Only me again with the latest installment of the Clash Blog. I’m not impressed today as the temperature is back over 110f just when I thought the worst of the summer was gone, if you’re sitting somewhere and complaining about it being in the 60’s outside I don’t want to hear it. Make sure you check back with the blog over the weekend as I should have approval for some very cool images from a recent art exhibition for you. This afternoon back like a zombie it’s time for The Clash Cup, I know it’s been dormant for a few weeks but all of the events surrounding Joe Strummer’s Birthday including reviews and previews took out much of the blog during the latter part of August.

So will it be this B-Side...

The Clash Cup if you’re new to the blog is a very simple and democratic process allows you to select your favorite Clash song by way of voting on the blog. We are now in round two and looking to whittle down the best Clash songs ever until we reach a final 16, then eight and so on. Each of the pairings is set 100% at random so you take what you get even with the decision isn’t always easy. Before tonight’s pairing we do have to review the voting for the most recent installment of the cup which was earlier in August. Decent voter turnout for the last matchup but I would suggest the more likely song still won out:

This is Radio Clash defeated Ghetto Defendant 28-18

Closer than I expected but I don’t think enough runner-up votes to allow the Combat Rock track to make it through to the next round, which to be fair is probably how it should be. As I said this is most likely the last round where the voting will often be fairly easy, so let’s have a look at the next pair:

Round 2 Match 10

City of the Dead versus  Justice Tonight/Kick It Over

Well that’s a turn up for the books as neither song would make the most obvious list of Clash songs which is not to say either song is poor by any means. In fact both songs are quite unique in terms of sound and come from that spell of hyperactivity that The Clash were guilty of from ‘77 until ‘79. The other thought I had almost immediately is how do you separate the two and choose a winner? I know which one I prefer (just) but I won’t share it so as not to influence your voting… as if. Also by sheer coincidence both tracks appeared on Super Black Market Clash which I think is another novelty in this pairing. The extended version of the album is sometimes just the perfect tonic for a good Clash fix perhaps especially because it featured many songs you don’t hear quite as often. Battle of the B-sides!!

Form book:

Round 1 – City of the Dead defeated Freedom Train           98% of the vote
Round 1 – Justice Tonight defeated Junco Partner             73% of the vote

Odds:

I am not quite sure what you can take from the first round, both for convincing wins although Justice Tonight had to overcome a trickier challenge from Junco Partner which was tough because I love both songs. If I had to predict a winner I think it might just be City of the Dead because it is an original track and not a dub/remix. Though I do think the voting will be close.

Stuff:

...this B-Side?

Not many tracks by the Clash have dated that badly at all, although I do think City of the Dead is one of the rare exceptions where the production just sounds a little muddy and the song could only be from the mid-late 70s. Worth remembering a song this good was originally just a B-Side to the stellar Complete Control. Justice Tonight of course was B- side to another of the most famous Clash singles London Calling so for yet another reason this pairing has fantastic symmetry. You don’t need me to tell you it’s also the dub version of Armagideon Time, a song that I will go on record and proclaim as my very favourite Clash cover version and high on my list of all Clash songs.

As for the voting the polls open immediately and you will have until next Tuesday morning to cast your vote for which song remains in the competition. Before you vote it’s always good to have one last chance to compare the songs side-by-side so if you’d like to just click the links that I provide. For City of the Dead let’s substitute the live version so we don’t focus on the production of the original. I do think some of Joe’s lyrics on the track are superb. Your last task is to reserve 8:54 of your life to just mellow out to Justice Tonight / Kick It Over and make sure you turn up the bass first of all.

Enjoy voting and thank you – this is actually rather an interesting pairing.

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Hello once more Clash fans and others, cheers for dropping in. I’ve got quite a few odds and sods to get to so lets just leap right in shall we? There are some official breaking things surrounding Sandinista!

Uncut Magazine features The Clash – If you’re in the UK you already know about this (and thanks for your emails) – the new edition of Uncut has an in-depth interview with Mick, Paul and Topper about the making of Sandinista! thus I find it quite funny that the cover promises ‘the untold story’ of the making of the album, as opposed to what exactly? 1980 was such a hectic year in Clash history that the making of the 4th Clash album has never been reviewed properly by the band with most commentary to date referring to the fact that it had too many songs / would have been better as a single or double album etc. I wouldn’t change a thing as it happens, its perhaps the album that I’ve grown up with and returned to more in the last decade than the others. Incidentally the bonus CD with the latest issue features fifteen tracks that Joe featured during his London Calling BBC broadcasts, my favourite of which is this by Cornershop and I think the lyrics sound like something Strummer himself might have written.

Leave Chattanooga
Walk in to New York City
Aeroplane down to Nippon ground
Meets some friends in Tokio-town
Across to West Maluva
Showboat to West Malay
Leave my foes to their woes
Sometimes “that’s how it goes”
It’s good to be on the road back home again

Speaking of Sandinista! its as good as official that a special 30th anniversary edition of the album will be released this year with requisite bonus tracks and some demos and remixes (plus I would expect remastering of some sort). I had to purchase another copy of the double CD recently to replace my worn out CDs just a few years ago so in addition to the vinyl and cassettes it looks like a 5th version will he heading to the household in time for Christmas. I think we’ll make the month the reissue comes out Sandinista! month on the blog. I’d love for the reissue to feature a live concert from late ‘80 or early ‘81 but I haven’t read anything that indicates this might be the case (grumpy return to my keyboard).

Returning to Uncut (I’m not in the UK so please don’t spoil my anticipation in reading the article when I get an imported copy in a week or two!) I hope the interview addresses the oft-circulated rumour that the album was essentially the work of Topper and Mick with session musicians and a well known Blockhead taking up much of the remaining slack during the recording process. I don’t buy that suggestion and I never really have and while its likely that the group cohesion during the recording of London Calling was no longer in full evidence as it had been in the summer of 1979 I don’t think the triple album was Mick Jones and Topper simply working with hired hands for the most part. Yes there were guest musicians but it is certainly a Clash album as a finished product. Others have said the evidence is that live versions of songs from this era bare little resemblance to the studio equivalents but once more I think that is the sound of a band expanding their limits and looking to break the confines of simply recreating a song in a live setting. Naturally I could be 100% wrong on both my assumptions so I’d be happy to hear what you think. Don’t however spill the beans on the magazine interview just yet – I’ll cover that when I get my copy!

Worth a mention and a link to a story is the fact that this summer did mark the 31st anniversary of the Sandinista uprising in Nicaragua which The Clash brought to a new audience. On July 21 1979 the first events associated with the uprising took place which eventually led to the overthrow of the existing dictatorship. This revolution this was one of the youngest and most independent rebel situations in recent history as most of the key people involved were little more than teens who didn’t have a plan B so much as they knew plan A had to be evicted. As you can predict the story didn’t end in ecstasy but it did mark a significant positive change in the history of that central American republic.

What else….today is September 1st – the least glorious day in Clash history as it marks the date in 1983 when the official word of Mick Jones being sacked from his own band was made public. Apparently so Paul and Joe could get The Clash back on track towards the original goals of the band…we know how that ended. I’ve written about that at length in the past and will do again I’m sure but its burned on my calendar as the darkest day during the time the band were a going concern. With that said let’s talk again September 2nd yes? Thanks for dropping in…

Let’s end on a happier note – check out this chap’s memory of meeting Joe Strummer many years ago.

Hello all – welcome to the weekend and a new season for Arsenal. A lack of activity in the transfer market leaves Arsenal supporters.…..ahhh….no, wrong blog, you really don’t want to hear all that do you? I will boldly predict the premier league table this weekend if you want to chime in…but for now The Clash!

Image courtesy Hank O'Neal - Mick Jones NYC 1982

I had something on tap for this evening until the video beneath came to my attention (thanks Simon & Brenda). There is a part one to the video but its essentially 6 minutes of very little to watch although Joe is funny towards the end, part two is what is of interest. This has been on youtube for quite some time so apologies if you have already seen it – it isn’t tagged in an obvious fashion so hopefully I’m not the last Clash fan in the world to have seen this. Thanks to Brenda again who can shed extra light on the specifics – the film was captured in Dec 1981 at Electric Lady Studios in New York. The video captures some conversation with Mick and Joe as they’ve been working on mixing Know Your Rights from the last Clash album (well..next to last) which wasn’t to see a release for another six months or so. Joe is really funny if not entirely convinced by the unfinished track but seems to loosen up when the playback starts, Mick explains ‘it hasn’t been mixed yet’ . The video captures a full version with fairly decent audio of the playback of the song with the original rough mix, a very different sounding song in tone and lyrics from what eventually found its way onto Combat Rock after Mick was removed from production duties. A lot has been written about ‘Rat Patrol’ mixes of the album when Mick headed production which not only featured at times radically different versions of songs that remained on the album but also a number of tracks that were then scrapped at a fairly advanced stage. Production was handed over to Glyn Johns who shortened tracks in length and ‘polished’ (I wouldn’t use that adjective) the songs to something that was more palatable to CBS or other members of the band depending on whose account is correct. Sadly while CBS saw fit to release one greatest hits album after another we’ve yet to have a full version of the Rat Patrol mixes from The earlier sessions so they can be compared side by side. Perhaps for the 30th anniversary?

The video is interesting  for a number of reasons, the energy in the studio, the demeanour of Joe who seems gradually satisfied with the track and the focus of Mick. The reaction to the song being played back is priceless in itself and leaves me wondering if Mick’s removal from production duties had far more to do with the label or management than Joe (or Paul/Topper).

I actually debated whether this video is even a good fit for the blog as due to the circumstances a lot might be read into what you see. Its really worth remembering everyone is very aware of it being filmed (not a daily event when cutting an album) and react in accordance to some extent. I don’t know more than most of you – and some of you know a lot more than I about the later days of The Clash. As I’ve expressed numerous times I think about 50 things went wrong over those last 18 months and you can argue that pulling Mick off of production was yet another one. It’s so simplistic to put it down to a single event, simplistic and almost certainly wrong. As a fan of the band and especially the music I’d like to have heard the original mixes of that album but not as bootlegs as they seemed to be pushing sounds into far bolder shapes than what was to then become Combat Rock. Regardless its on youtube anyway so I thought you’d find it worth a few minutes of your time.

Still – hope you enjoy it…..it made my evening a level more challenging (yes I argue with myself about the blog….how normal is that?).  Back soon ~

Mixing ‘Know Your Rights’, New York Dec ‘81

PS – My thanks to our friend Alan Miles who posted this video to our facebook page, please have a look at this splendid cover version of ‘Straight To Hell’

PPS – Keep an eye on the EVENTS page (top tool bar) as I’ll keep adding reminders for upcoming stuff !!