Hello again and a very good Friday evening to you from the soon to be deserted ClashBlog towers. Haunted forever by memories of The Clash Cup, unfinished ideas and blogging logjams….blogjams? Where did this week go? I need some of it back, not that I want to work more but that I’m not even vaguely ready for the holidays and instead find myself with bloggette looking for a new home in another city. Quite frankly it’s the wrong time of year for that but when opportunity presents itself you have to seize it I read once. Anyway, enough of my bleating.

I’ve got a lot lined up in the days ahead and part 2 & 3 of the Hillsborough post should see the light of day over the next few days, if my appearances are a bit sporadic I’ll be over in California until Wednesday so my access to the blog and blogging might be less ideal than usual. I’ll count on all of you to keep things interesting. I also need to get prepared for all the Joe Strummer memorials/tributes and assorted events in the days ahead, this weekend sees them kicking off with the inconvenience of the anniversary not landing on a weekend we’ll probably see events almost every day starting today. If you want to help spread the word about a local event please do so on the comments section of this post or feel free to use the facebook page which usually has a fair few readers – anything to spread the word of a Strummer night is alright with me. One of the biggest Clash/Strummer events of all actually takes place tomorrow in Parma, Italy – this one has been going for years and gets bigger on an annual basis it seems. It has to be said that it is one of the largest and best organised tributes to Joe and I’m sure attendance this year will once again do the Italian Clash contingent proud. Full information is available via this link and you’ll see that no less than 14 (!) bands are performing with the action kicking off at 1pm local time. I wish I’d have covered this earlier but some tour in the UK dominated proceedings. It’s more than live music though with (if my poor italian translation serves me) artwork, vinyl collection, djs and an auction all being part of the festivities. If you happen to be attending and would like to send in any photos to the blog please feel free to do so.

For tonight I wanted to leave the rest of the post in the excellent hand of Pete Stevens. Pete as you may know has been a giant friend of the blog since the very early days, his friendship and support has been immense as not only is he a brilliant photographer but he also will literally scale walls and scramble down gutters to get some of the concert and event photography I’ve been lucky enough to share on the blog. I’ve seen thousands of concert photographs over the years but I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say that Pete is as near to a modern day Bob Gruen or Pennie Smith as you’re going to see. Live concert photography isn’t easy nor does everything go to plan but the composition and sheer brilliance in so many of Pete’s stills would make you think he had days to plan his photos rather than fractions of seconds.

Luckily for us Pete was able to get full access to the Justice tonight event at The Scala in London last week. By now you probably know what happened that night and who the key players were on stage. While it’s great to read the accounts and see the choppy live footage on youtube unless you were there nothing does an event justice (tonight) like great photography. With that said I picked some of my favourite photos that Pete took from that night and they feature in the gallery below. Just click on any photo and they will enlarge and you can scroll through them. If like me you have a bit of time to linger please study the photos, if you had any doubt how much Mick enjoyed this along with the others the photos will enlighten you. One of my favourites is the expression of Peter Hooton when hugging Mick, magic stuff.

Thanks as ever to Pete – you’re a great friend and it’s my pleasure to share your work with everyone.

All the best, I’ll be in touch from San Diego or somewhere out that way. Tim

Good day Clash people. The days after that tour….have me thinking rather a lot. What a tour it was, for all the right reasons. Often when I’m far afield it’s been hard to imagine the events from the wrong end of a telescope but somehow Justice Tonight was easy to picture, easy to relate to and so bloody hard to be missing out on. Someone wrote somewhere over the course of these gigs that it was ‘all a bit rough and ready at times, exactly in keeping with the origins of the music’ and I couldn’t agree more. This wasn’t sponsored by Carlsberg or simulcast on MTV. This was a series of benefit gigs like no other in recent years in the midst of a tour that kept raising the bar for a cause that truly does matter. Could anything be more in keeping with The Clash and their fans?

“The way you get a better world is, you don’t put up with substandard anything”       Joe Strummer – 1999

This might be one of those posts I tend to write that will ramble a bit, in fact I’m fairly certain it will be. I’ll get there in the end I hope so I’ll beg your patience. I doubt I’ll manage it all in one sitting. I want to write about the story of The Clash, I want to write about The Clash and their audience, I want to write about making a difference and caring and I want to write about the cause that led to this tour in the first place. I also want to try and write about the Hillsborough disaster. I’m not an expert but I know how I felt about it then and still feel today.

Pete Wylie (image kind courtesy of Pete Stevens)

You don’t need to be English to understand the impact of Hillsborough to any greater degree, no more than being English will help you understand the importance of punk rock. If you feel and care, if you’re awake and alert, it transcends the fact it might not be local to you. What helps is a belief that wrongs should be righted, that change is the responsibility of us and not ‘them’ and that music isn’t the solution on it’s own although it can bring together passionate people who want to affect change. That’s what punk rock was really about, empowering the kid with no money and no contacts and get out there and do it for himself. It is often applied to music but can apply to anything, just allow it and it can be so.

“The most important thing for anyone, I think, is to be engaged, whether you’re an artist or a journalist is to be engaged in the process at some level”    Billy Bragg

When I first saw Billy Bragg it was during the coal miners strike in the UK. They were dark, tense and really militant times. At the same time activism wasn’t seen as pointless pursuit. The 1980′s are portrayed by the media as a time for silly haircuts and synth-pop but they were also the last time (until recently) that I saw activism being seen as worthy and full of potential to bring about change. We had the East/West divide, the cold war, a wall in Berlin and Apartheid to combat. In tandem with some right wing governments and fascist seeds being spread around they were good times to kick against the system. I know I did, it came naturally. As for Billy Bragg, for me he embodied the spirit of The Clash and I thought we can change the path of the country, people will listen, the wrongs will be righted. A few years later Bragg and Paul Weller toured as ‘Red Wedge’ which essentially was to get young kids involved in politics and vote labour. Was it a success? Yes, if like me, you became more engaged. No, if you judge it on the fact that Thatcher was again the winner in the following general election. At least people were paying attention.

Joe Strummer became the de facto mouthpiece of The Clash and with that the voice of that generation, a tough mantle to take on and one that I think caused him untold pressure and strain during the years the band were active. ‘Spokesman’ is not a role that anyone other than a dictator would comfortably adjust to, Joe was never a dictator. Joe often said things like we know the world has a lot of problems and four punks from London don’t have all the answers but essentially we’re here to encourage you to ask questions and get involved. Years later when I saw Billy Bragg again for the eleventh or twelfth time his message had moderated a bit but in actuality it was more valid than ever before, he didn’t ask you to wait for him to take the lead position. He said ‘I’m not able to change the world, music can’t change the world, but you can. The community we can build around music can take an idea such as not letting apathy win and bring it to work tomorrow and to the polls when we vote. I can’t change things but you surely can”.

To my ears he was channeling Joe Strummer – the same message really and the right message certainly. Not coincidentally Billy Bragg played with Mick Jones, Pete Wylie and The Farm in Liverpool on the Justice Tonight tour. The message remains, a good cause is one you will fight for and a good cause can result in justice if you push it. Part 2 of this will follow soon, sorry for the gap.

Ninety-six people died in a football ground that afternoon, the only thing they were guilty of was going to see a game. Here are the first thirty-two names that we should never forget and their age that spring afternoon in 1989. These were my peers and were for many of you as well. You can learn much more and help the Hillsborough Justice Campaign by visiting this link.

John Alfred Anderson (62)  Colin Mark Ashcroft (19)  James Gary Aspinall (18) 

Kester Roger Marcus Ball (16) Gerard Bernard Patrick Baron (67)  Simon Bell (17) 

Barry Sidney Bennett (26)  David John Benson (22) David William Birtle (22)

  Tony Bland (22) Paul David Brady (21)  Andrew Mark Brookes (26)

Carl Brown (18)  David Steven Brown (25) Henry Thomas Burke (47) 

Peter Andrew Burkett (24)  Paul William Carlile (19)  Raymond Thomas Chapman (50) 

Gary Christopher Church (19) Joseph Clark (29) Paul Clark (18)

  Gary Collins (22)  Stephen Paul Copoc (20)  Tracey Elizabeth Cox (23) 

James Philip Delaney (19) Christopher Barry Devonside (18) Christopher Edwards (29) 

Vincent Michael Fitzsimmons (34)  Thomas Steven Fox (21)  Jon-Paul Gilhooley (10)

  Barry Glover (27) Ian Thomas Glover (20)

Good evening from a soggy and pleasantly cold Arizona. Almost makes me think of winter today and definitely has me reflecting on the fact that 31 years ago today (or more likely tomorrow by the time I get this written and posted) I acquired my copy of the only triple album I’ve ever owned - Sandinista! Last year we were all drawn in to the rumour and then soft confirmation that a 30th anniversary special Legacy edition of the 4th Clash album was going to surface with added ‘rare’ material. Speculation was rife that we’d get unreleased tracks or better still an excellent live document of the band circa 1980/1.  However more than a year later that ship has obviously now sailed with Sony confirming it wasn’t to be. Perhaps the 35th anniversary will see the vaults finally opened up.

I mentioned it on Facebook today (the anniversary) and it led to some good discussion as to the merits of the album which are worth a look. As I wrote there I remember clearly buying it on release and being a bit confused, a bit shocked and rather annoyed that this wasn’t The Clash as I knew them or at least expected. I was only 13 at the time and if you asked me then or even a few years later I would have placed Sandinista! as my least favourite Clash album (excluding Cut The Crap – different parameters altogether). As the years rolled by and my maturity arrived the album was revisited time and time again, instead of my initial feeling of five or six good songs, there were suddenly a dozen. A few years later more than half the album was obviously brilliant and by the time the 90′s rolled around I realised that most of the album was excellent – one of the most ambitious, challenging and bold records ever made. You can argue that it’s not the best Clash album but it may well be the most interesting and certainly contains some of Joe’s best lyrics. Beyond all that remember how quickly it was made and so soon after the brilliance of London Calling, also think of how many new barriers were broken down in particular by Mick and Topper. The band released 55 songs plus Bankrobber within 12 months, unheard of output. Brilliant stuff indeed, at a later time we’ll try and determine the best Clash albums whilst remembering there are no wrong answers. Happy anniversary then to Sandinista! and its far reaching, sometimes ugly beauty – an album that will last a lifetime.

Image courtesy WrongEmBoyo

Sorry for the brief detour there, I owe it to myself and to you to share a few more guest contributions about the Justice Tonight tour, specifically the final night in Glasgow which ended everything on quite a high. Glasgow as you all know holds it place high in the list of cities with Clash lore and with that, great affection for the band. There are a number of rumours/quotes doing the rounds about whether this concept might be revisited in 2012 and whilst I naturally have no inside track on that knowledge I’ll say only that many rumours concerning Mick Jones in the last few years have come to fruition. We’ve just been through the most active 3 years Mick has seen since I don’t when, the early 90′s I’d guess. I hope that doesn’t signal the end of that spell but only Mick knows what he’s doing next – what is apparent is that he is thoroughly enjoying playing live. Glasgow then; please join me in thanking Geoff (via Martin who provided us with his summaries of London and Liverpool) for the overview beneath:

Based on the Liverpool start time we arrived at 8.20 only to find The Farm ending their set with All Together Now. Pete Wylie then launched straight away into his set of: Come Back, Better Scream, The Day That Margaret Thatcher Dies, Story of the Blues (with a neat little segued start of Drift Away as a tribute to Dobie Gray who passed away this week) Heart as big as Liverpool and ended with Sinful. I Have to say I was really impressed with his set, fantastic sound and vocals (despite the ‘hometown hangover’ from the previous evening) ably backed up by Joe, Paul and co Mick then took centre stage sharing vocal duties with Pete and James Allan from Glasvegas.

As a side note James Allan was a footballer playing in the Scottish lower leagues including Queens Park (not QPR). (ClashBlog ed: that’s news to me, but then again so is the overall interest in Glasvegas, looking a bit like Joe doesn’t make you Joe).

Immediate set after Pete Wylie was: Train in Vain/Stand by me, Stay Free, Clampdown, White Man (in Hammersmith Palais) – which is James Allan’s favourite Clash track. Then we went into a short break forJustice Tonight speeches and a single Glasvegas song – Daddy’s Gone. This was followed by the return of Mick and Co for Bankrobber, Armagideon Time, Should I Stay or Should I Go and London Calling before launching into All Together Now, at the conclusion Mick shouts ‘see you next time’.

Hmmmm wonder if he meant as B.A.D. who were brilliant earlier this year at the same venue or another cause that is deserving of the Clash set. Either and I’d be happy, just keep getting on stage, Mick. They left the stage to ‘make way for the disco’ only for them to return with Janie Jones. Disappointingly a fair number had left immediately after or during ATN. Another reason you should never leave before the final whistle. (Eds note: Anfield ’89) They’ll never be the same without Joe though I’m sure he’d have approved of the cause. Despite having mixed emotions as I did when the Skids reunited without Stuart Adamson I’d rather see Mick and Paul belting out Clash songs than some tribute band. More please……

Image courtesy mckingv on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/44867841@N02/

Thanks so much for that, a great review I thought cheers Geoff. I also have another short summary from Murray which I liked, he may be a bit more forthright than some but just remember opinions about music are simply that and everyone is entitled to one. After all you’ve been digesting mine for the better part of three years now. Does he like Glasvegas? Read along and find out:

The Farm – I never bought into that baggie nonsense the first time round and other than Altogether Now this just washed over me. Pete Wylie was brilliant, a greatest hits set worthy of the price of admission. The Clash set was great, better than I’d imagined. They took a break and the guitarist and singer from Glasvegas got on to do “Daddy’s Gone” – their one great song it seems ! He didnt get the best reception, while he was havin trouble plugging in the guy next to me was repeatedly yelling “you are a wank” at the top of his voice to much laughter around. He’d maybe win a Joe Strummer lookalike competition, but he was struggling with Bankrobber, fluffing the lines he had to read off the page, but then Strummer was always prone to fluffing lines so maybe it was some kind of homage ! or maybe the event was just too much for him. The night ended with John Robb taking a mic to the crowd for Janie Jones. Good fun and by what Mick was saying onstage I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened again sometime ….

 Thanks for that Murray, I can just hear a Glaswegian punter shouting that at James Allan in my head. Made me laugh I’ll confess, but as a guest I think he merited more class or am I getting soft? Right then I’ve got to go and drive with the lunatics in the rain this morning but please join me in thanking our guest reviewers for taking the time to write. Speaking of John Robb – his tour blog on Louder than War has been exceptional from the first night in Cardiff and provides so much insight you’d be a fool to miss it so please check that out. I’ll be back during the week, things are going to be hectic around here for the next six weeks as it looks like ClashBlog towers will shortly be relocating to new accommodations in California (more on that soon) but I want to keep up the momentum on the blog – we’ve had an exceptional number of visits over the last month for which I thank you and if you ever want to help our your humble blogger there’s a small banner ad over on the right. Thanks so much to those who already have. Also remember you can keep up to date by  Facebook, Twitter or get the RSS feed which will see the blog sent to you directly. Cheers – Tim