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

Yes, yes, I’m here. What did you manage today? I hope something worthwhile? Thanks for dropping in to the blog, I’ve just got time for a quick update as I’m distracted by the wonderful noise of the the pouring rain outside, it doesn’t happen often round here so when it does you tend to open the doors and windows and simply listen to it. (written last night, normal solar service resumed)

In England we called them badges, in the States they seem to be called buttons (why?) or pins. I’d love to know what the correct term is in French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Italian and the myriad of other tongues you readers consider your first language. I’m also curious as to whether music badges or your favourite slogan (I wore ‘Fuck Art Let’s Dance’ quite proudly for ages) were quite such a big deal when you were growing up?

I wish someone had tapped me on the shoulder when I was about 14 or 15 and told me to hold onto every badge, concert ticket stub, magazine and t-shirt that I owned as a young music nut (as if I need more crap), but I’d love to still have all the ticket stubs and badges at the very least. I’ve got perhaps a third of my earliest concert tickets but for some reason I’ve not got one single badge to my name. I think I had about a dozen Clash badges plus The Jam, XTC, The Specials, Madness, UB40 (they were good at first), Buzzcocks, and so many more. What happened to them all? At what juncture in my life did I leave them all in a drawer with the promise I’d come and pick them up at a later date? I don’t need them now although I’d still wear one from time to time but I wish I had them to look at still. It seems that if you did hold on to your band badges from the 70′s and 80′s that you might want to ask yourself if selling them on ebay is worth your time? Not The Clash ones of course but as you can see from this link (Guns on The Roof – original $29) and this one too (a pretty naff London Calling one which I did own) you can make a fair amount of cash out of them. I even wished I kept my dodgier badges (Ultravox anyone?) as I’d surely sell them to someone who wanted them as badly as I’d like to have my original Clash ones. There’s also a fairly vibrant reissue market for some of these badges which makes them quite affordable, again just have a look on ebay as most of the sellers seem to be in the UK. Better still if you have your own 14 year old lazing around the house right now, go and order a few badges so that the next time they go off to see Arcade Fire or Bon Iver they can cause a distraction with a Clash badge or two.

Did you keep yours? Did you collect them too? Stories below I hope.

Hello again and thanks for dropping in to the Clash Blog. It’s been an annoyingly warm week here in the desert, to the point where you don’t feel like opening the front door. I realise it’s to be expected in the desert but we set record highs this week on Tuesday, Wednesday and again today with temperatures between 113-116f each afternoon. Too Hot as The Specials might say.

Cardiff, 1978 - image courtesy Dave Smitham http://www.flickr.com/photos/64993138@N08/

On the back of the two week tour of the US by Big Audio Dynamite (incidentally, Canada feels a bit cheated Mick so come back soon) I was surprised that there weren’t as many interviews with Mick Jones as I might have expected but my initial perceptions might have been inaccurate. It seems he did give a lengthy and interesting interview with the Los Angeles Times between the recent two gigs in Los Angeles/Orange County. As you’ll recall that was during the week that London and then other cities in England were seeing an outbreak of looting and arson or if you feel like some lazy journalism ‘rioting’ broke out. I think it was interesting that Mick like many others (more intelligent observers anyway) pointed out that there are a large and broad number of contributing factors to the current dissatisfaction in the UK which can’t be ignored, even though politicians seemed to decide within 48 hours that it was due to organized gangs and greed. Simple as that eh Mr Cameron? Jones wasn’t rising for the bait of being a spokesperson of course, which is wise.

Far beyond that the rest of the interview is really pretty fascinating as Mick talks about the current state of the economy and how similar things now are to when Big Audio Dynamite were writing that debut album so many years ago, here is the link to the full article on the LA Times site. The interview also opens up the topic of new material by Big Audio Dynamite and there is a fence sitting reply as you’d expect although I think it is the honest truth – more on that in the next month or so I would expect after the summer concerts are all completed. To me though the most intriguing quote was the one below (find it then Mick!)

“Somewhere there’s a tape of the music of ‘The Bottom Line’ with the lyrics of Joe Strummer, but I have no idea where it is,” Jones said. “It would be quite interesting for me to hear it, though.”

Meanwhile The Guardian reported on a subject I often mention but can’t find a satisfactory conclusion to: with the world not exactly in the best shape at the moment where are today’s protest singers and punk artists? I know there are artists with plenty to say but surely there is some sort of disconnect between those who purchase music and the acts with something to say as they still exist. The article is worth a look and uses The Clash as the benchmark, read it here now.

That’s all for tonight from me I’m afraid, too warm to type let alone think and I’m still pouting over my bruised ribs. More tomorrow I’d expect and if you fancy submitting a guest post for the blog to help me through the dog days of summer please contact me. It can be anything you like so long as it’s related to The Clash! Cheers for now – Tim.