Hello again you wonderful Clashites (is that a word?) and welcome to a happy Monday. It’s happier than usual here as it’s a holiday Monday of sorts, something to do with some bloke who claimed to have discovered America. The native Americans and Vikings might have something to say on that matter although I’ve already discounted the piece of folklore that it was initially an Irish monk, although every other person here does claim to be partly Irish. I, on the other hand, actually am to the tune of 50% (cheers Mum). Right, I’m sure you didn’t land on the site today to learn such mundane facts so let me leap over to a wall in New Jersey for something more interesting.

Most of you will already be familiar with agitprop, politico and cultural artist Shepard Fairey. More importantly than that he’s also a huge Clash fan which raises his profile significantly as far as we’re concerned. Amongst his most famous pieces were Obama ‘hope’ (but the republicans don’t wanna share any) and a very nice Joe Strummer piece or two. I like Fairey’s work a great deal but I don’t like his name as I have to check the spelling every single time I write it.

Anyway Mr SF has been up to more great things with the recent completion and unveling of a giant mural on the wall of famed Asbury Lanes in Asbury Park, New Jersey. I’ve never been to Asbury Park although it’s famed in Clash lore from previous visits by the band – it looks a little bit like Southend meets Clacton. Correct me if I’m wrong. The mural is rather lovely and holds exta significance to us as it features Joe Strummer as one of the six punk icons on the piece. I may be biased but I also think that Joe looks by far the coolest of the six, I also take issue with who those six people should have been. At present the representatives are Joey Ramone, Johnny Rotten, Joe Strummer, Glenn Danzig, Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins. I’d probably take the first three and Henry Rollins (who deserves something for longevity). I’d probably include Paul, Topper and Mick but the wall isn’t big enough and let’s stick to one member per band. You could make a very good case for removing Danzig and MacKaye (maybe if I was exposed to Minor Threat at the time I’d feel differently?) and replace with any two from Dave Vanian, Pete Shelley, Siouxsie Sioux, Stiv Bators or Jello Biafra. I’m sure I’m missing other equally worthy names but nobody asked me. What do you think?

Let’s not get away from how cool the wall is however and I think/hope this will become another one of those places that must be visited if you’re in that part of the world. I do of course think yet again that this reiterates a huge gap in West London. We need something Clash inspired and permanent.

Please click on each photo for a larger view and before I forget I must give credit to those who took them, the top two are from Jason Persse check his stream as there’s some great stuff , while the final image titled Mount Rushcore was by Breathless Conni (apparently).

There is space (based on the last photo) for at least 3 or 4 more but I’d have to assume this is he completed version. Art lovers let me know? Okay time to enjoy some sunshine, remember that you can keep current via Facebook, Twitter get the RSS feed for the blog or email me and as ever I appreciate you sharing the blog wherever you can. October is off to a great start for visits so keep coming back if you like. Tim

Greetings once more from a very happy Clash Blog towers, the happiness is due to having all the windows open and temperature being below 80 for the first time since probably April. This calls for a a celebration of sorts so I am equipped with a cup of coffee and am also listening to XTC ‘Drums and Wires’ as I write. I’ve found myself listening to XTC rather a lot recently and I’ll go on record by saying they were one of the most influential bands of that era, in fact they’d sing on that rung just below The Clash with few other contenders. You can hear their impact on so many bands of the last twenty years, whether that influence was always intentional or not is open to debate but I hear them all over the place.

So, it’s Thursday already and I can finally start to cross a few more older stories off of my list. By now you’ve almost certainly heard that Mick Jones headed up to Merseyside last month to take part, a headlining part it turned out in Liverpool’s ‘Don’t Buy The Sun’ concert. I could (and perhaps might on my other blog) write an essay as to why you shouldn’t buy The Sun (english Murdoch operated gutter press newspaper) and I’m proud to say I never have. It’s a paper that looks to wave nationalistic, hateful, poorly researched, racist, divisive and frankly ridiculously sensationalistic views under the guise of a newspaper by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Unfortunately as poor taste would have it The Sun is also one of the best selling daily papers in England, except in Liverpool. If you’re of similar vintage to me you’ll forever remember the events that took place in Sheffield in  1989 when an FA Cup Semi-Final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest was so poorly policed that almost 100 football supporters were crushed to death. There were a number of mistakes that day but the fulcrum of the blame laid with some very poor decisions by the police. As someone who went to see my team home and away and had stood on that same section of terracing a number of times Hillsborough hit me and the people I knew very hard, we all realised it was could just have easily had happened to us. However I digress, the story and the facts behind that tragic event were slow to emerge but it didn’t stop The Sun from making up their own mind and wrongly blaming Liverpool supporters for not only causing the tragedy but also acting like animals during the rescue operation. It was hideous knee-jerk journalism and quite rightly resulted in the city turning on the paper and almost completely ceasing to purchase it. That was 22 years ago and the Sun and Murdoch haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory in the intervening years.

This summer of course saw the explosion of the phone tapping scandal with the sister paper The News of The World which comes out every Sunday. A paper that thrives on celebrity gossip and sensationalism was brought to it’s knees due to a scandal that simply wouldn’t go away and Murdoch reacted by closing it down to appease public pressure. Not that his News International empire has even caught a cold as a result but this closure was a sign that there was a limit to what is accepted by even a patient public. Anyway, enough of the history but if you want to you can read much more about Hillsborough and the Hillsborough Justice Campaign via this site and also the Don’t Buy The Sun campaign via this site.

Mick Jones has a longstanding and warm relationship with Liverpool which extends all the way back to the time of The Clash, so when friends Pete Wylie and Peter Hooton of The Farm invited Mick to the event it was something he was happy to get behind. It also helps that he’s been a dedicated football support since childhood, in his case Queens Park Rangers. I’ve read a lot about the concert plus there is some great video footage and I will get those links for you over the weekend, but many have said it was just an amazing evening with Jones receiving a hero’s welcome and performing some Clash songs which were completely unexpected by many I would think. For today though I wanted to link you to a few things that we didn’t  get enough of when Big Audio Dynamite were touring – in depth interviews with Mick Jones. I guess that’s fair enough as the range of questions were well thought out and varied ranging from Clash history to the recent riots in the UK and his feelings about Liverpool. These are some of the best I’ve seen this year.

The Olympia, Liverpool

The first interview was in the live4ever ezine and the interview takes place around the Liverpool concert. Also interviewed is Mick’s cousin Martin Muscatt of the band Taurus Trakker, an excellent read and here’s the link. Also worth a visit is the Taurus Trakker website where you can learn and hear more and also purchase the new album ‘Building Ten’ which features (you guessed it) Mick Jones amongst some other special guests.

“You do it because you know it’s what you enjoy the most, I was born for this to tell you the truth and it was all I ever wanted to do really. I remember going to the careers officer at school and being asked what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted to be in a band and they said they couldn’t help me”  Mick Jones

Sabotage Times is the home of the other interview conducted with Mick when he was on Merseyside and it’s a brilliant one too. You’ll see some duplication with the other interview as he must have had a mini press conference of sorts but there is more than enough to make both worth reading. Stopping just short of being sunkissed I’ve got to say Mick continues to come across as the nicest bloke imaginable. Right then I hope you enjoy both of these and I’ll get those other loose ends pulled together this weekend. Huge thanks to Sabotage Times and live4ever for the Mick transcripts, bookmark those sites! Don’t forget you can keep current via Facebook, Twitter get the RSS feed for the blog or email me.

“I was brought up by my maternal grandmother, so I was a latch key kid with a key round a chain to get in and out of the council flat. But to come so far is an amazing thing, it’s a story for everybody and I love to use it to inspire other people. It doesn’t matter where you’re from – its what you are. For me to be here playing after all these years is such an incredible thing”    Mick Jones

Good evening everyone, how was your day then? My personal highlight was cracking some php code and the majestic cup of coffee that started my day…..as you can see it’s been a slow day at Clashblog Towers. Last night I was looking back at the post we (quite literally ‘we’ as 95% of the content was written by you) put together to mark the anniversary of the death of Joe Strummer last December. It reminded me just how greatly he is missed, just how inspiring he was and just what a difference a band made to each of our lives. It left me partially saddened that 2011 and all the continuing chaos lack simply knowing that Joe Strummer is there to observe it with us, conversely it reminded me that I’m still (I hope?) tuned in enough to care about the things that I do because of The Clash and I know many of you are too. I’ve got a shelving unit in my office with a photograph of Joe on it and every day I either say or think ‘hello Joe’ – I don’t need reminding of how much The Clash matter to me but I like seeing him anyway. I need to find a way that guarantees that the 16 year old kid growing up today in Vancouver, Wellington, Barcelona or Cardiff knows all about The Clash and I need your help.

I want to build out a page on the site as a ‘Clash guide to’ every major city, with links to inner pages that will have a ‘Clash bio’ of the individual towns. It will be a big project and I’ll need help but I think it would be a fun one. Some cities (London, New York etc) will take a lot of work and others not so much but for the hardcore fans I thought it might be good to create a list of venues that The Clash played or that events took place with maps, current photos and notes about the venue where we can find them. Sort of like The Clash Landmarks series I’ve been doing but easy to access and archive. Then if you’re stuck on a rainy afternoon in Cleveland or Dundee you can revisit the places mentioned or grab some photos for the blog. It will be a lot of research but perhaps/hopefully something enjoyable and useful for everyone. I know elements of this exist elsewhere but I’d like to gradually make the site a bit more robust as a resource as well as the daily blogging. If you’d like to volunteer to help with a town you know or where you currently live just let me know. I’ve not formulated the exact dimensions of the idea yet but it will happen soon and become real. The idea occurred to me when I was last in Los Angeles and thought of the Clash related places I drove by. Anyway, as usual I’m rambling on but if you are an expert on your town let me know (especially if you have a decent digital camera). For example the photo below is where The Clash played today in 1982 – the City Coliseum in Austin, Texas in 1982. This photo was taken just prior to the demolition in 2002. I checked google streetview and it’s just a park now.

City Coliseum, Austin

Friday is (B.A.) D-Day for me to decide where to go and see Big Audio Dynamite in August although I don’t see either venue selling out the day of ticket release. I’m sure some of you in California and the southwest are going to L.A./Orange County so let me know which gig holds more appeal. I’m thinking downtown Los Angeles would be a bit more exciting on the basis that the concert hall isn’t sitting in car park. Can you imagine the same at Wembley? Oh yeah that’s right – Wembley Arena…..shit hole. Is it still there?

Finally tonight how often have you ever seen a photo of Joe Strummer standing in front of a post for Wire Train? (if you remember them you have my sympathy). You’ll get to see that and also read an interesting piece about the fate of the Vanderbilt University college radio station in Nashville by following this link. Joe had appeared on the station years back during the last US Clash (MKII) tour. It’s a sad sign of the times, years ago college radio in the US was at the heart of what became post punk/new wave (call it what you will) playing great music by artists that wouldn’t get considered by the major commercial radio stations. From the early/mid 80′s onward college radio saved thousands of young ears from a lifetime plagued by John Mellencamp and Rush and showed them the way forward to that ‘alternative stuff’. Radio in the US is dying with the growth of the internet, digital music, satellite radio and easy access to whatever you want to hear coupled with a few large corporations controlling a horribly high percentage of all radio. On the one hand we have more choice and easier access to music than ever yet on the other who is responsible for breaking new bands? I live a few miles away from one of the biggest universities in the country and it only has an AM station. Hard to believe but sadly true.

Alright, I’m off to do some studying – see you in the comments I hope. Tim