SHAKEDOWN, 1979 (May)

The top end of the first new chart of May 1979 didn’t unearth as many gems as recent weeks, but there was the appearance of a bona-fide disco classic to get the limbs all movin’ and a shakin’

mp3: Earth Wind and Fire with The Emotions – Boogie Wonderland

This proved to be one of the sounds of the summer.  It came into the charts at #30 on 6 May and didn’t leave the Top 75 for 13 weeks, including seven in a row inside the Top 10.  It even pulled off that rare achievement of looking as if it was going to start dropping out of the charts when it slipped from #4 to #5 after 7 weeks, only to go back to #4 in Week 8 of its stay.

Two other new entries worth giving a mention to are songs whose titles have a word in common and provided Swindon’s finest troubadours and one of Glasgow’s greatest exports with their first entries into the singles chart:-

mp3 : XTC – Life Begins At The Hop
mp3 : Simple Minds – Life In A Day

The former was a minor hit – in at #62 and peaking at #54.  XTC‘s breakthrough was still a few months off.  The latter came in at #67 and peaked at #62.  Simple Minds would have to wait a further three years before they ever went Top 20.

Oliver’s Army had been one of the most surprising huge songs of early 1979, and just 7 days after had it finally dropped out of the Top 75 after 12 weeks, the follow-up entered at #71

mp3: Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Accidents Will Happen

An almost under-the-radar sort of hit in that it would spend 8 weeks in the Top 75, but never get any higher than #28.

A different type of new wave was the highest new entry in the chart of 13 May:-

mp3: Blondie – Sunday Girl

The fourth single to be lifted from Parallel Lines came in at #10.  Seven days later, it was up at #1, bringing an end to the six-week-long occupation of the top spot by Art Garfunkel.  It was helped by a brilliant piece of marketing from Chrysalis Records with the inclusion of a French language version of the song on the 12″ release, one that I reckon was bought by just about every teenager and young adult who was infatuated with Debbie Harry.

One of my own favourites from all of 1979 entered the charts in the second week of May:-

mp3: The Clash – I Fought The Law

It was hard to believe this was a cover version, given how it captured The Clash at their post-punk finest.  The lead track from The Cost of Living EP came in at #35 and then went up to #23 before falling back down to #32.  But then, gravity was somehow defied as it went back up again over the next three weeks to #24, #23 and #22.  Just imagine how big this would have been if The Clash had actually broken the habit of a lifetime and played Top of The Pops.

Coming in at #51 is one I have always considered as a bit of a classic:-

mp3: McFadden and Whitehead – Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now

The one and only song with which the Philadephia-based R&B duo of Gene McFadden and John Whitehead ever tasted success in the UK.  The song, and later re-recorded/remixed versions, is reputed to have sold 8 million copies the world over. Both men would later die at young ages in the 00s. Whitehead was 55 when he was fatally shot outside his home studio in May 2004 – the perpetrators were never caught.  McFadden passed away from liver and lung cancer in January 2006, aged 56.

Those of you who pay attention to the companion pieces to this series might recall that back in March, I looked at a flop single called Down In The Park.

“They had started out as a guitar-based new wave band, Mean Street, but the dawn of 1978 saw a change of name to Tubeway Army, albeit the new wave element was still to the fore (they supported The Skids at gigs in the summer of ’78).  By the end of the year, a debut album had been released, with the lead singer changing his name from Gary Webb to Gary Numan, and looking to incorporate synths into the group.  The album sold modestly, but there was enough interest at Beggars Banquet to fund a follow-up for planned release in mid-1979, and Down In The Park was seen as being the advance single.  It didn’t sell very well, but things were about to change…”

The bottom end of the chart of 13 May 1979 was the first indication of said change:-

mp3: Tubeway Army – Are Friends Electric?

This is another one that I’ll always associate with the summer of 79.  In at #71……it took until its 7th week in the charts to reach #1 where it would enjoy a 4-week stay, not finally dropping out of the Top 75 until September had come around.   Turned out to be Tubeway Army‘s last single before breaking up, so it would be accurate to describe them as a one-hit wonder, albeit Gary Numan would enjoy solo success.

Looking now at the chart of 20 May, and the arrival of this tune made sure ‘one-hit wonders’ couldn’t be a label to attach to the doyens of Dunfermline:-

mp3: The Skids – Masquerade

This came in at #29 and peaked at #14. Not quite as successful as Into The Valley, but it would prove to be the second-highest position The Skids would reach in their career, despite the fact that later singles would prove, in my opinion, to be better and more enduring.

Masquerade was one of 13 songs to enter the Top 75 in this particular chart, but none of the others are fondly recalled in any shape or form.  Which takes us to the chart straddling the final week of May and the first few days of the month when I turned sweet sixteen.

mp3: Squeeze – Up The Junction

It’s now one of my favourite songs of all time, but it didn’t really ‘speak’ to me when I was a teenager.  As I’ve written before when featuring Up The Junction on the blog:-

“A soap opera story in just over three minutes.

The boy about town gets caught out with his trousers down. He can’t cope with the fact that he has to grow up and take responsibility. The woman of his dreams soon moves on and all he has left are bittersweet memories.

A massive hit and one of my favourite songs of all time, albeit as a 16-year old I didn’t quite understand the full nuances. But now I’m 51 nearly 61 and I’ve seen it this story play out in real life far too often over the years.

Tears and saying sorry are just not enough.”

It came in at #50, and in an 11-week stay in the Top 75, would peak at #2…denied the top spot by Tubeway Army.

JC

SHAKEDOWN, 1979 (January, part one)

Last month, in the final part of the year-long series on the singles charts of 1983, I promised that the next series along such a theme would be a 45-year look back at the 45s that were making all the noise in 1979.  The difference being that I won’t be looking at the charts in any depth, but aiming instead to celebrate (mostly) those post-punk/new wave/alt singles which attracted the attention of the record-buying public.  Makes sense to start in January…..

mp3: Ian Dury and The Blockheads – Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick

Released in November 1978, it enjoyed a gradual climb up the charts to eventually reach #1 on 21 January, having patiently waited its turn for a couple of weeks at #2 behind Y.M.C.A, by The Village People.  It has proved to be one of the most memorable, engaging, enduring and enjoyable singles of the era of appeal to music fans of all ages and with all tastes. And one of the few songs in which I don’t mind a sax solo.

mp3: Chic – Le Freak

Another that had been released in November 78 but reached its peak of #7 in January 79.  It commemorates Studio 54 in New York City for its notoriously long customer waiting lines, exclusive clientele, and discourteous bouncers. According to Nile Rodgers, the song was devised during New Year’s Eve 1977, as a result of his and Bernard Edwards’ being refused entrance to the nightclub, where they had been invited by Grace Jones, due to her failure to notify the nightclub’s staff. The lyrics of the refrain were originally “Fuck off!” as that was what the bouncer had said as he slammed the door closed.

mp3: Funkadelic – One Nation Under A Groove

The only hit single in the UK for Funkadelic, and from what was their tenth album, having started out in 1970.  I wasn’t quite 16 years of age at this point in time, and my musical tastes were still evolving. I didn’t know too much about funk, but I recognised immediately that this was a very special sounding track.

mp3: The Clash – Tommy Gun

It peaked at #19 in the final chart of the previous year, but was still hanging around during January, and indeed beyond.  As Joe Strummer would late explain in the liner notes to the Clash On Broadway box set, he got the idea to write “Tommy Gun” when it occurred to him that terrorists – like rock and movie stars – probably enjoy reading the press about their so-called triumphs.  Memorable in the main for Topper Headon’s drumming sounding like a machine gun as much as the lyrics condemning mindless violence.

mp3: Buzzcocks – Promises

This peaked at #20 in the final chart of the previous year, but was still just about hanging around into January. It was the band’s seventh single, and had maintained the momentum, of Ever Fallen In Love…and indeed was a song in a similar vein, given it dealt with a love affair gone wrong.  There were no longer any hard and fast rules that such songs had to be sloppy.

mp3: Blondie – Hanging On The Telephone

This just qualifies and no more.  It was a big hit (#5) in November 1978 but thanks to its 11-week stay in the Top 7 meant it was still listed come January.  A fast and frantic cover version, it was the second single to be lifted from Parallel Lines….the real biggie was just about to hit the shops.

mp3: X-Ray Spex- Germ Free Adolescents

As with the above 45, this qualifies and no more.  It had reached #19 in November 1978 but thanks to what proved to a 12-week stay in the Top 75, it was still listed come January. A single from an album by a band whom I grew to only really appreciate in later years upon realising how much of an influence it all was on what was to come.

The intention had been to cover all of the month in one post, but having already hit seven absolute belters from just the first week of the singles chart of January 1979, it’s probably a good idea to draw breath.

JC

SHOULD’VE BEEN A SINGLE ?(1)

So………

I come up with this idea of looking at songs that would have been massive hits if the band and/or record label had released them as singles.   The first one that came to mind was this

mp3:  The Clash – Clampdown

Here’s what I typed out back in May 2015 when I pulled together The Clash ICA (#12 in the series).

“The Clash famously had a policy of minimising the number of 45s that would be taken from any album – a stance that led to a lot of friction with CBS Records. It also caused the band to miss out on chart success, as they left behind so many great album cuts that were tailor-made for radio airplay – none more so than this track from London Calling.

I suppose that’s not quite true as Clampdown was released in early 1980 in Australia where, it being the height of their summer, I’d like to imagine that it would be blasting out over Bondi Beach at high volume. But I doubt it….

Oh, and there are many reasons to say thank you for the invention of the internet, not least being the fact that you can now, all these years later, put in the relevant search and get the previously impossible to work out spoken intro:-

“The kingdom was ransacked, the jewels got ransacked and a chopper descends
They hid it in the back and they switched it on and off but the tape of spool just ends
They say now I’m back,hit at his face in a crack but he said there’s a crack on the lens”

Before one of the great shout/sing-a-long lines ever written…WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO NOW?”

Which means this proposed new idea for the blog has gotten off to a very shaky start. I had forgotten all about it being given an Australian release, where it was backed by this on the b-side:-

mp3:  The Clash – Guns Of Brixton

Another song from London Calling, and one which, in 1990, was  pulled out of the vaults and given the dubby  indie-dance treatment and released as a single to help promote the compilation The Story Of The Clash Volume 1:-

mp3:  The Clash – Return To Brixton

I’ll hopefully do better next time I return to the idea…..which strikes me as being nigh-on perfect for guest contributions if anyone has a suggestion they want to offer.

JC

60 ALBUMS @ 60 : #18

The Clash – London Calling (1979)

Often cited as one of the best and most important albums of the 80s was, in fact, released on 14 December 1979, just seven days after its title track has been released as a single.

For all that The Clash were a massively popular band in the UK at the end of the 70s, their records never really sold in hugely massive quantities.  Until one of their songs was used to soundtrack a jeans advert in 1991 (and thus find its way to #1 when re-released), London Calling delivered their best ever singles chart position when it reached #11 in the middle of January 1980.

The parent album, as you can see from the sticker that was attached to the front of it, cost £5, which was actually superb value for a double album, but was still a bit more expensive than most other records sitting in the racks. How else to explain that while previous release Give ‘Em Enough Rope had debuted at #2, London Calling did no better than #9.  It is true that the busy Christmas market wouldn’t have helped matter in terms of a chart position, but the album only stuck around for 20 weeks all told, which in those days was almost like the blink of an eye  – for instance, Regatta De Blanc, which was released by The Police in October 1979, would enjoy a 74-week stay in the charts.

The Clash, however, had credibility and kudos well beyond any of their peers.  It’s quite strange looking back at things now, just how far removed their music was in comparison to what had been recorded for the self-titled debut album some two-and-a-half years previously.  The sound of a punk rock band had been replaced by a confident rock band, one that wasn’t afraid to hide away from its many influences.

One of my later flatmates in Edinburgh in the mid-80s had been a punk in a large village on the outskirts of Glasgow.  He told me that London Calling had been a really difficult record to love when it was released. He was 16-years old and all he really wanted was loud and fast guitars, over which should ideally be shouted incomprehensible but angry sounding lyrics.   The new album by The Clash had been too polished in many places for his liking.

Worse than that was the fact that his slightly older sister, whose tastes veered towards the standard rock fare of the mid 70s onwards, thought that the album was a classic and had taken great delight in telling her sibling that the double album was all the proof you needed that punk was dead and that the only way to have longevity and success in the music industry was through being able to play.  I can only imagine the arguments which broke out in that household back then…….

But, it is very much the case that London Calling changed everything for The Clash. It’s an album that enabled the breakthrough in America, something which none of their punk/new wave contemporaries from the UK managed to achieve without turning into some sort of comic book parody…..and yes, I’m thinking of you Billy Idol.

As with Parallel Lines, there’s a few songs that have proven not to quite have the same timelessness as others, which is the reason it appears slightly lower in the rundown than I anticipated when pulling it together.

This, however, is timeless.

mp3:  The Clash – Clampdown

JC

(BONUS POST) : ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #015

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

#015– The Clash – ‚(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais’ (CBS Records ’78)

Hello friends,

I trust not all have you have carefully read the ‘rules & regulations’ I had set up for myself for this series – I announced them in the first part of it. There were many, but today just one of them is important: “only one single per band”! Why do I mention this? Well, you might – or might not – know that The Clash have always been my favorite band – and by quite some distance even. So, if I hadn’t set this rule up, you could well find yourself having to listen to Clash singles for the next 12 weeks in a row (so, yes, George, I know you will indeed be pleased by this rule!) …

Also, I am a firm believer in this record being the best record in the history of the whole world ever. At least I am today, this could be surpassed tomorrow, of course, but this is rather unlikely.

Now, what does it make so special to me? Funnily enough, I have never been a great fan of reggae, in fact I disliked it intensely when I was younger … I just wouldn’t listen to it, probably because in my young narrow mind it was not ‘punk’ enough. I remember Peel occasionally ridiculing me because of my attitude, and – in hindsight – rightly so, of course. Although, it must be said, even to this day I never managed to share his passion for all this raga-stuff, Admiral Tibet etc. … I just don’t get it, sorry, John!

But I digress. The reggae elements in ‘White Man’ are – undeniably – one beneficial factor: as well musically as regarding their importance for punk music. Blending punk with other genres was unheard of back then by and large, and consequently this tune defined new borders for quite many bands to come.

The lyrics are another factor. I mean, when I was 26, like Strummer was back in 1978, I had only one thing in common with him (apart from not so nice teeth): I had also attended some gigs which disappointed me enormously. But this is where the similarities between us end because I certainly was not able to write a tune like this at this age (nor at any other age, mind you!) just because a gig I saw didn’t meet with my approval.

And this is just the beginning of it all, the way the song builds from his personal disappointment into perhaps the (band’s) most poignant statement about British society ever is just unbelievable … I mean, try to indict power-pop, shoddy reggae, and neo-Nazism in one four-minute span for yourself … and let me know when you’re ready!

‘White Man’ is a song I never get tired of. I trust this applies to a lot of you as well … therefore, it would be neat to hear your opinions, of course!

mp3:  The Clash – (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais

Enjoy,

Dirk

PS: the original single was issued simultaneously in four colour variations: white, yellow, blue and pink. I own them all, but I have them framed on my wall: which either shows you how much I love this record or either what a nerdy fuckwit I am … you decide. So the file today derives from the pink version out of the 19 Singles-Boxset …

JC adds……

I’m with Dirk on this one.   It was #2 in the 45 45s @ 45 series back in 2008, kept off the top spot by Temptation (and no, not the version by Heaven 17)

THE TVV 2022/2023 FESTIVE SERIES (Part 6)

I bought a second-hand CD a long time ago, specifically for the purposes of having a bit of fun on the blog, and I’ve decided to use the normally quiet festive period, when the traffic and number of visitors drops quite dramatically, to go with it.

The CD was issued in 1996.  It is called Beat On The Brass, and it was recorded by The Nutley Brass, the brains of whom belong to New York musician Sam Elwitt.

The concept behind the album is simple. Take one bona-fide punk/post-punk/new wave classic and give it the easy listening treatment.

There are 18 tracks on the CD all told.  Some have to be heard to be believed.

Strap yourselves in.

mp3: The Nutley Brass – Tommy Gun

And, just so you can appreciate the magnificence (or otherwise) of the renditions, you’ll also be able to listen to the original versions as we make our way through the CD in random order.

mp3: The Clash – Tommy Gun

Released as a single in November 1978.

JC

NOSTALGIA IN OCTOBER (3)

Three extracts from ICA 12 which is the third and last of the posts that were originally scheduled for last month.

The Clash evolved and diversified like no other band that I’ve ever known in my lifetime and so the idea of dipping into their extensive catalogue and suggesting ten songs as the definitive collection – and putting them in a semblance of order that makes for great listening – is a task which, when complete, will inevitably lead to very legitimate questions about those that have been left off.

Complete Control

You’ve got to open any imaginary compilation album with a killer tune…something of an anthem which epitomizes the band or singer being featured….and I can’t think of anything better than this. One of punk rock’s greatest songs, written and recorded in frustration as the penny dropped for the band, and in particular Joe Strummer, that being a fully fledged, ideologically driven punk at the same time as being a core part of the mainstream music industry was an uncomfortable and some would say impossible position. Anger as an energy…..

White Man In Hammersmith Palais

Another song fuelled by disappointment and anger. The song title may have been derived from being let down at the dearth of talent performing at an all-night reggae gig, but the most meaningful attacks come later on as Joe delivers his very own state-of-the-nation address and in doing so outlines what was so wrong with the UK at that time. Little did he or any of us know that social disorder, racial disharmony, unfair distribution of wealth and the increasing lurch to the right-wing of the political spectrum by all mainstream parties would get a lot worse over the next decade.

This is my favourite Clash song of all time. It is one of those once-in-a-lifetime tunes that comes along and embeds itself permanently in your subconscious with a lyric that educates and raises your social and political awareness. I turned 15 years of age the day after this 45 was released….it struck a chord with me then and given that, almost 37 years on*, I  still hold many of those values that forged my outlook on life, this song hasn’t dated….nor will it ever.

Stay Free

The second album is considered by many to be a weak record, but here am I going with a second successive track from it (NB – the ICA at this point was preceded by Safe European Home) and there’s no sign of the two cracking 45s that were lifted from it. It just demonstrates that Give ‘Em Enough Rope had plenty of moments to be declared as a decent and solid record rather than weak.

At 15 years of age, I was gravitating to the lyricists who were telling stories via the songs – Paul Weller was already a huge favourite and the tale of Down In The Tube Station At Midnight was, in my young mind, the greatest song lyric of all time. But not far behind was Mick Jones‘ heartfelt tribute to his best mate, who had gone spectacularly off the rails while Mick was working tirelessly to make it as a musician. This has more than stood the test of time as a great love song….

*the post was originally published on 1 May 2015.  It’s now 44 years since the songs appeared, and I like to think, that even now I’m an old fogey who is retired from working life, I still hold the same values.  Oh, and what I’d give for a Joe Strummer for the modern age.

JC

PS : I was sure that The Clash would have been victorious in the first edition of the ICA World Cup, but were beaten 22-18 in the semi-final by The Jam.  The songs up against one another were Capital Radio 2 and Man In The Corner Shop.

THE MONDAY MORNING HI-QUALITY VINYL RIP : Part sixty-three: JANIE JONES

Here’s the thing.

I lost my copy of the eponymous debut by The Clash many many many moons ago.  Most likely 1984 or 1985 when the crowd of us haring a flat didn’t worry too much about who actually owned the record sitting by the communal stereo in the living room and as people came and went, so too did some singles and albums.

To be fair, my copy was battered, bruised and worn by this time, with loads of jumps and skips.  It wasn’t until 1990 that I realised it was missing when it came time to pack up all my possessions and move back to Glasgow again following the breakdown of my first marriage.

I never replaced it, but I did buy a CD version a few years later….which is what I also had to do with London Calling as it too was beyond saving from years of abuse.

I did buy a recent brand-new repress of London Calling not too long ago, and thoroughly enjoyed giving it a spin.  And now, at long last, I again have a vinyl copy of The Clash, having picked up a second-hand artefact (at least) while browsing round a second-hand store during a recent three-day break in Bristol (the same store where I picked up The Pastels 12″ single that featured last Friday).  It was very reasonably priced – £15 – and given how old it is, it was in remarkably good condition.

OK, it’s not a first or even second pressing as the inner sleeve is ‘Nice Price’, the marketing ploy used by CBS Records when they wanted to shift further copies of old albums through a reduction in price.  This particular pressing probably dates from the early 80s, but I’m more than happy with it.

Tempting as it was to give you the full near-six minutes of the cover of Police & Thieves, I felt things would be best served today by going with Side 1, Track 1:-

mp3: The Clash – Janie Jones

Still provides a thrill all these years later.

JC

FROM OUR GERMAN CORRESPONDENT(S)

I’m interrupting the planned schedule to bring you some news from Germany.

I’m sure I wasn’t alone in being horrified watching the scenes of carnage and devastation from the unprecedented flooding which recently hit many parts of central Europe, and in particular Germany. The death toll is at 171, while 155 people remain missing, with the president of the country’s disaster relief organisation now saying she does not expect rescuers to find any more survivors.

My immediate thoughts were for two very good and old friends of this corner of t’internet, Dirk and Walter, both of whom came to Glasgow a few years ago when a small group of bloggers decided a meeting in person was long overdue. I was sure that Walter would be fine, as his home city of Stuttgart had been spared the worst of the downpour. Dirk, however, I wasn’t so sure about, and this was confirmed with this part of the response from Walter to the e-mail I had sent to both of them:-

“Hi Jim,

many thanks for your mail. Everything is fine with me and slowly normal life comes back as we knew in the times before the pandemic. Although I suspect it won’t be too long. Thank God I am not affected in my region by the rains and the floods, but as far as I know the area in the Dirk lives the full force of the storm hit him.”

Two anxious days passed before an e-mail dropped in from Dirk. It was short, simply saying that he and his family were OK but that he wasn’t at home just now, adding that he would get back to me in detail once he had returned. He was as good as his word:-

“Hello JC, hello Walter,

First of all thanks VERY much for being worried/taking care/asking. I can assure you though that everything is fine over here, and although I live in a region which basically was surrounded by the floods, nothing at all happened to the village. Also, I live on a bit of a hill anyway, so all I had to do was to empty the swimming pool a bit before I left for a few days away on Thursday. And that trip was the only reason why I couldn’t write earlier, I just HATE to write longer messages on my mobile … too old-fashioned, me, I suppose …

In fact, we went to a vineyard in Rhineland-Palatinate where I probably ate and certainly drank too much, but also this region was not affected. But I crossed the Mosselle river as well as the Ahr river on my way and what I was able to see from the motorway down in the valleys was really shocking.

I mean, people who live at the rivers are used to high tides and all the villages have high tide protection systems and plans. But what happened there last week was so “special”, there was no way whatsoever for them to cope with it in the shortness of time. I just watched an interview on the telly with the mayor of Schuld – a small village which by and large fully got destroyed – and he said that they had a high tide of 3.60 meters in 2016. After which they improved their system, but no-one could do anything at all against the masses of water which hit the village last week in the middle of the night. The wave was 8.86 (!!) meters, he said, and apparently it didn’t slowly build up, but came rushing down instead within seconds.

The only “family and friends – damage” I know about was in my sister’s cellar, but they had mostly everything in shelves, perhaps the floor can even be saved, but first of all it has to dry fully before they know for sure. And if not, well, it’s just a bloody floor, a bit of laminate, nothing serious.

Nothing serious anyway compared to the hundreds of people who lost their lives, are still missing and/or haven’t got a home any longer. One problem will turn out to be the various forms of insurances here in Germany. If you have a house, you have to insure it. But if you’re not specifically insured against natural hazard, you will get nothing from the insurance for the house, just for what was in it. Now every bloody politician says: ‘No need to worry, we will take care of you”. But I know German bureaucracy, believe me, and I’m willing to have a small bet that those poor people will wait forever for any government money.

So, hard times indeed, luckily not for me. All in all, I coped rather well with Covid, mainly because it meant that I could work from home three weeks out of four. Which I enjoyed very much. Still do, in fact, because – as Walter said – with all the lowered restrictions, it’s just a question of time when the whole mess will start again. But before it does, I will be away again (the week after next) to the Baltic Sea with my brother-in-law’s caravan. Very much looking forward to this as well, because basically it will turn out to be a repetition of the vineyard-trip. Only with beer instead of wine, I suppose.”

Dirk’s e-mail went on to explain why he had been quiet of late, offering all sorts of wholly unnecessary apologies. Not surprisingly, like all of us in these unprecedented times, his priorities have shifted increasingly towards his family and his own physical and mental well-being, and he’s not spent too much time browsing round music blogs in the way he used to. He has, on the plus side, built himself a Tiki-bar!!

Our exchanges ended on a positive note, with me promising that, as soon as travelling becomes more possible and enjoyable again, to make a trip over to Germany to meet up with both Dirk and Walter, two of the nicest and most genuine folk on Planet Earth.

As Dirk is a huge Clash fan, the title of this one seems appropriate today:-

mp3: The Clash – Safe European Home

Thanks for reading.

JC

THE MONDAY MORNING HI-QUALITY VINYL RIP : Part Nineteen : SISTOSIG/STH

It’s just over five years since this double-A effort was featured in the series looking at the singles released by The Clash.  But this time round the mp3s come straight from the 12″ vinyl, ripped at 320 kpbs for a better listening experience.

Here’s what was said back in May 2016, along with a couple of things offered up in the comments by two of our Stateside regulars:-

“Released just three months after Rock The Casbah, a lot had changed for The Clash in the summer of 1982, not least the fact that they had ‘cracked’ America.  Combat Rock was proving to be an enduring album, going on to spend almost six months successively in the UK charts which was well beyond the time expected of any album by the band. They were now determined to get their music across to as wide an audience as possible, hence the decision to accept the task of opening for The Who at a series of outdoor stadium gigs in October 1982, although it is worth recalling that the band continued to headline at much smaller venues in the States at the same time.

The days of standing up to record company wishes to milk albums dry were also over as seen by the fact that the release of a double A single meant that exactly one-third of Combat Rock had been put out on the 45rpm format.  But in saying this, there’s no argument that it is one of the band’s finest 45s.

Straight To Hell -the very idea that one of the world’s foremost punk bands would, within just five years of their explosive and noisy debut, end up recording and releasing a song that leaned heavily on a bossa nova drumbeat devised by Topper Headon and a haunting violin sound would have been laughable. It has a stunning and thought-provoking lyric delivered by a resigned-sounding Joe Strummer who seems devastated by the fact that musicians cannot make the world’s problems disappear.

Radio stations and the general public however, preferred the charms of Should I Stay Or Should I Go. It has a great riff, a sing-a-long and infectiously catchy chorus and the most ridiculously yet charming backing vocals in some strange version of Spanish.  What’s not to like???

Jonny The Friendly Lawyer added:-

I was a massive Who fan since my sister bought me Who’s Next when I was a little kid. By the time I saw the Clash open for them at Shea Stadium I’d been a dedicated fan since London Calling, which was only 3 years earlier.

I had seen them once at the Bonds shows but the group were still not in the mainstream at that time. I just did not know what to make of the idea of The Clash, who’d been practically underground until a couple of years before, playing for rock giants who’d been at Woodstock and were pretty much on their last legs as a band. It sort of felt, to me, that this massive crowd (Shea was a baseball stadium that held over 55,000 — I’d been watching the Mets play there since 1968) didn’t DESERVE to be in on the act. The vast majority were there to see The ‘Oo, of course, who went through the motions satisfactorily, and I wanted to make a “punk meets the godfathers” mental connection, but just couldn’t.

If I remember correctly, Echorich not only saw many of the Bonds shows but also saw the Clash at the legendary Palladium gig from a couple of years prior, when NO ONE knew the band and they got zero radio play. I wonder what the slightly older than me crowd thought of the only band that mattered opening for the only band that used to matter.

Echorich chimed in:-

…yes I was at Shea Stadium – I was living walking distance from Shea at the time and one of the photographers I rep’ed at my agency, Bob Gruen – who drove the band to the show in his 50’s Cadillac, got us tix. Honestly, I would have been happy to sit outside the stadium in the parking lot listening to them tear down the house if I had to. But it was a weird feeling seeing a band I loved play in such an impersonal setting. The Clash rose to the challenge, but their show a month earlier, in the pouring rain at Pier 84, courting electrocution and drowning a few thousand in sound as much as rain was one of the most electric shows I’ve ever seen.

mp3: The Clash – Should I Stay Or Should I Go
mp3: The Clash – Straight To Hell

I hope, gentlemen, that some further happy memories are triggered listening again to the tracks almost 40 years on.

JC

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS (10/22)

Album : London Calling by The Clash
Review : Rolling Stone, 3 April 1980
Author : Tom Carson

By now, our expectations of the Clash might seem to have become inflated beyond any possibility of fulfillment. It’s not simply that they’re the greatest rock & roll band in the world — indeed, after years of watching too many superstars compromise, blow chances and sell out, being the greatest is just about synonymous with being the music’s last hope. While the group itself resists such labels, they do tell you exactly how high the stakes are, and how urgent the need. The Clash got their start on the crest of what looked like a revolution, only to see the punk movement either smash up on its own violent momentum or be absorbed into the same corporate-rock machinery it had meant to destroy. Now, almost against their will, they’re the only ones left.

Give ‘Em Enough Rope, the band’s last recording, railed against the notion that being rock & roll heroes meant martyrdom. Yet the album also presented itself so flamboyantly as a last stand that it created a near-insoluble problem: after you’ve already brought the apocalypse crashing down on your head, how can you possibly go on? On the Clash’s new LP, London Calling, there’s a composition called “Death or Glory” that seems to disavow the struggle completely. Over a harsh and stormy guitar riff, lead singer Joe Strummer offers a grim litany of failure. Then his cohort, Mick Jones, steps forward to drive what appears to be the final nail into the coffin. “Death or glory,” he bitterly announces, “become just another story.”

But “Death or Glory” — in many ways, the pivotal song on London Calling — reverses itself midway. After Jones’ last, anguished cry drops off into silence, the music seems to scatter from the echo of his words. Strummer reenters, quiet and undramatic, talking almost to himself at first and not much caring if anyone else is listening. “We’re gonna march a long way,” he whispers. “Gonna fight — a long time.” The guitars, distant as bugles on some faraway plain, begin to rally. The drums collect into a beat, and Strummer slowly picks up strength and authority as he sings:

We’ve gotta travel — over mountains
We’ve gotta travel — over seas
We’re gonna fight — you, brother
We’re gonna fight — till you lose
We’re gonna raise —
TROUBLE!

The band races back to the firing line, and when the singers go surging into the final chorus of “Death or glory…just another story,” you know what they’re really saying: like hell it is!

Merry and tough, passionate and large-spirited, London Calling celebrates the romance of rock & roll rebellion in grand, epic terms. It doesn’t merely reaffirm the Clash’s own commitment to rock-as-revolution. Instead, the record ranges across the whole of rock & roll’s past for its sound, and digs deeply into rock legend, history, politics and myth for its images and themes. Everything has been brought together into a single, vast, stirring story — one that, as the Clash tell it, seems not only theirs but ours. For all its first-take scrappiness and guerrilla production, this two-LP set — which, at the group’s insistence, sells for not much more than the price of one — is music that means to endure. It’s so rich and far-reaching that it leaves you not just exhilarated but exalted and triumphantly alive.

From the start, however, you know how tough a fight it’s going to be. “London Calling” opens the album on an ominous note. When Strummer comes in on the downbeat, he sounds weary, used up, desperate: “The Ice Age is coming/The sun is zooming in/Meltdown expected/The wheat is growing thin.’

The rest of the record never turns its back on that vision of dread. Rather, it pulls you through the horror and out the other side. The Clash’s brand of heroism may be supremely romantic, even naive, but their utter refusal to sentimentalize their own myth — and their determination to live up to an actual code of honor in the real world, without ever minimizing the odds — makes such romanticism seem not only brave but absolutely necessary. London Calling sounds like a series of insistent messages sent to the scattered armies of the night, proffering warnings and comfort, good cheer and exhortations to keep moving. If we begin amid the desolation of the title track, we end, four sides later, with Mick Jones spitting out heroic defiance in “I’m Not Down” and finding a majestic metaphor at the pit of his depression that lifts him — and us — right off the ground. “Like skyscrapers rising up,” Jones screams. “Floor by floor — I’m not giving up.” Then Joe Strummer invites the audience, with a wink and a grin, to “smash up your seats and rock to this brand new beat” in the merry-go-round invocation of “Revolution Rock.”

Against all the brutality, injustice and large and small betrayals delineated in song after song here — the assembly-line Fascists in “Clampdown,” the advertising executives of “Koka Kola,” the drug dealer who turns out to be the singer’s one friend in the jittery, hypnotic “Hateful” — the Clash can only offer their sense of historic purpose and the faith, innocence, humor and camaraderie embodied in the band itself. This shines through everywhere, balancing out the terrors that the LP faces again and again. It can take forms as simple as letting bassist Paul Simonon sing his own “The Guns of Brixton,” or as relatively subtle as the way Strummer modestly moves in to support Jones’ fragile lead vocal on the forlorn “Lost in the Supermarket.” It can be as intimate and hilarious as the moment when Joe Strummer deflates any hint of portentousness in the sexual-equality polemics of “Lover’s Rock” by squawking “I’m so nervous!” to close the tune. In “Four Horsemen,” which sounds like the movie soundtrack to a rock & roll version of The Seven Samurai, the Clash’s martial pride turns openly exultant. The guitars and drums start at a thundering gallop, and when Strummer sings, “Four horsemen …,” the other members of the group charge into line to shout joyously: “…and it’s gonna be us!”

London Calling is spacious and extravagant. It’s as packed with characters and incidents as a great novel, and the band’s new stylistic expansions — brass, organ, occasional piano, blues grind, pop airiness and the reggae-dub influence that percolates subversively through nearly every number — add density and richness to the sound. The riotous rockabilly-meets-the-Ventures quality of “Brand New Cadillac” (“Jesus Christ!” Strummer yells to his ex-girlfriend, having so much fun he almost forgets to be angry, “Whereja get that Cadillac?”) slips without pause into the strung-out shuffle of “Jimmy Jazz,” a Nelson Algren-like street scene that limps along as slowly as its hero, just one step ahead of the cops. If “Rudie Can’t Fail” (the “She’s Leaving Home” of our generation) celebrates an initiation into bohemian lowlife with affection and panache, “The Card Cheat” picks up on what might be the same character twenty years later, shot down in a last grab for “more time away from the darkest door.” An awesome orchestral backing track gives this lower-depths anecdote a somber weight far beyond its scope. At the end of “. — “from the Hundred Year War to the Crimea” — that turns ephemeral pathos into permanent tragedy.

Other tracks tackle history head-on, and claim it as the Clash’s own. “Wrong ‘Em Boyo” updates the story of Stagger Lee in bumptious reggae terms, forging links between rock & roll legend and the group’s own politicized roots-rock rebel. “The Right Profile,” which is about Montgomery Clift, accomplishes a different kind of transformation. Over braying and sarcastic horns, Joe Strummer gags, mugs, mocks and snickers his way through a comic-horrible account of the actor’s collapse on booze and pills, only to close with a grudging admiration that becomes unexpectedly and astonishingly moving. It’s as if the singer is saying, no matter how ugly and pathetic Clift’s life was, he was still — in spite of everything — one of us.

“Spanish Bombs” is probably London Calling‘s best and most ambitious song. A soaring, chiming intro pulls you in, and before you can get your bearings, Strummer’s already halfway into his tale. Lost and lonely in his “disco casino,” he’s unable to tell whether the gunfire he hears is out on the streets or inside his head. Bits of Spanish doggerel, fragments of combat scenes, jangling flamenco guitars and the lilting vocals of a children’s tune mesh in a swirling kaleidoscope of courage and disillusionment, old wars and new corruption. The evocation of the Spanish Civil War is sumptuously romantic: “With trenches full of poets, the ragged army, fixin’ bayonets to fight the other line.” Strummer sings, as Jones throws in some lovely, softly stinging notes behind him. Here as elsewhere, the heroic past isn’t simply resurrected for nostalgia’s sake. Instead, the Clash state that the lessons of the past must be earned before we can apply them to the present.

London Calling certainly lives up to that challenge. With its grainy cover photo, its immediate, on-the-run sound, and songs that bristle with names and phrases from today’s headlines, it’s as topical as a broadside. But the album also claims to be no more than the latest battlefield in a war of rock & roll, culture and politics that’ll undoubtedly go on forever. “Revolution Rock,” the LP’s formal coda, celebrates the joys of this struggle as an eternal carnival. A spiraling organ weaves circles around Joe Strummer’s voice, while the horn section totters, sways and recovers like a drunken mariachi band. “This must be the way out,” Strummer calls over his shoulder, so full of glee at his own good luck that he can hardly believe it.” El Clash Combo,” he drawls like a proud father, coasting now, sure he’s made it home. “Weddings, parties, anything… And bongo jazz a specialty.”

But it’s Mick Jones who has the last word. “Train in Vain” arrives like an orphan in the wake of “Revolution Rock.” It’s not even listed on the label, and it sounds faint, almost overheard. Longing, tenderness and regret mingle in Jones’ voice as he tries to get across to his girl that losing her meant losing everything, yet he’s going to manage somehow. Though his sorrow is complete, his pride is that he can sing about it. A wistful, simple number about love and loss and perseverance, “Tram in Vain” seems like an odd ending to the anthemic tumult of London Calling. But it’s absolutely appropriate, because if this record has told us anything, it’s that a love affair and a revolution — small battles as well as large ones — are not that different. They’re all part of the same long, bloody march.

mp3 : The Clash – London Calling
mp3 : The Clash – Death or Glory
mp3 : The Clash – Spanish Bombs
mp3 : The Clash – Train In Vain

JC adds :  And here was me thinking that the NME was the sole outlet for overly-long and overly-descriptive album reviews back in the day.  There is no doubt that Tom Carson really liked London Calling, but with the benefit of hindsight over the past 40 years (certainly since its UK release), you can look back and argue that what he homed in on for particular attention was either inconsequential or unmerited.

Death or Glory is an important song, but is it worthy of taking up so much of the review?  Spanish Bombs is far from the album’s best or most ambitious song. And there’s more then a few remarks on various songs that feel straight out of Psued’s Corner. Having said all that, his view that Train In Vain seems an odd ending to the album is one that I’ve long shared, but as we’ve since learned from the story behind the album, this was really just the most  practical way of getting a new song out there to fans than any considered attempt to find an ending that was to provide an alternative to some of the anthemic stuff – indeed, there’s a body of thought that, outside of the title track, Train In Vain, has become the most anthemic song on the album.

I really did enjoy reading this particular review, for nothing else that it has a different tone and feel to those which came later when the album was remixed/re-released/re-packaged for certain anniversaries.  It also felt like the perfect way to close out the blog for 2019.

 

TODAY I FEEL LIKE LISTENING TO THIS LOT

Normal service is resumed after the holiday.

They’ve had the singles treatment over 19 consecutive weeks, an ICA and a handful of songs featuring on other postings. So here’s an imaginary 4-track EP with stuff I’ve not played here before:-

mp3 : The Clash – What’s My Name (live at Belle Vue, Manchester 1977)
mp3 : The Clash – Guns On The Roof
mp3 : The Clash – Brand New Cadillac
mp3 : The Clash – Rock The Casbah

Track 1 is lifted from a TV clip that was filmed for inclusion on So It Goes, the weekly music programme devised and presented by Anthony H Wilson (or plain Tony as he was known in those days). That’s why you get the added lyric of ‘here we are on TV…..‘in the middle. It’s a far more raw and energetic version than appears on the debut album.

Track 2 takes the riff from Clash City Rockers, which itself ripped off the 1965 single, I Can’t Explain by The Who, and has Joe pontificating on state-sponsored terrorism while taking its title from an incident closer to home when Paul, Topper and a bunch of hangers-on ended up in trouble for shooting at pigeons from the roof of their rehearsal rooms having been mistaken for terrorists shooting at passing trains.

Track 3, lifted from London Calling, is the well-known and well-loved cover of the 1959 song by Vince Taylor which The Clash considered to be one of the first and best British rock’n’roll records

Track 4. Nope, this version hasn’t been featured before. It’s lifted from the album that never was – Rat Patrol From Fort Knox – recorded by the band and fully produced by Mick Jones over a three-month period between November 1981 and January 1982. It would likely have been a double album, which coming on the back of London Calling and Sandinista was too much for CBS to accept, but even worse was that the rest of the band, along with newly re-instated manager Bernie Rhodes, rejected it feeling some songs were too long and others had too many overdubs and samples.

The songs were then given to Glyn Johns to rework and remix into what became Combat Rock….it was only years later when the Rat Patrol sessions were released in bootleg form did many folk come to the realisation that the strive for commercialism had been at the expense of the beginning of the break-up of the band with Mick Jones utterly devastated by what had happened.

Bonus Track

mp3 : The Clash – The Beautiful People Are Ugly

This would have been the opening song on Rat Patrol if it had been allowed to see the light of day. A touch on the pop side perhaps, but again it was Mick trying to prevent the band from pigeon-holed by critics and fans alike.

JC

TRAIN IN VAIN

From the BBC news website yesterday….

ScotRail has apologised for major disruption after severe damage to overhead wires just outside Glasgow Central station.

Services to and from the station’s high level were affected.

Ten trains travelling on high level routes lost power at about 21:15 on Saturday and passengers had to wait to be led to safety by ScotRail staff.

The train company said it was now almost back to running a full service, after knock-on disruption on Sunday.

Some passengers, commenting on social media, said that they had been stuck on trains for several hours on Saturday night and had to be helped off by engineers with ladders.

ScotRail said all passengers were removed from the affected trains by 00:45.

They were then advised to find alternative transport home, with some offered taxis.

Glasgow Central high level was closed completely at 22:45 with no services running for the remainder of Saturday evening.

I was on one of the ten trains that were stuck outside the station when the power went down.  It ground to a halt at around 21:30 and about 30 minutes later, after the on-train back of power had been drained, it plunged into complete darkness which is how it stayed for almost three hours…on the most basic of trains without a toilet or washroom. And yes. the evacuation method was by ladder down from the stricken train and then up another ladder to a diesel-powered set of carriages for onward transfer to a station in the opposite direction of Glasgow Central and into a taxi.

The annoying thing was that I was only on the train as a last-minute decision to head into town for no more than an hour or so to head to the final ever Strangeways night where a few friends were hanging around – all in an effort to cheer myself up after watching Raith Rovers blow their season in the most miserable manner imaginable.

As Aldo said to me, there are some days it just isn’t worth getting out of bed.

mp3 : The Clash – Train In Vain

JC

CALL ME STAR-STRUCK, UNCLE SAM

I’ve always been fascinated by New York City.

As a young kid I thought it was the most famous place in the world thanks to it being the backdrop to so many films and TV shows. Hell, it even was the setting for one of my favourite cartoons – Top Cat – while there was no mistaking that my favourite comic book hero’s home of Gotham City was the just a different name for NYC.

It was, in my young eyes, everything that America stood for where everything was bigger and better than you could wish for while growing up amidst the monochrome or at best faded-beige UK of the mid 70s. If someone had asked me, as an 11 or 12 year old why I wanted to see New York they would have got the 11 or 12 year old’s classic answer…….just because!

If pushed I would say it was all to do with the fact it seemed to be the best place for sport with the best known names such as the Jets, the Yankees and the Harlem Globetrotters (little did I realise the last of these was showbiz and not sport!). In ‘soccer’ you had the phenomenon of the New York Cosmos and I was desperate to be given the chance of seeing Pele and Franz Beckenbauer take to the field amidst pomp, pageantry and cheerleaders.

Boxing was another sport I watched – particularly the exploits of Muhammad Ali – and it seemed that every other month there was a world championship fight taking place in NYC at Madison Square Gardens. I wanted to be part of such a loud and raucous crowd (albeit years later my first experience of a live boxing match put me off for life)

Oh and then there was the fact that I was fascinated by the idea of hot dogs, hamburgers and milk shakes, none of which you could get in Glasgow at the time (well you could, but you knew that they were all fifth-rate and not a patch on the real things).

Then I got slightly older and began to fall in love with pop music. NYC began to loom even larger as all the best bands in the world constantly talked about how it was the greatest city to play in and how the energy and vitality of the place brought so much to the performances. It also appeared to be where some of the best new music was coming from. And it seemed as if all the women were as gorgeous as Debbie Harry.

But the sheer cost involved meant that visiting NYC in my truly formative years was always going to be an unfulfilled dream. It was difficult enough finding the money to go and visit London far less get on a plane and cross the Atlantic. I didn’t even know how to go about obtaining a passport……

The idea of visiting in later years did come up – myself and Mrs Villain talked about going there for my 30th in 1993 but in the end we went for a beach holiday in the Caribbean. Her 40th in 1998 was another possibility but again the lure of the sand and the sun proved too much.

By now I was in a job that had me seeing a fair bit of the world as I was a senior aide to the equivalent of the Mayor of Glasgow and accompanied him on a number of occasions, especially when he was to deliver a keynote speech at a conference or event.

I had always hoped the opportunity to do so in NYC would occur and so when he received and accepted an invitation to be part of a conference on Waterfront Regeneration, taking place at the Brooklyn Marriott, the dream of so many years was set to some true.

I began to plan everything in terms of how I would spend my free time at the conference and before long I had arranged to stay on for a few extra days at my own expense. Greenwich Village, Central Park, Times Square, Madison Square Gardens, Yankee Stadium, the Chelsea Hotel, Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge, the Guggenheim and the Statue of Liberty were all on the list as was a ride in a yellow cab. I’d find small and bohemian record and book stores and have the time of my life. I was counting down the days to the conference which was taking place from September 20-22 2001.

It’ll soon be 15 years to the day that the Twin Towers came down and changed everything we thought about the world in the proverbial blink of an eye. It’ll soon be 15 years to the day that I made my first ever visit to NYC as incredibly enough, the conference wasn’t postponed.

It’s true that more than half of the delegates cancelled, including I would reckon 90% of those scheduled to come from Europe as travel plans were predictably chaotic and uncertain.

As it turned out, I was a passenger on the first Glasgow-Newark flight after 9/11. What I experienced during my stay will stay with me for ever. There’s an entire book can be written about my experiences over the following seven days – understandably it wasn’t what I ever imagined NYC to be in my long-held dreams. But if anything, I fell in love deeper and harder than I thought possible.

I’ve returned a couple of times since and seen more of the ‘real’ New York and thoroughly enjoyed myself. But everywhere I look there seems to be a haunting and chilling memory of my first time…..

I was hopeful of returning to NYC this year, on my 53rd birthday no less, to fulfil the ambition of attending a gig at Madison Square Gardens as The Twilight Sad were supporting The Cure that day. But some months out I knew that events close to home would mean I had to be in Scotland for something important the day after my birthday and so the plan was shelved.

I almost set myself up to head over this past weekend with today being Labor Day at the end of a long holiday weekend in the USA with my beloved Toronto Blue Jays playing at Yankee Stadium. But I chose instead to head to Toronto later this month and enjoy an extended break of a week rather than a few days.

Maybe NYC will be on the agenda for next year. Or maybe I’ll wait a while longer and go over when I have as much time on my hands as possible and do things properly and not in a rushed way, hopefully with Mrs V in tow.

There’s a reason for these particular paragraphs appearing today which will reveal itself in 24 hours’ time. For now, here’s some music from UK and Irish bands just as equally fascinated with the city, including the song from which I stole the title of todays’ posting:-

mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Hey Manhattan!
mp3 : The Clash – Broadway
mp3 : The Frank & Walters – Fashion Crisis Hits New York

Enjoy.

A LAZY STROLL DOWN MEMORY LANE : 45 45s AT 45 (2)

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON TUESDAY 17 JUNE 2008

(and re-posted on 7 November 2013)

(As mentioned when this was featured in The Clash singles back in February, I held back then to this anticipated appearance to give my own take on the 45……)

I’ve repeatedly said that I was never a punk, but just someone who loved an awful lot of the punk-sounding records. However, the early singles and debut LP by The Clash weren’t things that I was initially fond of – they were just too raw and raucous for my tastes, which at that time were still evolving.

As with most teenagers, I got some money from my mum and dad and aunties and uncles for my 15th birthday, and so I traipsed up the road to the record shop. I can’t actually remember everything that was bought…there’s every chance I bought a bundle of disco stuff as Saturday Night Fever was all the rage and all the girls wanted someone who danced like John Travolta.

I do distinctly remember buying my first ever single by The Clash with some of the money – it was on prominent display in the shop having just been released a couple of days previously. The reason I remember all this is down to a sort of hero-worship of a guy called Mick. Not only did he work in a record shop, he also had his own mobile disco with lights and everything….and Mick said that day that if I wanted to buy something special for my birthday then it should be this new single called (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais.

When I told him that I didn’t really like The Clash, he asked me if I had ever really listened to them. I had to admit that I hadn’t other than what I had sometimes heard on the radio. He then offered to play the single for me there and then. Of course in order to retain any degree of coolness, I was always going to say it was fantastic…..

So I took the record home, but I was nowhere near convinced. This certainly was nothing like love at first sight. But like all new records, it continued to get spins on the turntable all the time, and within a week or so, after a number of listens, I realised, in a sort of Road To Damascus conversion moment, the song was something really different and special. And with that I felt I could classify myself as a Clash fan – one of the best decisions I ever made as the band and their music became a sort of secret password for getting on so well with people in the years to come.

The first example of this was a year later when I took on my first ever summer job, over a period of six weeks or so, at the age of 16. It was in a city-centre store that sold car accessories. I was easily the youngest member of staff – the rest of them were dead old being at least 19, while the store manager was ancient at the age of 25. I wasn’t able to do the sort of things they did, such as go out to the pub after work on a Friday night. But one other worker was interested in the fact I bought Melody Maker every week – although his own preference was for the NME.

That’s when I learned his taste was for punk/new wave, his favourite being The Clash. The fact that I liked the band was a big factor in me being accepted in the workplace.

A few years later, the time had come to move out of the family home and into a student flat. It was a case of trying to find folk you would be compatible with, and the deal with the two lads who I was eventually to move in beside was sealed when we all said that White Man…was our favourite Clash single. So much so in my case, that by this time (1983) I had learned to play it note-for-note on a Casio keyboard which I demonstrated one evening in a drunken stupor while another of the flat mates played bass and the other sang. The girls we had back that night were far from impressed.

I always thought I was in a minority with my love for this single over all others by The Clash. I was certain that White Riot, London Calling or even the cover of I Fought The Law would win out in any popularity contest. But no, there was some sort of poll a few years back which revealed that the most popular and enduring song was the one released in June 1978:-

mp3 : The Clash – (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais
mp3 : The Clash – The Prisoner

It was unusually slow and melodic for a punk/new wave band. You could even make out a whole lot of the words without the need for a lyric sheet. It was also a song that lended itself to the use of your badminton racquet masquerading as your guitar….and it’s a song that has aged magnificently, sounding every bit as fresh, exciting and vibrant today as it did 30 years ago.

It’s hard to recall that all those years ago, the release of White Man… caused a bit of an uproar among the hardcore fans of the band. It was a radical departure from the short, sharp, loud and angry songs that had symbolised everything punk/new wave was supposed to be. It was, looking back, the earliest indication (notwithstanding Police & Thieves) that The Clash were no one-trick pony but in fact a quite extraordinary band capable of producing top-quality songs influenced by all sorts of genres.

I no longer have this single in the collection – another victim of the Edinburgh debacle of 1986, but by then it wasn’t a bit of vinyl that could have safely gone on the record player.

It was a record that had been played to within an inch of its life – it was worn out, full of scratches and jumps courtesy of it being shoved on more than once in a drunken stupor in which I bumped against the turntable. And because I imagine that’s how everyone who ever owned the single behaved with it, I’ve never pursued a copy via e-bay as the vinyl will be in a far from pristine condition. Instead, I’ve relied on an antiseptically clean copy that I have within the 3-CD box-set of Clash on Broadway.

And so next time round will finally reveal the choice at #1….

THE CLASH ON SUNDAYS (19)

Disc 19 is This Is England. The last in the series and a bit of an anti-climax. Sorry.  But I can’t re-write history.

Topper Headon had been fired post the recording of Combat Rock and then Mick Jones was sensationally kicked out of his band (and not for the first time in his life) in 1983.  What’s also mostly forgotten is that Terry Chimes, brought in for Topper to tour Combat Rock, had also left under a cloud some eight months before Mick got the boot.

This isn’t the place to go over the rights and wrongs of all the turmoil, and besides, depending on whose versions you most believe you’ll come to a different conclusion on who was most to blame.

This Is England was written in late 1983 but wouldn’t be released for the best part of two years.  It’s a state-of-the nation diatribe with the lyric detailing much of what was wrong with the country under a right-wing government although many of the topics, such as inner-city violence, urban alienation, life on council estates, high unemployment and racism weren’t new to The Clash.

The critics savaged the songs and subsequent album Cut The Crap.  To them, and indeed to many, you had no right to call it a release by The Clash with just Joe and Paul on board, backed by some rock musicians and aided by a drum machine. Despite this, it did make #24 in the UK charts which wasn’t all that shabby a performance – indeed it is a higher position than was ever managed by Rock The Casbah.…..

It was originally released only in the UK on 7″ and 12″ vinyl and in years to come was initially disowned by all concerned not appearing on any compilation LPs., not showing up again until 2003 and then again being included as the 19th and final reproduced 45 in the The Singles box set which has provided the foundations for this series.

7″ release:-

mp3 : The Clash – This Is England
mp3 : The Clash – Do It Now

12″ bonus track:-

mp3 : The Clash – Sex Mad Roar

THIS IS ENGLAND  : Released 30 September 1985 : #24 in the UK singles chart

When I arrived back in this country Friday, June 29th 2006, having been away for several years, all I saw were St George crosses displayed everywhere.

After the awful England game on the 30th and ever since, these white and red displays look like yesterday’s tired fashion and are now a figure of fun; likewise the silly songs that were offered to go with the stupid team.

‘This Is England’ reflects this immense national fuck-up.

Bernard Rhodes, former manager of The Clash

And that, dear readers, brings this particular Sunday series to an end. Huge thanks for all the comments that have been left behind over the past four and a bit months, and in particular to echorich and JTFL for their wonderfully unique and indeed first-hand account of life in the USA with The Clash.

As hinted at a few weeks ago, the Sunday slot will now be taken up with a look back at the 45s and EPs of Belle and Sebastian.

Cheers.

JC

THE CLASH ON SUNDAYS (18)

Disc 18 is Straight To Hell/Should I Stay Or Should I Go.

Released just three months after Rock The Casbah, a lot had changed for The Clash in the summer of 1982, not least the fact that they had ‘cracked’ America.  Combat Rock was proving to be an enduring album, going on to spend almost six months successively in the UK charts which was well beyond the time expected of any album by the band. They were now determined to get their music across to as wide an audience as possible, hence the decision to accept the task of opening for The Who at a series of outdoor stadium gigs in October 1982, although it is worth recalling that the band continued to headline at much smaller venues in the States at the same time.

The days of standing up to record company wishes to milk albums dry were also over as seen by the fact that the release of a double A single meant that exactly one-third of  Combat Rock had been put out on the 45rpm format.  But in saying this, there’s no argument that it is one of the band’s finest 45s.

My own preference is for Straight To Hell.  As I wrote when I included it in the ICA this time last year, my view is that it an extraordinary piece of music. The very idea that one of the world’s foremost punk bands would, within just five years of their explosive and noisy debut, end up recording and releasing a song that leaned heavily on a bossa nova drumbeat devised by Topper Headon and a haunting violin sound would have been laughable.

It has a stunning and thought-provoking lyric delivered by a resigned-sounding Joe Strummer who seems devastated by the fact that musicians cannot make the world’s problems disappear.

Radio stations and the general public however, preferred the charms of Should I Stay Or Should I Go. It has a great riff, a sing-a-long and infectiously catchy chorus and the most ridiculously yet charming backing vocals in some strange version of Spanish.  What’s not to like???

It famously became a huge hit all over again some nine years later after it was used in an advert to promote Levi Jeans.  It went to #1 in the UK as well as Top 5 in just about every singles chart in Europe.

 

mp3 : The Clash – Straight To Hell (edited version)
mp3 : The Clash – Should I Stay Or Should I Go

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO  : Released 17 September 1982 : #17 in the UK singles chart; #1 on its re-release in 1991

My favourite Clash song is ‘Train In Vain’. My favourite of their singles is in that vein – ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’.  I thought I’d heard it somewhere before (I’m not trying to be ironic). I had to buy all my Clash records until ‘Combat Rock’ which was produced by longtime Who producer Glyn Johns.  I got a free one of those . It makes me feel like I’m 34 again and Spring is in the cocaine.

We had a junior manager called Chris Chappel who was a huge Clash fan.  I invited them onto the US tour after Chris convinced our senior manager they would be good.  By the end of the tour, they had broken the USA.  We were playing huge stadiums on that tour and they really handled the shows well, and convinced the crowd they were real.

I adore The Clash, as I adored the Sex Pistols.  Different, incompatible, not really comparable, they both felt to me like bands who (like The Jam a little later) had travelled a route laid by The Who more than any other band.  The New York Dolls and the Ramones influenced British punk rock, of course, but it was our simultaneous exaltation of rock, and indifference to it, that both bands emulated, though they each had different reasons for using that particularly tortured formula.  So, I have a personal pride in The Clash as I do in the Sex Pistols and The Jam.

I feel bad that I have outlived Joe Strummer, but delighted that Topper is alive, against the odds: he is an absolute sweetheart. I really admire Mick Jones and Paul Simonon too, for remaining true to their individual artistic theses. These guys made a troubled and druggy period of my life in the late 1970s and early 1980s so much happier.  The Who just played at the Brighton Centre and all I could think of while we played was that I had once played with The Clash on the same stage in 1981.

Pete Townsend, The Who

THE CLASH ON SUNDAYS (17)

Disc 12 is Rock The Casbah.

Combat Rock had not turned out to be a return to the punk origins as many had thought might be the case based on its lead off single.  It was also clear that the record company were now, for whatever reason, calling more of the shots as Rock The Casbah was issued just seven weeks after Know Your Rights when there had previously been considerable gaps between the singles.

The move was as much a response to the reception given to the album, particularly in America.  There is no doubt that Rock the Casbah was always going to be a single, as evidenced by the promo video being made.  I’m not sure how many of you have noticed however, that the drummer in the video is none other than Terry Chimes and not Topper Headon….the irony of course being that we would later learn Rock The Casbah was mostly written by the now departed drummer who had left the band on the eve of the tour to promote the album, with exhaustion being cited.

This is a single like no other in the history of The Clash, at least during their time together as a band.  It didn’t do all that brilliantly in the UK, stalling at #30 and perhaps providing evidence that long time fans were finding it hard to come to terms with the new sound.  But elsewhere, where The Clash hadn’t really enjoyed huge success before, the single brought fame and fortune – Top 5 in both Australia and New Zealand, Top 20 across much of Europe and most crucially, Top 10 in the USA in both mainstream and dance charts.

It’s a song driven along in the main by the disco beat and piano playing, but there’s some decent contributions from Mick on guitar while Joe’s lyrics are among the catchiest he ever penned.  It’s a terrific and enduring pop song that, if written and recorded in that style by any other band of the era, would equally have proven to be a hit.  It’s the one song by The Clash that just about everyone aged 45-60 nowadays can easily recall.

It was released in the UK on 7″ and 12″ vinyl. The former contained a decent sounding and poppy b-side albeit it does on for maybe a minute too long)  which we would later learn was written by Paul Simonon about issues he was having in a long-term relationship but unlike Guns Of Brixton the vocal was taken on by Joe.  The latter had an instrumental remix of the a-side on offer:-

mp3 : The Clash – Rock The Casbah
mp3 : The Clash – Long Time Jerk
mp3 : The Clash – Mustapha Dance

ROCK THE CASBAH  : Released 11 June 1982 : #30 in the UK singles chart (#15 on 1991 re-release)

I was aware of The Clash when punk happened because that was what started us going, although I don’t think Joy Division were punk like that.  I think we were something else that came after that didn’t have a name.

‘Rock The Casbah’ is my favourite track. I heard it in New York when we first started going there in the early 80s after the demise of Joy Division. We were struggling a bit because Ian’s death meant we couldn’t go in that direction anymore, we’d peaked in that sound.

Clubs in NY were ‘new wave’ and the music was infinitely better than in England. For a start they were often in big warehouses.  There was the Peppermint Lounge, Danceteria, Hurrah’s, AM-PM…tons of them. They weren’t playing commercial dance music, but club tracks by English groups…and the two absolute classics were ‘Tainted Love’ by Soft Cell and ‘Rock The Casbah.’

It broke form. I believe it was written by the drummer. It really cut it in a club and showed me you can make club music that’s not cheesy – like nightclub music was in England at the time.  Here was a proper group, making proper music, but they were using traditional rock’n’roll instruments to make music that dominated a New York club scene.  That was a massive inspiration for me.

The song has great rhythmic content and a great hookline. It’s The Clash at their best.  OK, it’s not slashing guitars and a 190bpm tempo – but it’s a fucking great, really, really good song.

Bernard Sumner, Joy Division & New Order

THE CLASH ON SUNDAYS (16)

Disc 16 is Know Your Rights.

April 1982.  And just when you thought that The Clash were incapable of any new surprises, they hit hard with the release of what turned out to be the first of three singles that would be lifted from Combat Rock.

Maybe they were just fed up of not being able to articulate their message properly with a music press that were no longer fans (for the most part) or maybe it was just a bit of piss-taking from Joe aimed at those who had dismissed This Is Radio Clash as sloganeering even before hearing a single note.  But it takes a big set of balls to scream out that what follows on record is ‘a public service announcement………………..WITH GUITARS!!!!!’

Yup, it’s time to throw away the funk, disco and reggae and get back to some good old-fashioned noise to what is suspiciously akin to a rockabilly beat.  But it was exactly what we were needing.

I’m a big fan of this song, and think it is one of the most underrated of the singles.  It was a throwback to the angry, disenfranchised band of old. It only came out on 7″ vinyl – no extended remixes for this track – and it even had a b-side that name-checked London just like so many songs of old.  The infatuation with America was seemingly over and it made me believe that the forthcoming album was going to be 45 minutes of pent-up aggression unleashed on a listening public.

Got that wrong didn’t I?

mp3 : The Clash – Know Your Rights
mp3 : The Clash – First Night Back In London

Years later, the early versions of the songs that made it onto Combat Rock became available in bootleg form.  It is interesting to hear how the lyric is delivered with a far more cynical rather than angry tone.  It’s also a couple of minutes longer than the version that was eventually publicly issued…

mp3 : The Clash – Know Your Rights (early version)

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS  : Released 23 April 1982 : #43 in the UK singles chart

For me it’s all about the first ten seconds of ‘Know Your Rights’.  The way Mick Jones bashes his guitar  and then Strummer shouts “This is a public service announcement/With guitars!” That’s the whole reason why The Clash existed right there. It’s a massive influence on what we’re going with Radio 4.

As a kid growing up in America, ‘Combat Rock’ was everywhere. MTV had just started and the video for ‘Rock the Casbah’ was on all the time. All the kids at school loved it but ‘Know Your Rights’ was the one for me. It’s the ultimate synthesis of all their influences, from reggae to punk through R&B to soul.  Musically, it sounds really urgent, as if they were keen to tighten things up.

Maybe they were conscious that they’d lost a few people en route with ‘Sandinista’ and wanted ro strip the sound back to bare bones.  The lyrics are spot on: “Murder is a crime/Unless it is done by a politician or an aristocrat”.  Someone could release ‘Know Your Rights’ next week and it would still sound relevant.  It’s timeless.

Anthony Roman, Radio 4

THE CLASH ON SUNDAYS (15)

Disc 15 is This Is Radio Clash.

By late 1981, The Clash were not getting much positive press in the UK.  This was in part down to the continued backlash against what many critics and journalists considered to be a folly (or even worse a vanity project) of the triple-album but also because the band were no longer as accessible as they had been just five years previous when the debut album and singles had been unleashed.

Word came through that the band were reverting to old practices and releasing a one-off 45 that hadn’t been on any previous albums nor would it feature on any future recordings.  Word then came through that the title of the new 45 was to be This Is Radio Clash, and before anyone had heard a single second of music, it had been dismissed by a number of writers on the title alone on the basis that they’d had enough of the Joe’s sloganeering.

As such, the new single was on a hiding to nothing.  The reviews were mixed to say the least, and there was a further backlash when it was revealed that the 7″ single was the same tune with slightly altered lyrics and the 12″ only had remixes.  As someone wrote at the time, it was as if the band had used up all their creative talent in making Sandanista! and now had the equivalent of writer’s block.

All of which is very unfair on the single.  Yes, it was another surprise in terms of its sound being akin to a dance number that was more funk than punk, but it was far from awful.  Indeed, it is easy to look back now and see that they were laying down a marker for what was to be their next album – the one that really would propel them to fame and fortune in the USA which had been such a goal in recent times.  As one of those new wavers who liked his disco music, I was at the time and have continued ever since to be a fan of this single and can look back with pride that I helped it reach the giddy heights of #47!! Although I have to admit that the 12″ mixes are a bit on the dull side.

mp3 : The Clash – This Is Radio Clash
mp3 : The Clash – Radio Clash
mp3 : The Clash – Outside Broadcast
mp3 : The Clash – Radio 5

Worth noting that at the time of its release, there were only Radios 1,2,3 and 4 broadcasting nationally on the BBC in the UK. Radio 5, which became the news and sports channel, was launched in 1990.

THIS IS RADIO CLASH  : Released 20 November 1981 : #47 in the UK singles chart

The thing with ‘Radio Clash’ is it’s got that great ‘dan-daan-daan-dandaaaah’ introduction, almost as if saying ‘Here comes the villain’, the the riff comes in.  It’s pretty much like listening to the future if you consider what they were doing with sampling and remixing but without all the modern technology.

I wasn’t around for punk but you didn’t have to be to realise it was way ahead of its time. Also, it’ still got the attitude in there, even now, many years on. Joe’s lyrics hit home.  If you compare it to ‘White Riot’, they are so far apart stylistically, and that to me is what makes The Clash great. The mixing of styles, the lack of fear of experimentation, the way they’d get on and make records they wanted to, regardless of what anyone thought.  Not being afraid to try musically different styles has influenced Hard Fi,

I’m from a satellite town where the cultural arena was pretty sparse so The Clash were one of the ways to actually find out about stuff, whether it was dub, ska or Jack Kerouac.  They talked about what was going on in the world, we took that from them, they dealt with global issues but we’ve kept it to a local level. My older brother, Steve, got me into them.  Then I read Nirvana talking about them in interviews, and then Mick produced my first band.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago when he joined us on stage at Brixton Academy and it sums up how so much has changed in the last few years.  You couldn’t ask for any more. When I hear their songs it makes my heart beat faster, and I just want to pick up my guitar and get on stage.

Richard Archer, Hard Fi

(I’m thinking today’s author won’t be too well-known outside of the UK – here’s wiki )