Alright then it’s a Friday night at Clash Blog towers and I just brewed perhaps the strongest cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted outside of Italy, it’s very good but I might not sleep again until next Thursday. I do hope your week went well and that the weekend promises some excitement or relaxing moments subject to your preference. I think I’m off to see Tim Kasher (the singer from Cursive) on Sunday night and I really should as he puts on quite a brilliant show and I think Cursive and his other act The Good Life are two of the best American bands of the last decade. Check them out if you haven’t.

Gotta get The Clash in the top 5 !

I had intended to do some proper writing tonight and then another poll popped up that I wasn’t previously aware of that really needs your participation. It seems that the next edition of the NME will have their rendition of the best 20 debut albums of all-time which will be definitely worth a look. In the meantime you can vote for your preferred choice for the best debut ever and you won’t be surprised to see the first Clash album from 1977 amongst the contenders. All things considered the current ranking of ninth isn’t all that bad although for me I think it is one of the three or four best debuts of all-time. I don’t think it’s the best debut album ever, but I will tell you that my choice for that particular prestige does make the NME list that appears to the left. With enough high scores there looks to be a chance to move The Clash into the top five but to do so it’s going to need to leapfrog Jimi Hendrix, The Smiths, Joy Division and The Stone Roses. I still find it absurd that an album that is almost guaranteed to make these type of lists never got an official US release back in 77, with the eventual release matching the UK version in title only as the content was so shuffled by the thinkers in suits over at CBS records.

What do you think of the list overall? What obvious titles do you think it’s missing? I would definitely include Jesus and Mary Chain and The Streets in my list amongst others after I gave it some brief consideration. From 1977 and 1978 the two obvious titles are there (The Clash and The Sex Pistols) which doesn’t leave any room for The Stranglers, The Damned, Buzzcocks or any other contemporaries. Of the 20 albums 13 are from the UK and 6 surprisingly were released in the last 10 years. I’m surprised that REM, Talking Heads, U2 and some others aren’t on the list although each of the debuts by those bands were occasionally patchy. I think for a band to have the best debut ever it suggests that the first album may have been the pinnacle of their output which I don’t think you can say for The Clash although I do think that the first Clash album was the most important record released between 1970 and 1978. Last fact if you actually care, I own 14 of the 20 listed although I’m sure some of you can top that. But also be really interested to hear what debuts you think should have made the list but were omitted. I’d be prepared to bet a pound against a penny that when the NME publishes its list The Clash debut will rank higher than ninth and it should in this poll as well, so that is up to us. In the best rigged elections outside of Florida in 2000, here is the link to the NME list itself and here is the link to vote for that famous green black and orange charge of energy from 1977. (don’t forget to select your ‘score’ for the album als0). We could also vote lower for the albums above The Clash but that’s a bit nasty innit?

One last thing tonight, I wanted to do a little bit of shameless self-promotion for a new blog that I am now writing. Although I write other blogs for other businesses, I wanted to have a forum to write about topics other than The Clash from time to time. Please don’t view this as any sort of infidelity, more a case of me needing both an additional creative outlet for writing but also to improve my writing style as I seek to add more freelance writing gigs to my portfolio (so to speak). I’ll be writing about a broad range of topics including music, the media, blogging, society and news and politics are sure to creep into the mix as well. It started with the name which won’t surprise you has a very strong Clash connection and we were excited to find that WorldServiceBulletins.com was available in the first place. If you’ve enjoyed the Clash Blog and there’s at least a reasonable chance that you’ll enjoy parts of the new one too and I welcome your visits, your comments, your feedback and any support via the usual social media methods (Facebook, twitter, etc) to get the blog better known. It will also help me keep The Clash Blog more on task I would think, although that remains to be seen. Anyway, please click over to WorldServiceBulletins if you can and have a look – there’s already a fair few posts to get you started and the site is still being fine tuned.  Thank you.

That should do it for now and hopefully I’ll have time for more than two more updates over the weekend as I realised the backlog of things to get to is a bit absurd. I know that Gorillaz played in Dublin last night and in Manchester this evening with London to follow, if you happened to attend any of the gigs and wanted to write in or share photos etc. please contact me via the usual channels. I’m especially interested to know how the audience reacted to seeing Mick and Paul onstage again although I daresay the UK press will be full of that over the coming days as well. Cheers – Tim

A happy new week to you all then as we steam into another Monday on the blog. I just don’t know where the time goes anymore as it seems like it should be midsummer and yet here we are in the second week of October. I also noticed that I have the very best intentions when it comes to rolling along with The Clash Cup and yet once I think it’s about a week since the latest installment it turns out that it’s been close to three weeks which is unforgivably long. My October resolution will be to get to at least three more match ups before Halloween so tonight will be the first. If you happen to be new to the blog it’s a simple process where you vote for the best Clash song based upon a random match up, better still is proportional representation is offered so that runners-up can still make it through to the next round with good support. We’re getting closer to the final 64 songs now and the beginning of round three, the final goal is to propose the best 16, 8 and then the final four best Clash songs ever recorded. According to you, the cream of Clash fans. Before that we have to review the last pairing which I’m ashamed to say was back on September 18.

English Civil War defeated Four Horsemen 39-19

That was far more one-sided than I had expected, but for once (at last) my preferred choice made it through to the next round. I’m very curious to see how many tracks from London Calling make it to the final 64 but Four Horsemen won’t be one of them. So let’s move on to the next terrific twosome.

Clash Cup Round 2 Match 12

What’s My Name versus Jimmy Jazz

This really is a fantastic pairing of songs for so many reasons. First of all both of them are really good tracks and it would be a shame to see either depart with The Clash Cup quite so early. Better still is a huge contrast in styles of the two songs, if you bumped into some herbert who had only ever heard ‘Rock The Casbah’ and wanted to know more about The Clash just imagine if you threw these two songs at him or her to listen to. If you have no prior knowledge of the band you’d probably be shocked to realize it was the same group in the first place, What’s My Name is almost a prototype 1976 English punk song although I think the original version may have predated Joe Strummer joining the band that summer, but received his lyrical reworking like some other early Mick Jones tracks. As for musicianship it along with White Riot is one of the more basic Clash tracks to play but what it lacks in complexity it makes up for with aggression and lyrical nous. Hard to believe then that just three years later the same band knocked out Jimmy Jazz for the London Calling album, what would have been a huge departure in 1978 somehow fit just perfectly onto the album that established the band as being willing to draw from the past as much as write about the future. The origins of the song lay with Topper Headon and his desire to do something with a jazz feel on the album, when added to Joe Strummer’s ability to ‘tell that tale’ plus the introduction of brass you have a Clash song unlike any other.

Form Book

Round 1 What’s My Name defeated The Right Profile     72% of the vote
Round 1 Jimmy Jazz defeated If Music Could Talk    74% of the vote

Back in the first round both songs had to overcome fairly stubborn opposition but did so quite comfortably it looks. If Jimmy Jazz is one of the least likely Clash songs on London Calling, then the song that What’s My Name defeated in round one would probably run a close second. I had thought The Right Profile would have done a bit better, but support for some of the early Clash songs seems to be very strong. With all that said I don’t quite know which way you lot might vote on this pairing. I think it will be very close but Jimmy Jazz will just win it by head. Chop Chop!

Stuff

This is sometimes a tricky bit, trying to tell you something about the songs that you don’t already know. As it happens I’m in the middle of that Marcus Gray book about the making of London Calling, whilst it’s an interesting read at times it gets very very detailed to the point where you need a cup of coffee and a cigarette after reading some chapters – so full of information is his writing. He also runs through track by track in such exquisite detail that you feel a bit overwhelmed by the information, you can’t argue the facts really but you can debate the interpretation of some songs at least to a certain extent. Jimmy Jazz is one such song where the lyrics are examined as painstakingly as a crime scene, though I’m not convinced that Strummer had quite so much in mind when to a certain extent the song is so brilliant because it feels quite free-form and he literally skats his way through it. As for trivia, opening whistle isn’t provided by Joe or any member of the Clash but by band friend and roadie The Baker  (what a relief, thanks for correction lads…). As for What’s My Name, I just checked and the song does get co-writing credits for Keith Levene so it was kicking around from the very early days. It’s a song that is either about alienation or just general confusion, some observerance about boredom by its very nature just simply getting you into trouble, which it can, and does, and I have.

Before you cast your vote, I always urge you to take one last listen to both songs before clicking a mouse so that you vote with a clear conscience. As ever I will provide a few links to get you started, I don’t think you can top this live version of Jimmy Jazz from New Jersey in 1980. ‘Who said no birds will sing’. For What’s My Name you can find a great selection of lovely raw recording from the earlier gigs, but this one from Manchester in 1977 is a must see/hear for Joe Strummer going simply mental.

Thanks for voting, polls are all yours until Friday. Please add your comments to explain your voting, I always enjoy that. Talk to you soon.

 Loading ...

Good day to you once more, how was the sanctity of your weekend then? I hope calm, busy, productive or whatever adjective you had in mind and not the steaming opposite. I’ve been reading a lot about The Clash lately and taking it all in for future regurgitation in hopefully some presentable form. I have to say that The Clash band upon entering an industry that was full of rules and accepted ways of getting things accomplished (then far more so than now) were never really suited to play that game, which is fortunate for us in terms of the output but in my opinion was also probably the underlying reason we only got about seven years longevity from the band. All the decisions they made compiled together to make an implosion pretty much inevitable or at least likely, especially when their growing popularity was never offset by some time to take stock and then organise what to do next.

Image courtesy Pennie Smith

Every facet of The Clash story contains now well-documented decisions that seem to have been made with little concern for how it might be perceived by critics or label management. I won’t call the decisions they made mistakes, they were the key notes that shaped exactly what The Clash became but many skilled observers would say that The Clash were a success despite the decisions they made, not because of them. I think that everything does happen for a reason ultimately and its from those odd pairings that the best chemistry can happen. You never know when you are about to meet someone who might change the direction of your life forever, you can’t plan for that and if you do it will be less of a life anyway. Just look at the four members of the band, they weren’t friends before but gelled to compliment each other, you can counter that with Bernie Rhodes ‘made’ them work together, but they could have each walked out, others did. I’m just finding myself fascinated with some of the facts about the band and when you lay them end to end it makes for a series of huge gambles, each one becoming arguably more risky and counter intuitive. I wonder do the actions of a band we really like perhaps permeate our own sense of risk taking, if not a band then who – a parent or a teacher I guess…or are we programmed to do what we do and that’s the end of it?

I’ll finish my thoughts I’m sure in other posts but you can’t help but be amazed at the collective decisions The Clash took. A few things run true and familiar throughout which shows that the consistency you see was in actuality quite consistent. The Clash took great efforts to provide value for money to their fans, whether that started due to Mick being an obsessive music fan and lover of pop culture or Joe and Paul having been so broke for so long that they wanted to ease their fans financial involvement. The band wanted their gigs to cost less than other bands, were one of the last to really jump on the merchandising bandwagon and then keeping prices low. Releasing albums and singles at prices that didn’t make for the profit margins the label wanted but appealed to Joe’s sense of value. They also weren’t living the high life, the CBS contract and constant change of  management meant cash was spent before it was earned and decisions were made to tour as it brought in needed cash. They also took risks with the music they recorded and

Ray Jordan and Paul Simonon (image courtesy Chelsea Space)

released. Making sure singles weren’t on albums initially at least and wanting to take risks with the sounds and influences they channeled. I don’t see many calculated moves throughout their career…I mean ‘Hitsville UK‘ as a single and on a triple album? As time wore on they took more risks not fewer, managing and producing themselves for a time…Guy Stevens as a producer, embracing rap and esoteric guests for vocals or poets to read over a track. Nothing safe…and nothing as expected.

They worked with people they liked rather than people they needed. They toured with their mates and girlfriends, they let friends become roadies and drivers, technicians and promoters. They didn’t pay attention to what was the easiest way to do things…and therefore make more money. They lost money by having acts they admired support them in the US – and also lost it in the UK by putting too many bands on the bill at too low a price. See a rule and do the opposite…just do what sounds interesting and will appeal to the fans.

Indie music/labels as a phrase didn’t exist before punk came about….the independent record label and the freedom that came with it was a thing of the future. Although The Clash signed to CBS, one of the biggest labels, they really set about their work as if it was Factory or Rough Trade. More to the point it was the fear of contract as a noose that allowed the indies to take off immediately after punk. Where would be without those labels? Well…we’ve seen the benefits ever since (current charts not withstanding). It never changed either…Strummer choosing a small label for the Mescaleros because ‘he liked them’ and Carbon Silicon giving music away online both are in keeping with the opposite of shrewd and the definition of inclusiveness. I like that Joe bought albums and cds from record shops wherever he might be…that Mick collected films and comics. I’ll even try and pull this all together by saying I think its exactly why Paul and Mick are touring with Gorillaz, nobody would have expected it nor called it a likely idea to bring immediate credit and yet they’ve pulled it off in my opinion. Its all part of the fabric of a band that would face a big decision by doing what felt right. Not a bad way to do it…

I’ll be back later with Clash Cup and more Gorillaz stuff. Tim

I just heard about this…and am saddened. RIP Solomon Burke – What a voice that man had…passed away today at age 70.

Solomon Burke…the voice