Hello you fine people and welcome back to the blog. We’re rolling into February now and the list of acts appearing at this summer’s festivals is beginning to build up a healthy head of steam. We’ll start previewing some of those in the next week or two but sadly this year we don’t have Big Audio Dynamite or the Justice Tonight bands waiting in the wings to add some Clash infused flavour to events in the sunshine. Perhaps Mick Jones has got something else entirely up his sleeve? If the last few years have taught us anything it should be that ‘you never know’.

I was tidying my bookshelf this past weekend and realised I’ve still got a few holes to fill in terms of books related to The Clash, I might need to do a bit of shopping in the months ahead to fill in those spaces although there aren’t many. I was curious to see which are the best-selling titles according to the giant Amazon.com supercomputers (ignore the man behind the curtain) which I think tracks ‘sales rank’ for the last 90 days. I’ve based the top ten on a combined score from the US and UK versions of Amazon rather than some insider knowledge. I still wonder if the ultimate Clash book is yet to be written but I’m not even sure what that would be, each of the books on the market have many great merits and as a collective do a good/very good job of chronicling the history of the band. My struggle is often remembering where I read about a specific incident or fact and invariably choosing the wrong one when trying to research. Here, in no relation to my personal preferences are the top ten:

The Big Pink Book | The Clash

Stealing All Transmissions | Randal Doane   (more soon on this title, and on his Feb 15th  reading/signing in NYC)

A Riot of Our Own | Johnny Green

Passion is a Fashion | Pat Gilbert

The Clash; The Complete Guide | Tony Fletcher

Return of the Last Gang in Town | Marcus Gray

Redemption Song, The Ballad of Joe Strummer | Chris Salewicz

Let Fury Have The Hour | Antonio D’Ambrosio  (Not a Clash book, per se)

The Clash: The Music That Matters | Tony Fletcher

Route 19 Revisited | Marcus Gray

There you have it, it seems I’ve got all but the two titles by Tony Fletcher (nothing personal Tony, but if you want to send them in for review you’re more than welcome to) and for differing reasons I’d recommend owning all eight of those above. Each brings something to the overall appreciation of the band without a doubt.

'The Three Dons' - image courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/writemboyo/

Two of the greatest books about The Clash are unfortunately both out of print so therefore I didn’t include in the rankings. Both are primarily outstanding collections of photographs with limited text but nevertheless I think both are essential to own. Namely The Clash Before After by Pennie Smith and equally brilliant coffee table book by Bob Gruen ‘The Clash’. Both can be found used on Amazon/Ebay but expect to pay over the odds. Another I’d love to read but haven’t found an affordable copy is ‘Vision of a Homeland’ which is focused on Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros.

I often wonder which title you find yourself referring to or reading a 2nd (3rd, 4th) time again from cover to cover? I find that collectively there is so much information within these pages that revisiting the entire book is often more rewarding on repeat visits, especially when the perspective continues to grow due to other titles and interviews/memories that keep popping up online. I’ll make the argument that the story of The Clash is quite unlike any other to almost the same extent as the music of The Clash accomplished the same thing. So much happened in such a short space of time in relative terms that it couldn’t fail to make for an interesting read. How many of these do you have, has the ultimate Clash book been written yet?

The future is unwritten, so share it

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Good evening all and welcome back to a fog-shrouded ClashBlog Towers. I never really expected this much fog when we moved here which may have been naive seeing as there’s a rather big ocean just down the street. It just happens to be the one-year anniversary of our move here from the desert of Arizona this week too. Regular readers of the blog will know I didn’t look back in anger or even at all so glad was I to escape from that town, if you love boiling hot weather there’s not much wrong with it but if you like getting outside between May and October may I suggest anywhere but.

A relatively short post tonight in case you’ve already read about this, but if you hadn’t I sincerely felt you should. Our friends over at Strummerville are trying some new fundraising activities this year and I wanted to try and raise awareness about a special auction being conducted via Charity Buzz. This all came about in conjunction with the great concert last week in New York City and there’s been some great items donated for the auction. At present there are 15 individual lots open for bidding until the 18th of February. The list for all items is right here and further information about the auction is here on the revamped and rejuiced Strummerville site.

While as you’d expect there are some primo Joe Strummer related items there are also donated items from others such as a signed Billie Joe Armstrong acoustic guitar in addition to rare prints of Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt. Of the Joe/Clash memorabilia I’d be hard pressed to know what I’d love to have most but would probably opt for the famed Bob Gruen photo of Strummer at the ‘Top of The Rock’ in New York in addition to a signed copy of his exceptional book of Clash photography to replace my somewhat dog-eared copy. Bidding on that item is currently at $709 if you want to make a silent bid and then send the loot along to your favourite blogger. Plenty of other items so go along and take a look or share this post with anyone you know who collects rare rock and roll memorabilia whilst at the same time give great assistance to Strummerville.

I’m going to walk the dog in the fog, just cos it rhymes. Thanks for dropping in. Which item would you bid for if money was no object?

The future is unwritten, so share it

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Hello, welcome back and where have you been? I feel like I’ve been glued to this computer for the better part of 96 hours and that’s probably because I essentially have. If I wasn’t so knackered I’d take the dog for a long walk just to break things up but perhaps we’ll do that in the morning. I hope your week was decent and the weekend offers some decent options. I hope everyone in Minneapolis tonight and New York earlier in the week enjoyed the local Joe Strummer events, they both sounded like they would be brilliant. If you attended and want to write in or share photos/videos or battle scars please write in.

Before getting stuck in I wanted to thank you all for your continued reading of the blog, I managed to get more updates posted in January than in any month last year and you rewarded me with traffic that increased 20% over December and the most total readers in a single month since last May. Cheers for that.

There are some live gigs that I hope some of you will be interested in so let’s crack on with that. Viv Albertine has four live dates coming up later this month so if you’re in Newbury, London or Laugharne Wales please get along to see her. She’ll be playing tracks from her new album ‘The Vermillion Border’ which came out in November. Full details here and you might just Mick Jones at the London gig which is on Feb 23 at Nambucca which just happens to be right near Arsenal.

I’ve been getting a lot of emails recently from bands who’d like me to share their songs via the blog. Is this something you’d be interested in? I’d always meant to write more about the other music I like too but never really have the time. I might try it anyway and if you like it or hate it just let me know, I’m all for young bands who are inspired by The Clash getting down to writing songs and recording them. In fact this is arguably the easiest time in modern music history to get your work recorded and potentially shared around the web, so why not have a Clash corner for new bands. What do you think?

Speaking of tours I’d be neglecting my duty if I didn’t mention that The Specials and Billy Bragg (not together mind you) are touring shortly so make sure you check the links above to see if they are coming to a town near you. I’d like to go to see both but we’ll see how the piggy bank is looking nearer the time. I find it hard to justify spending a large sum on one concert when I could see 3 or 4 different acts for the price of one of these.

I don’t recall how much I paid to see concerts including The Clash back in my long ago youth but I’m sure that the thought of paying more than £6 to see anyone was never a  consideration until round about 1987 at a guess, unless you’re looking at large arena gigs. I think the last decade has seen the largest inflation in ticket prices which I apportion mostly to the fact that artists rely on concert ticket sales as the primary source of revenue in these file sharing and file stealing times. I might be wrong but I could see 90% of the acts that I like for somewhere between $8-$16 a decade back whereas today $15 is a cheap concert and $20 is the going rate for acts even in the smallest venues. Ultimately though it’s not the ticket prices I object to so much as the extortionate booking/convenience fees and the dreaded $12 bottle of Heineken. I wouldn’t have Heineken as a first choice at the best of times but when it’s the only reasonable beer at the venue at least don’t charge me the same amount I could get twelve bottles of the stuff for. I don’t like having to pick and choose which concerts to attend but $40-$50 per ticket makes it tricky.

Right back to work for me, just wondering who are the best live band you’ve seen in the last twelve months and the most you’ve paid to see an act?

The future is unwritten, so share it

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