Hello all and welcome back to the blog, it was a very good day today until I cooked dinner and proceeded to drop a large pot of rice all over the kitchen floor. It then became a very bad 15 minute spell punctuated by an incomplete meal and a very happy dog, I’m better now however.

I was just on ebay (I don’t know why either) and notice that there is another gathering swell of vintage The Clash t-shirts making their way onto the online auction site. I’m not sure if people are clearing out their attics or realising that they’ll never weigh what they once did ever again but the number of shirts in recent months is getting a bit mad to be honest. Going with the assumption that they are all 100% legitimate I don’t know what makes people pay $200, $300 or even more for a t-shirt that originally cost a tiny fraction of that. If I had the money and the desire I’d love to get some autographed photos or other memorabilia but a t-shirt that was mass produced in the first place seems to only hold real value by holding onto it as the original proud owner for all these years. I could be wrong?

I only recall purchasing a t-shirt at one of The Clash concerts I attended and that was the post Mick Jones Out of Control thing. It was a pretty ugly shirt and I don’t even remembering wearing it with much pride as I was still annoyed about the band getting rid of Jones. I never bought concert shirts regularly as I’d rather save the funds for another concert or a pint of cider, or if everything went well even the luxury of a shared taxi home now and then. Even so I know I acquired pretty early t-shirts for a number of bands between 1981-1986 and don’t have any left now. I did hang onto a bunch of James shirts in part because they were really well made and also in the knowledge that for a time in that bands career it was James shirt sales keeping them afloat such was their inability to sell records, which was a shame as they were brilliant both live and on record.

1982 tour t-shirt perhaps? Asking $249 on Ebay

So I wondered if many of you have very old Clash concert memorabilia that you’ve held onto. I’ve seen some wonderful old ticket stubs and a few flyers but I don’t recall t-shirts becoming really popular until about 1982 when marketing the brand as well as the band seemed to make the record companies sit up and take notice. On a related note was anyone ever manning a merchandise table for The Clash or indeed any other band? At the end of a tour what happened to all those unsold shirts in the days before the internet? Did they all get sent to a mysterious warehouse in Swindon to gradually seep onto ebay 25 years later or did they just get recycled? If there was a holding place for such things someone could well be sitting on a goldmine. Anyway I’ll put together a list of examples on the next post but would love to hear what you held onto.

That’s all for now, there was a popular John Lydon piece this morning on the sister site in case you missed it. More very soon and thanks as always for reading.

The Clash Blog News | Twitter | Facebook | Google+| RSS feed 

The future is unwritten, so share it

• 
• 

Welcome back good people and by all accounts it’s Tuesday, which is good in relative terms I suppose. If you managed to get through my extended mutterings on the last post about living in West London as a teenager then you’ll make sense of what is to follow, if not then read that first.

As mentioned I had a lot to say about why I ended up living just off the Goldhawk Road/Shepherds Bush when I was a late teen. Probably choosing what part of London to live in based on liking a band isn’t the soundest decision making basis but at 17 you make a lot of strange decisions. Since leaving Stowe Road I’ve rarely thought that much about it but in a recent revelation the significance of that street suddenly seemed borderline brilliant, to me at least.

To backtrack a bit, I’ve recently started reading the book ‘Vision of a Homeland’ by Anthony Davie (huge thanks to Damian H for sending it across the Pacific to me), when I finish it I’ll post a review. The book of course is an account from the key players of Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros from the beginning right up to working on Streetcore. In the book I learned that the video below was filmed in part just a few yards from my old front door, outside and on the roof of The Town House Studios plus in and around a local pub. This came about because the filming of the video for Johnny Appleseed was done rather off the cuff and three members of The Mescaleros were at the time working with Paul Heaton (former Housemartin, at that time The Beautiful South) on his new project called Biscuit Boy. As the story goes Joe literally decided to head to the studio where they were working with Heaton and enlist them to work on his video for the single.

Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros – Johnny Appleseed

It might be that Johnny Appleseed was in my opinion one of the greatest post-Clash songs that Joe ever wrote or it could be that the video shows a sunny day in London with Joe looking on top form, but it has remained one of my favourite videos since I first saw it. To find out it was filmed in my old neighbourhood made me go back and study it in more detail. About a third of the video is filmed in the West End and features Joe alone but most/all of the clips with the band were filmed either outside the studio or at the very foot of my old road just yards from the former front door. Talk about awful timing on my part. The pub scenes both interior and exterior were at our nearest local on the SE corner of Brackenbury Road and Goldhawk Road called The Brackenbury Arms. It was a average in the extreme but pure proximity made it an occasional choice. Since the filming of the video it’s been changed into a Morocaan/Lebanese restaurant called Mezaziq, joining the sad and endless list of pub closures in Britain.

If you’re conducting your Clash related tour of London, the filming took place along and just off the Goldhawk Road from St. Stephens Ave down to Brackenbury Road on both sides of the street. Nearest tubes are Goldhawk Road and Shepherd’s Bush. It almost makes me wish I’d have stayed in that flat another 15 years but knowing my luck I’d have somehow missed the fact that Joe Strummer was filming a video at the bottom of the road. I certainly walked past the studio countless times without every knowing who was recording in there, before the internet we had no clue really did we?  Make sure you check out the link to The Town House and just look at some of the albums that were recorded there over the years too, not a bad list at all.

The pub featured in the 'Johnny Appleseed' video, now a restaurant and my old house just behind the tree top left.

I’m sure that’s far more than you ever needed to know, but if you’re local or visiting a place worth heading to. I’ll be back soon with more trivia and such.

The Clash Blog News | Twitter | Facebook | Google+| RSS feed 

The future is unwritten, so share it

• 
• 

A very happy Sunday to you from the towers. I’ve got a bit of time before we head to the beach today and wanted to say hello. Nothing really new to report so I’ve got the feeling the calm before the storm might signal some good news ahead. The news I expect any day now is the full details of The Clash boxset which has been promised for this year, originally penciled in for February and discussed at length now for over a year we’re still to see the fine print of a release date and price. I think it may account for a rather quiet year so far from Mick Jones as my idle speculation suggests he’s working on it for Sony. Pure speculation on my part but I hope that might be the case.

Our former flat on Stowe Road, looks much nicer 28 years later

This long forthcoming tale will all make sense in part two…I promise. When I moved out of central London in search of the first flat together with my then girlfriend I needed somewhere less expensive and at the same time larger than the shared accommodation I’d been living in just off Marylebone High Street. It was great living that close to the West End and being able to walk everywhere but something bigger and a lot more private was needed. I think it was early 1985 and I was yet to turn 18, The Clash (MKII) were on their last legs and we were heading into an era dominated by Big Audio Dynamite, The Smiths and The Jesus and Mary Chain. I was working in Tottenham Court Road and she at Selfridges. Flat seeking near Hammersmith or Shepherds Bush (it was cheap) began in earnest plus I wanted to live in what I considered to be a Clash related neighbourhood. All I really knew back then was that The Clash had met ‘properly in 1976 when Bernie Rhodes brought Joe Strummer to meet Mick and Paul in a flat just off the Uxbridge Road. In those days I had no idea exactly where but simply wanted to be nearby, even though I was almost nine years too late.

Flat hunting in London in the 80′s wasn’t enjoyable. In those days you’d get the Evening Standard and make hasty phone calls from pay phones and hopefully make an appointment to see a flat that evening. You’d bring your references and hope it was still available by the time you got there, if it was you’d hope the landlord liked you and your references convinced him you weren’t going to burn the place down. The first place we saw was on Southerton Road W6, you could literally hit The Hammersmith Palais with a good throwing arm and I hoped for the best. By the time we got there the queue outside was probably a dozen people deep, after waiting 30 minutes the back half of the queue were told the flat was taken.

Another appointment was made that same evening on Stowe Road which sits just off of The Goldhawk Road W12. Then it was a pretty run down 3 story house with a biggish ground floor flat was the target and I remember entering it and feeling like it was about 1962, everything just seemed old and worn out but it was cheap and pretty big. We didn’t have much money and although the cooker looked like it had been there since the blitz and the formica counters had known a lot of previous owners it would be alright. We were approved and found ourselves living a short walk from Goldhawk Road tube station, only 10 minutes away from Shepherds Bush Green and I liked that Loftus Road was a short stroll too if I wanted to see football when traveling away to see Arsenal was outside of my budget, which was most of the time. It was a multicultural neighbourhood with a lot of activity, markets were nearby and Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill were just a short ride by bus or tube away. Commuting to work was always upstairs on the bus right along the top of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park past Marble Arch and onto Oxford Street. It took longer than the tube but I always enjoyed seeing the city come to life every morning from the top of a double decker, I’d take the tube home at night.

The BBC Television Theatre, before it became the Shepherd's Bush Empire

Although our flat was a bit of a dump we had saved enough cash to buy some used bikes we didn’t get a car until a few years later when I got a ‘proper job’. Having a bike meant you could get away from the noise and down to Ravenscourt Park or alongside The Thames in less than 10 minutes. We’d often go down to the BBC Television Theatre to see if we could see a musical guest or celebrity who was appearing on Wogan which was broadcast from there three nights a week, milling around in The Bush you’d often see someone vaguely famous having a quick gin and tonic. The BBC Television Theatre is now known as the Shepherd’s Bush Empire – the same venue Big Audio Dynamite appeared at in 2011 and Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros nine years previous to that. My only memorable brush with fame was briefly chatting to The Housemartins before they appeared on Wogan in 1986.

I think we lived there for two and a half years, my memories are going to see a lot of concerts and nights in pubs down by the river in the summer. I never did bump into anyone from The Clash but I was pleased to be that close to where it all began and felt like I was living a daily pilgrimage of sorts. Frequently walking past the Hammersmith School of Art on Lime Grove made me (ridiculously?) feel I was better aware of Mick Jones than I used to be because he went there.  More in the next part and a recent realisation that perhaps I should never have left that house on Stowe Road because if I had stayed I may have met Joe Strummer.

The Clash Blog News | Twitter | Facebook | Google+| RSS feed 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

The future is unwritten, so share it

• 
•