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 !!

Sunday already and I’m not vaguely sure where the last 36 hours skipped off to. Nice to see proper football back at last and a signal that the bloody summer here is now entering its final stages. Welcome back to the blog wherever you may be reading and I wanted to point out a few more changes that should help with site navigation. Over on the right under ‘categories’ I’m going to add each post for video clash / westway traffic / clash shopping /clash landmarks etc so if you find a post you like and want to review older posts in the same vein you can find them far more easily. So for example this post will get filed under Clash Landmarks for the rest of time…or something. I’ve also added that ‘events’ page on the top navigation on the page which (when I get it current) will help us keep better track of things that are coming up on the calendar. Speaking of the calendar I noticed its been a while since I did a Clash landmarks feature and also tomorrow marks the anniversary in 1982 of when The Clash began their North America Combat Rock Tour. For all intents this was the last ‘proper’ Clash tour and the one which led to the huge success and ultimately the implosion of the band. The tour kicked off just outside Denver at the Red Rocks amphitheatre.

Red Rocks is of course famously associated with a live performance by U2 in 1983, another semi-ironic case of U2 making inroads by following in the steps that The Clash had taken before them. That live album by U2 took the awareness of the Irish band to a whole new level even before they had consolidated their appeal outside of England and Ireland, a live album that sold for years and was seen as a must have for fans. A good example of CBS failing to do what Island Records did so well, capturing exactly what the fans of a band wanted. Island saw that U2 had something of an extra gear when playing live (the material on Red Rocks improves greatly on the first 2 albums) and decided to capture that as a live album. The Clash live were an amazing proposition and a quality live Clash album in 1983 might have not only increased the profile of the band but taken the pressure off of the band to tour, record, tour, record. Just a thought and not what this piece is about. Somehow we waited until the late 90’s for a live Clash album which is just insane.

Ever since I can remember seeing a band live has held huge appeal to me and the venue has often been a part of that. In London I’d sometimes see a band I was only half interested in if the location was somewhere I’d never been before. Going into the lobby of a club for the first time before you see the configuration of the stage always held a lot of excitement for me and if I visited a new city and when I moved to new places checking out the venues was always high on my list of things to do. I’ve got a long list of places I’ve read about that I wish I could get to for a concert, sadly many especially in cities like New York are now long gone. Outdoor venues have typically held as much appeal to me as camping (read as none) as I don’t want bugs biting me, rain falling on me or the lack of a ceiling causing the sound to echo upward to the heavens. Plus really, standing in a field also has its own set of problems. Hollywood Bowl is one excellent exception to the rule and another I’d like to visit is Red Rocks just outside Denver. The natural rock formations create an amphitheatre carved out of nature rather than trampling dirt down and throwing up bleacher seating. It apparently sounds as great as it looks and maybe one day I’ll get up to Colorado and see a show there. I would have loved to have seen The Clash there and I think James supported Neil Young there on an acoustic tour back in ‘93. In part two I’ll look at the concert itself and the history of Red Rocks which I previously had no idea about. Mostly though it should have been Strummer at the heart of the biggest live album of that era and not Bono – another example of where The Clash could have taken pressure off with better management and planning. A shame, though I don’t quite know why I keep revisiting the late stages of the band recently? Probably trying to understand it better – but more to the point it shows me the list of reasons was as long as the regrets it then caused. Part two later in the week….back to sick cat watch here….

Hello all and welcome back to the Clash Blog, hope your weekend is going well. Updates from the desert – George the Clash Blog cat is doing a bit better with some medication it seems, still looking for root cause but pinched nerve /arthritis look to be leading contenders for said cat’s recent struggles. Poor old George. I’m alright just got it from playing football and suitably knackered, had a look back at the recent posts and noticed we’ve yet to go on a search for new/odd/interesting videos so far this month so that will be on the agenda. I also don’t know that anything more taxing than looking at videos sounds ideal after dropping more money at the vet. The goal remains the same, hopefully less than most of you have seen many of the videos selected – so let me know if that is the case. Some may not be new but recently loaded to the video directory at youtube et al.

“That’s a good album if you’re into your punk music” This chap might remind some of you of yourselves or someone you know. Very basically this very nice lad introduces us to his collect of ‘Clash stuff’. He’s simply a fan but that pure adoration of the band comes through from him laying out all his cds, records and books. In the background he’s got the band providing backing to his narration as he just rambles on a bit. You might not need the full 10 minutes of the video to get the gist of it but its fun to watch just to see the devotion of a fan. I’d also guess he’s no more than in his mid 20’s as he doesn’t reference double or triple albums so he was probably well after the time the band were in full flow, that in itself I think says so much about the continuing impact of the band. I like the video most for his delivery and instructions ‘don’t download that, just buy it’  – also listen (near the end) for the story of how he got into The Clash it might make you a bit weepy.

Paul Simonon interview – 1990 I realise there are a lot of clips online I’ve never seen before and this is one of them. Taken from Canadian TV in 1990 Paul Simonon and Gary Myrick are interviewed at length (ostensibly of course about Havana 3am). Interesting interview overall if for no other reason in the contrast between a lad from London and another from Dallas, Texas. Also reminded me how Havana 3am did some support slots for Big Audio Dynamite upon suggestion from Mick, another one of those things that gets buried in the mountain of debris in my head. If you’ve never seen it you’ll enjoy it.

London Calling covered by SOR Band? – 31/7/10 Where to begin, I can’t resist a Clash cover version and I don’t add many to these posts unless there is something a bit different. This one is different but they look young, they’re doing their best and its a nod to The Clash. Things to watch for: the club looks like the back of my Nan’s house in Dublin, they are playing the song with keyboards (a bit different), the drummer is Animal from the Muppets as best as I can tell. I feel awful as I can’t share a thing about SOR Band, so if you know them or are them please write in, I think the ‘gig’ was in New York.

The Offspring cover ‘Guns of Brixton’ in Vancouver: They’ve covered this for quite a while as far as I know but I’ve never mentioned it on the blog. Its a good run through of the Simonon track if a little bit too regimented. Tell me honestly that The Offspring are normally a little more animated on stage than this surely? That said its a decent version.

Honourable mentions:

Not karaoke, not a cover but this girl just seems to love to mime to Rock the Casbah. Watch for jazz hands and….well the rest of it, I can’t explain…

The Sunshiners cover ‘Should I Stay…’ , not quite calypso or reggae and neither completely awful or especially good.

That will be all I’ve got this evening, I need to check the cat and it just started raining so I need to go and get wet (it never rains here). Thanks for dropping in.