Well hello again and thanks for your visit to the blog. Found myself listening to so much music from around 1979 1980 today, namely some XTC, Gang of Four and some Joy Division and it smacked me in the forehead (not for the first time) just how much is owed to that era of music by some of the upstarts from the last 10 years. I’m thinking Bloc Party, The Futureheads, The Cribs and Maximo Park off the top of my head. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of the more recent bands I’ve mentioned but talk about a foundation to draw from! On a recent post someone had written that they were surprised that I cited 1979 as the pinnacle for music in my humble opinion, I could see that being a five-part post as I state my position but what brilliant seeds were planted by punk a few years prior to what emerged in 1979. It was also the same year that began my subscription to Melody Maker and buying the NME whenever I could, oh how I wish I had kept every single issue from that year and the seven or eight year spell that followed.

I was doing some back-end maintenance on the blog at the weekend and noticed a couple of occasions where I had written a part one about something and never followed up with the requisite part two, after sitting alone embarrassed for a few moments I realised that perhaps no one even noticed. That said it’s not a mistake I’ll be repeating in the future, to that end I’d written a few days ago about the state of the NME here in 2010. So I thought I should really follow up on that piece. On a side note but very related I’d always been a consumer of the theory that the NME was the best of the three music papers (the three British weeklies) at championing the rise and rise of notably the Sex Pistols but also the entire London punk scene that was evolving in 1976. If I’m not mistaken that history has also been propagated by the NME itself during the intervening years? I’m currently two thirds of the way through that new Jon Savage book which apart from being brilliant is also really informative, the section I’m currently on reviews the viewpoint of the journalists who were an integral part of the scene in ’76 and ’77. Needless to say I was a bit shocked by the statements which were supported by facts that Sounds had been the earliest of the three to really give many column inches to the Sex Pistols and in fact trumping the NME by a good few months by taking a risk on a band that was attracting perhaps 30 to 50 people to some of their earliest gigs. Funny what you learn!

Anyway in part one I reminisced about growing up with the music papers and like many of you in that pre-Internet age how much we relied upon the music weeklies to shape and influence our record purchasing and perhaps our viewpoints. The English music press was never quite as serious as its US counterpart and the attention until the late 70s was firmly fixated on the music itself and didn’t really seek to jump on a bandwagon or proclaim the trend that was going to change England forever. There was also an inherent sense of humor and independence with the papers as I remember them although the shelf-life of that week’s fad seem to be getting shorter and shorter as the 80′s arrived and pop music became a bigger part of the equation once again. If you took an act like Frankie goes to Hollywood it seemed to be just months had passed between them being considered the future of English music to little more than an overblown sensation who could never match the expectations of the record buying public. However so many good memories are attached to those papers which I hope you can relate to. The excitement of seeing gig lists for the first time, hoping a band you liked would be playing a venue that was convenient. I keeping a black diary that was partially a calendar in my backpack and when the NME and Melody Maker came out I would turn to the gig guide and write in pencil the potential bands that I plan on seeing, only to convert that to black biro nearer to the dates when I knew if I had enough money and would be free of other obligations. It was also critical, very critical, to have a girlfriend whose idea of a good night out was to see a band at a Polytechnic or a smoky pub in preference to a film or a meal. I was quite lucky in that regard dating a girl who rarely put up a fuss about going to concerts and even when she did her sister (who actually had a better taste in music than her) was always keen to see the latest indie band with me. The older sister actually looked quite similar so I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel to explain who she was if I bumped into somebody that I knew.

My first flat was walking distance from ULU...a very conscious decision

I’ll skip forward a few years to about 1983, from that year until about 1990 I went to more concerts than I can even recall. Seeing a band wasn’t expensive in general and there were no shortage of concerts that I felt I had to see, if the support band had good press you arrive early if not you often would take up residency in a local pub a bit longer than usual. I think I knew every venue in the city from New Cross up to Kentish Town and from Hammersmith to Islington. I came to know which venues would allow encores beyond a certain time, of course you would match that up with knowing when the last tube train to get you home ran. More than once the dilemma of staying for one more song versus being forced to get the night bus home had to be faced. The very idea of jumping in a black cab could suddenly change the evening from being fairly affordable to a bit of a knees up which in turn could impact your chances of seeing another band two nights later. I cannot recall what year ordering tickets via the telephone started to catch on, initially it was only the bigger venues like Hammersmith Odeon or Wembley Arena where you had to go to such lengths unless of course it was something a bit special like the Bunnymen at the Royal Albert Hall. For most gigs I remember you could just turn up and hopefully your research meant you hadn’t left it too late. That said loads of venues allowed more people than the place could hold if ticket sales were brisk especially at colleges and pubs.

I just realised this is going to run to a part three or more as I haven’t even finished talking about the NME in its prime. More on that soon and of course more Clash stuff to follow. Tim

Good afternoon and this would be Friday then, so welcome back to your Clashblog for an end of the week extravaganza. I do hope you voted in The Clash Cup from yesterday as it’s turning out to be quite a close run thing and ultimately up to you – not me. I’d been meaning to write today’s piece for about a week but last weekend with a complete washout so it fell through the cracks. I think this will be a two-part piece as there is quite a lot to get through.

Allow me to start by taking you back to about 1974 when I was seven, if you are nearly the same vintage as me or grew up in the UK you will surely relate. At that age I did get pocket money weekly and much of my wealth would be spent on comics. At that age it was Shiver & Shake or Whoopee as far as I can recall. The Beano and Dandy for some reason belonged to my brothers generation, these comics contained one or two page weekly strips about 15 or 20 regular characters that you grew quite fond of. I think my mum knew she was onto a good thing as it meant I was reading constantly and also developed a keen interest in sketching cartoon characters, something I still do now and they definitely owe something to those early comics. By about the age of nine or ten my mother somehow got hold of about 200 Marvel comics which became a new obsession until I turned twelve.

That was the age where I suddenly became far more aware of what my brother was listening to not least of all The Clash. I also realized that summer that there was not one or two but three weekly music papers which would interview and have reviews of so many of the bands that seeped out from my brother’s speakers. Here’s my strange memory, my grandmother did not live nearby but love to send things in the post each week. She used to send me at least one comic every week from about the age of six. I think it was Christmas 1979 when I asked if she could now start sending Melody Maker each week to our home, she was going down to the newsagents every Wednesday and changed my subscription from Shoot! (a football magazine) to the Melody Maker which would then get sent from the post office two doors down. I’m forever grateful that she did that every week until I was about 16 as there was no better moment than that paper coming in the post each week. Thinking back I’m not sure why I chose the Melody Maker over the NME or Sounds. I think my decision may be based on something as simple who was on the cover the week that my awareness finally triggered. As it stood I was guaranteed Melody Maker 52 times per year and would pick up the NME when I had extra cash and Sounds only if somebody I really liked was featured. Sounds always seemed to focus more on metal and progressive music whilst post punk was somewhat of an afterthought in those days. But the time I moved out of that house was purchasing my own copies of the NME and Melody Maker every single week and did so fervently right up until the early 1990′s.

At that point the purchasing then became more selective depending on who was in the issue until gradually I stopped buying them entirely. Sounds and Melody Maker both went bust eventually as their key audience moved on to the monthly magazines such as Q, Uncut or Select with the demise hastened by the internet. Melody Maker finally went under in 2000 when it unceremoniously merged with the NME. Sounds came to an end much earlier back in 1991. I had a feeling this would be a long post and so it’s turning out as my premise was to write about the state of the NME in 2010 which surprisingly to me is not as bad as I feared and certainly better than a few years prior. The motivation to write was due to a kind blog reader (thank you again) to send me the recent NME that featured the special 16 page Clash collectors issue at the beginning of August. I’ll be back in the coming days to cover both of those things. Cheers for now – Tim.

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.