Good evening everyone from the Towers, you want sick kids, we’ve got ‘em and you might as well take them for how infrequently the attend school these days. Rant over, but one more to follow (paragraph two is a good place to start tonight) – I’d like us all in to join our friends in Washington DC but only putting forth either 90 or 95% effort beginning tomorrow and see how well our workplace is impacted. Speaking as someone in a household that will be affected by the sequestration I’d like to thank the government for doing their very best to ease us back into recession by cutting the income of this household for no good reason. So I need the blog to raise coffee money more than ever if you’d like to help over on the right.

Enough with the moaning, I wanted to thank everyone for visiting our new red-headed stepchild site – The Clash Blog News – I’m pleased to say that the design is almost done and you’ve been reading it in great numbers which I truly appreciate as it makes it all worthwhile. If you’ve not gathered that site is still by me but will feature shorter posts that are still Clash related or at least other bands/issues that I think you’ll be interested in, hopefully we’ll get some special guest posts by budding writers too and hear some new music. So please feel free to contribute, comment and share. There’s been a few updates the last two days about Mick Jones and his new ‘Scouse’ status which are worth a read too, full credit to him and richly deserved. Many years ago I had to go to Speke (Liverpool) for work on a semi-regular basis and was treated as an honorary Scouser too on some great nights out, bloody good times.

I’ve been working on websites so much this week that I wanted to be sure you visit and bookmark some of these which provide me with constant reading pleasure and information which all help/inspire me to write this blog(s) on such a regular basis. Doubtless you already visit some of them but if you don’t make sure you do as there’s some great stuff online if you dig it out.

Black Market Clash

If Mecca for a Clash fan was the most comprehensive list of Clash concerts, concert notes and recordings/bootlegs than this site would be the one to bow to. Just a wonderful resource of such high quality that it should be bound and printed as a coffee table book except books are digital now just like music and thus sadly going the way of the dodo.

Discogs

I’ve sadly not kept all but at least most of the vinyl from my youth. Now that collectors are out in full force I’d suggest record shops for old Clash records might be hit and miss but rather than eBay or Amazon the very best place for vinyl in my opinion for years has been Discogs.

The Big Takeover

I love great music journalism, I know it doesn’t show in the way that I write but I’ve never lost the passion for great album reviews and well developed interviews with the bands that I love. Jack Rabid and a cast of dozens have kept this twice a year magazine going for over 30 years and the website is a good place to get introduced. Chances are you’ll find out about the bands you forgot and be introduced to many you should know about.

Louder Than War

John Robb has developed a website that has become a fruitful garden of news and reviews that an older punk just shouldn’t be missing. I don’t know  how he has time to produce the amount of content he does (I’d do the same if not for work I suppose) but it has resulted in a site that is essential reading on a regular basis.

PunkFlyer.com

A bloody amazing site and what it lacks in design it more than makes up for in terms of content. Make sure you have a big bottle of cider or a pot of tea ready to go because you’ll start digging in and will have suddenly lost a few hours.

The Quietus

Another of my must read music websites that I have to recommend. It’s a shame that the once fantastic British music press has never spawned an online equivalent holding the same name (Yes…NME, I mean you) but sites like The Quietus admirably fill in many of the gaps.

That’s all for now, a handy gallery of all sites mentioned is below so just click on one to enlarge and get started.

The future is unwritten, so share it

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Hello again and thanks for visiting once more, it’s nice to see you, especially you in the back with the really good haircut. Nothing to report from Clash Blog Towers, the dog and cat are sunbathing and for the first time in a while the house is bereft of kids staying home sick from school. It’s all been a bit Florence Nightingale around here lately. Oh also, in case you missed it I’ve built a sister website called Clash Blog News…it’s still this site essentially but please visit if you haven’t.

In this Facebook era of ‘rent-a-quote’ (you know the kind I mean, people photoshop a picture of Nelson Mandela with some inspiring quote and share it to show they now somehow sit that bit nearer to the knowledge tree) one of the characters from the world of Punk Rock that I often see quoted is none other than Henry Rollins. Come to think of it I don’t know if all of the quotes attributed to Rollins are actually his own but for the most part there isn’t much to debate with even if it appears in Facebook terms that he spends as much time pontificating as making music these days, which isn’t the case.

Rollins is an unashamed fan of The Clash and even though its over 25 years since he fronted Black Flag (honestly, 27 years this year) he has had a long and varied career that is now well into its third decade. What I didn’t realise because I never make time to see that many films is that Henry has now appeared in over twenty movies since his acting debut in addition to his extensive television and radio work which I was aware of. What’s really interesting about him is he usually causes a reaction which is more than can be said for many and while he sometimes skates the perimeter of the bleeding obvious in my opinion he ruffles feather by not pulling punches when talking about music, society and the state of the nation. It’s probably only obvious to me because I don’t usually disagree with his perspective on most topics.

In this recent article written for LA Weekly, Henry talks about getting older (he’s still only 52) and staying angry at which point he speaks at length about The Clash. I’ve reproduced some of that below but I do recommend the whole article being worth a read. He writes about how the debut Clash album is something he’s listened to since he was kid and how it still never fails to impact him, a sentiment that I know many of you can relate to. Nice to know he still plays vinyl too. He blogs a few times a week on the LA Weekly site, it’s always worth a look so bookmark it after you read it.

“One of my true north, clear the air, reset favorites is the first Clash album, the UK version, which has different songs than its American cousin. I have been listening to this album since I was in high school and it still moves me.

So, I sat right in front of the speakers and took it in one more time. As I listened, I did a multi-level gut check. I do this kind of thing all the time: Before shows, auditions, anything where there is risk involved. I do the big ones in the early hours of the new year and on my birthday. I try to figure out where I’m at as far as motivation, intensity, etc.

When the album’s last song, “Garage Land,” (sic) finished. I found myself very happy. Ecstatic, actually. Because I realized how angry I was. I got up, flipped the record over, started it again and resumed my self-analysis. As the songs played, I concluded that I was more angry than I was a year ago. This to be an achievement, something I have somehow gotten it right.

My anger does not manifest itself in destruction of objects, swearing in traffic, or attempting to get beaten up by another male several years my junior ”                  Henry Rollins – LA Weekly

What’s your take on the always outspoken Rollins and indeed Black Flag? Did many of you see them live back in the 80′s, I remember they played The Marquee in London with Husker Du in about ’84 – quite a bill.

Henry Rollins LA Weekly Blog | Henry Rollins official site | The Clash Blog News

The future is unwritten, so share it

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Sorry I’ve been away, a bloody busy few days. Hope all is well at your end. This is a new idea, I hope it will work out well and actually result in me blogging more and sharing more stuff that you’d like to read. That’s the intention at least.

I’ve created a ‘sister website’ which is actually part of this site for shorter news stories. This blog will continue with the longer features and The Clash Blog – News will have shorter and more regular updates with associated stories and tales. You can link to it from the top menu (above) or the link I just gave and of course you can get back here from that site too. Slightly different sites but still all compiled by your Clash Blogger. I intend to continue with it if you like it and probably even if you don’t – but I hope that you will. Either way I’d really like your feedback because ultimately I write this for you to read. I’ll still be updating the blog 4-6 times per week with posts that are very much focused on The Clash but I wanted to also try and find a way to cover more peripheral stories that do relate to the band and I imagine also the music that many of us listen to and the culture around that.

The news stories will be more of the short rapid fire variety sometimes with a link nature as opposed to more of the commentary that I try and add to the blog. The news will focus on tours, live updates, record releases, newspaper stories, politics and other blogs. I’ll also be adding things that might typically have ended up on ‘Westway Traffic’ which are the stories that merit a few sentences rather than four paragraphs but I hope will still have interest. Rather than archive these posts on the blog home page they will be added to the ‘news site” – when I update the page I’ll add it to the Facebook page plus Twitter and other social media. Hope that all makes sense? Also, if you see stories that should or could be included please contact me  and let me know. I also welcome and encourage guest posts, so if you’ve ever wanted to write about The Clash this is your forum.

More to come here (and there) in the days ahead, so thanks for dropping in.

The future is unwritten, so share it

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