin player and harmony vocalist in Catherine Irwin’s Freakwater, and by the time E.D.D. got back together to record for Atavistic and Thrill Jockey in the 00’s, she’d learned a thing or two on the drums, too. “Ice Storm,” from Stalled Parade, has kick-ass drumming.

3. ?uestlove Yes, it’s cool that he’s a live drummer who fronts a hip-hop group, he has great hair, and he’s buddies with Dave Chappelle. But I’ve seen ?uestlove play many times both with the Roots and in support of D’Angelo and I’ve never seen him do anything any nondrummer with even a smattering of music theory couldn’t figure out how to play in about two seconds.

4. Bryan Herweg Poor guy. If Herweg and his bassist brother Larry had joined an emo band or some indie rockers, people would leave him alone. But Pelican are a metal band, or at least they’re sort of connected to a scene with a lot of metalheads in it. Metal fans expect more from their drummers, and Herweg’s untechnical, feel-less playing on the first two Pelican records and particularly on stage has built him a “fanbase” of player-haters way out of proportion with the quality of his band (and really, his drumming, which wasn’t great but had an un-rock squareness to it that worked with what Pelican used to do). Herweg seemed to really be affected by all the criticism heaped upon him by Neurosis and Isis fans, so after The Fire in Our Hearts Will Beckon the Thaw he must have woodshedded and practiced for months on end. Sadly, his emergence as a greatly improved player coincided with a sudden total loss of imagination from the rest of his bandmates — the drumming is in fact the best thing about City of Echoes, which otherwise took Pelican from a completely unique and fascinating anti-song, post-neoclassical group to just another deeply boring instrumental Chicago band.

5. Michael Lenzi An obscure choice indeed, but I never pass up the chance to promote the unjustly forgotten Number One Cup, a trio of midwestern Pavement appreciaters who made two near-classic albums in the mid-nineties. Lenzi, Seth Cohen, and Patrick O’Connell met at a Stereolab show and decided to form a band, but they were all guitarists; Lenzi cheerfully agreed to switch to drums and more or less taught himself to play as the Cup recorded their debut album, Possum Trot Plan. For that album and its follow-up, Wrecked by Lions, Lenzi’s novice status didn’t hurt the sound at all, as the secret to the band’s genius was that they wrote songs that sounded like you could have written them immediately after picking up an instrument for the first time, only you didn’t, they did. Then Seth Cohen got really into Radiohead and the band committed career suicide with the dreadful People People Why Are We Fighting? When the band left lo-fi behind and started filling its songs with synth washes and guitar-army overdubs, Lenzi’s drumming all of a sudden sounded just crappy instead of rogueishly charming as it did on the first two albums. On the plus side, Lenzi was and is one of the best lead-singing drummers I can recall.

So you’re probably wondering why I left Meg White off of the second list. That’s easy: Calling Meg White a drummer is a slap in the face to all those who ply the trade. White isn’t a drummer, she’s an elaborate stage prop.

But I digress.

Anyway, been a long summer and I realize I’ve been lax on reviews. My apologies, as I’ve come across a few gems this summer. I’d like to think I’ll have time to give Josh Rouse’s Country Mouse, City House the full, glowing review it deserves, and I’ll continue to hold out hope that I will. The same holds true for Golden Smog’s EP Blood on the Slacks, but no guarantees.

Of the two, Rouse’s is more complete; after all it is a formal, full-length album. But the two do have similarities–parts of both were recorded in Spain and produced by Paco Loco. One wonders if the artists involved share a few pints as well, as Rouse once opened for Golden Smog about ten years ago.

Other than that, its been a slow few months, at least musically, though it is hard to top a Spring when you interview Ian Hunter, see him in concert, and fall in love with his newest record.

That said, the past few weeks I’ve done something I haven’t done in years–actually gone out and purchased an album at full price. One of the obvious perks of writing for NATN is the slew of free material, so it almost feels weird and unbecoming to venture out and buy a new record. Especially when one of them is Ryan Adam’s newest, Easy Tiger.

I’ve been pretty hard on Adams since 2001’s Gold for a variety of reasons, so I’m not going to go into the again. But I have to say that thus far, after a cursory listen, Easy Tiger ain’t all that bad. I’ve always thought that if you stripped away the BS, Adams is hands down one of the most talented singer/songwriters of our time. And that’s what Easy Tiger is–stripped down, no BS.

Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind, but right now, Adams may have won back an early fan.

Ok, here’s the thing. His show was tremendous. He ripped through all the hits from his solo and Mott the Hoople years, including “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” “All the Way from Memphis,” “Roll Away the Stone,” and, of course, “All the Young Dudes.”

He even pulled out a few surprises, notably “Angeline” and a lost 80s tune “Seeing Double” that he worked up as if he’d been listening to the Jayhawks’ latest album.

So after a nearly two-and-a-half hour show, where my wife and I sat within five feet of the man, what is my quibble?

Simple–I love the new stuff. I want to hear the new stuff. His latest record, Shrunken Heads, is probably his best album, if ever than certainly of the past 20 years. His blunt, honest take on post-Iraq America is the most biting, acerbic, and accurate account you will find on record.

Few singer/songwriters have the command of his craft that he does right now, and I want to hear it all.

Now he did play a healthy selection from Shrunken Heads, so I really can’t complain too much. In fact, anthems like “Soul of America,” “Shrunken Heads,” and “When the World was Round” were perhaps the most well-received of any number he played.

And to me, this is what separates Ian Hunter from his contemporaries like the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, and, to a lesser extent, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. Sure, those legends will sell out huge amphitheaters and arenas–and deservedly so. Their shows bring out the thousands who want to hear the classics, and generally after playing a few token new songs, they will get the classics.

But Ian, with a smaller, more faithful fanbase, can not only get away with playing new material, his fans embrace it. Taking a few looks around the crowd, everyone was singing along to “Words (Big Mouth),” the opening song from Shrunken Heads.

And when he started the encore with “When the World was Round,” a stinging rebuke of the backwards-looking leaders of our country, the place nearly exploded.

The biggest cheers, though, were saved for “Shrunken Heads,” an astute lament about urban decay, the luck of the genes, and our world leaders. “Nothin’ matters anymore/ The rich get richer, and the poor get sorer/ You took our loyalty and you tore it to shreds/ We’re all the mercy of shrunken heads,” Ian spewed into the mic, before the band turned the song into an extended jam session.

And believe me, the crowd went wild.

Maybe one reason was because it came out around the same time as Robbie Fulks’ Revenge, a live album so expansive and daring that anything comparable seems a bit anticlimatic.

And while Revenge stands on its own, its too bad I never got back to Reconstruction, which is much more of a classic concert album.

Basically, as my wife put it, if you want to hear a Scott Miller show–and really, why wouldn’t you?–than put on Reconstruction. The setlist is familiar, the songs rock, and Scott is, as always, in his element.

So now that he’s putting together a series of shows this summer, this seemed like an appropriate time to revisit the record. What I like best about Reconstruction is its simplicity; there are no head-trips or surprises that populate Fulks’ Revenge, as Miller is a straightforward, hardworking performer who relies more on his doggedness than his wits.

Still, Reconstruction is not without a few clever moments, such as the end of “Drunk All Around This Town,” when Miller ad libs about not wanting his parents to hear the song because, tongue-in-cheek, “I’d never put it on a live record.”

At its core, Reconstruction is as close a replication of a Scott Miller live show as you’ll get without actually being in the smoky club. And if you’ve ever wanted to carry around your favorite concerts in your record collection, this is your chance.

Now I haven’t heard Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky, but Mark’s review makes a case that the album cements Jeff Tweedy’s band’s position as the best band in the country. I know I’ve come close to making that statement, so hearing it from Mark drives the point home.

Still, I couldn’t help but find it a bit ironic that Son Volt, the band led by Jay Farrar, has struggled mightily to keep pace. As Mark noted in his Wilco review, everyone expected Farrar to be the real jewel rising from the ashes of Uncle Tupelo’s breakup. And after Son Volt’s Trace, no one was doubting those predictions.

But as we all know, Tweedy’s Wilco released stellar album after stellar album, starting in 1996 with Being There and, as Mark writes, continuing 11 years later with Sky Blue Sky.

Farrar? Well, after a decent sequel to Trace with 1997’s Straighaways, his career didn’t exactly live up to expectations. Only 2005’s Okemah and the Melody of Riot and, to a lesser extent, 2007’s The Search have redeemed what seemed like a six-year odyssey at sea, with Son Volt’s 1998 Wide Swing Tremelo and two mediocre solo records through 2003.

Hey, I’m not trying to stoke the fires of any supposed rivalry between the two former bandmates, but its not every year that they both release records, and its not every month that both are listed under NATN’s archive at the same time. So I took the bait.

Its not hard to imagine and he admits it on stage, saying he writes songs that are stuck in the 1970s and sound like a cross between Carole King and the Bee Gees.

I’m not sure if I would go that far, but after his performance at the Birchmere outside of Washington, D.C., Monday night, Rouse left no doubt that the only thing keeping him from selling millions of records is, perhaps, timing. About 15-20 years ago, back when alternative radio stations actually existed and played songs that weren’t on the Top 40, Rouse might be as big as anyone. But in today’s world, where so few companies own so many media outlets, Rouse must rely on the Internet and word-of-mouth to be heard.

And anyone who was at the Birchmere the other night should certainly be spreading the word, as Rouse knocked out a blistering, career-spanning set, covering his earliest records from practically 10 years ago to his most recent records from the past two years.

Rouse drew heavily from his last two proper records, 2005’s Nashville and last year’s Subtitulo, and he added a few selections from this year’s e.p. She’s Spanish, I’m American, a five-song duet with Spanish vocalist Paz Suay. Rouse and his band injected new life in the otherwise quiet and laid-back Subtitulo tunes, especially “It Looks Like Love,” “Givin’ it Up,” and “His Majesty Rides.” His rhythm section of bassist James “Hags” Haggerty and drummer Joe Pisapia kept things tight, while multi-instrumentalist Curt Perkins brought a surreal edge that was missing from Rouse’s last D.C.-area appearance a year ago.

But it was the Nashville cuts, like “Streetlights,” “Winter in the Hamptons,” and “Its the Nighttime” that stood out, especially during the encore when Rouse and the band nailed “Sad Eyes,” a slow ballad that ends with a Leon Russell-influenced piano-tinged mash up.

So while it wasn’t 1993, Rouse delivered a terrific performance that, maybe 20 years ago, would’ve resulted in platinum record sales. Still, I doubt he was disappointed with the solid turnout on a Monday night, not bad for a guy who wishes it was about 30 years ago.