Bloody Hell….where does the time go? I had the best intentions of getting to this last night but it wasn’t to be, however I’m a believer that good things are worth waiting for and what could be better on a Monday than the latest installment of The Clash Cup. You can find out all about the premise on many earlier posts (It’s a knock-out cup competition with democracy mixed in and you help vote for the best Clash songs of all time). It’s a fun and simple process but as we’re now in round two I’m seeing decisions that are far more difficult and the voting reflects that. How do you oust a song when you love both? That’s a problem we need to overcome I fear.

Before we find out the next two random songs to ponder I do have results from our last pairing.

Round 2 – Match 3:

Clash City Rockers defeated The Card Cheat    35-23   (60.3% vs 39.7%)

So that’s twice that The Card Cheat has lost in the popular vote and the 39.7% share probably won’t be enough to keep it floating into round three. The timing on Clash City Rockers is funny as I just read in the Strummer biography about how Mickey Foote sped up the original master tapes ‘by about 1.5%’ at the insistence of Bernard Rhodes but without the knowledge of Strummer/Jones. Needless to say it was the last time he produced a Clash record. Still a great single if just a bit too fast….

So the random number machines has been wheeled out for our next two songs and the dynamic duo are:

Round 2 – Match 4:

The Leader    versus   Every Little Bit Hurts

Blimey!! Well if this was the FA Cup the equivalent would be Gillingham pulling Chesterfield out of the magic bag and avoiding Liverpool or Manchester United wouldn’t it? Still all songs got to round two on merit and one of these is guaranteed a place in round three, so are you loyal enough to back the same horse. Let’s see how they progressed to this stage.

Form:

Round 1 – The Leader defeated Junkie Slip  19-5 (79% of the vote)

Round 1 – Every Little Bit Hurts defeated Cool Confusion 20-14 (59% of the vote)

Odds:

Well at least we can see how both songs got through round one can’t we? I wouldn’t make a good bookmaker as I’ve missed 2 of 3 predictions so far, but I’d bet my Clash coins on The Leader for this pairing. It’s a good song, good support in the first round and is taking on a track that never got an official release. How can you not back The Leader? (prove me wrong).

Lyrics:

So the girl let the thin man touch her
Mixing questions, drunken laughter
The ministry car was waiting there
A minister knows his own affair

Come back to me
Darling you’ll see
I can give you all the things
That you wanted before

As ever you can spend some time listening before voting (always encouraged) by clicking the respective links The Leader (live!!) or Every Little Bit Hurts.

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Thanks for voting and for visiting the blog, polls close Saturday evening. Til next time…and don’t forget to submit your questions for Strummerville.

Welcome back to the blog as we leap into a new week and a new month all at the same time. I’ve got just a few minutes so I thought I’d continue with our collective quest to determine the best Clash songs ever recorded. If you are new to the blog it’s a simple process one vote per person, the song with the most votes progresses to round 3. The simple part ends there – some songs were seeded (and will enter the competition in round 3) and some of the runner ups with the best vote percentage will also stay in the hunt. Before I find out the random songs for match 3 we need to review match 2 from February 19th. It wasn’t as close as I expected – and if you want a song to lose just ask me to handicap it by suggesting I think it will win! Hence the result was:

1977   defeats   Koka Kola      33-15

A rather convincing win and we’ll say goodbye to the track from London Calling as a result. Match 3 then and these (don’t forget) are pulled at random. The pitted pair are:

Clash City Rockers   vs   The Card Cheat

That’s an interesting pairing as I know both are loved by a lot of fans. Could you pick more extremely different Clash songs if you tried? One is a straight ahead rocker which heavily ‘borrows’ from the past while the other is as close to the ‘wall of sound’ as The Clash ever got due to the recording process for The Card Cheat. I like both so can’t see an easy way to make my selection so please don’t rush your decision!

Form:

Round 1 – Clash City Rockers defeated Remote Control  29-14       (67.4% of the vote)

Round 1 – The Card Cheat lost to The Prisoner 29-18      *stayed alive due to runner up support in round one.

Odds:

Clash City Rockers has got to be favoured, I’d forgotten that The Card Cheat only remains due to the best runner up support and thus I can’t see it beating the odds a second time. I’ve got to back Clash City Rockers as an odds-on favourite at 7-4 on. Then again I’m not you and I’ve only got the one vote.

Best Lyrics:

So don’t complain about your useless employment, jack it in, forever tonight

He only wanted more time, Away from the darkest door
But his luck it gave in, As the dawn light crept in
And he lay on the floor

Listen and watch here if you need any refreshing Clash City Rockers and The Card Cheat

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Polls are open for a week – please be responsible. Thanks for taking part.

Blurry (sorry) video capture from live Clash performance in 1977

Hello good people, any excitement at your end? I neglected to mention earlier the week the passing of Doug Fieger from the Knack. The Knack weren’t a band that changed the world but at the tail end of the 1970’s they were one of the first American bands to takes a pop/punk sound (let’s just call it New Wave I suppose) to the top of the charts. Remarkably ‘My Sharona’ was #1 in the US for six weeks and also in the UK for five weeks! I remember the song being everywhere for a while when I was a kid but was it that huge? Fieger died in his home at the age of just 57 from cancer last Sunday, more details here in the Washington Post.

Right then… I know this is a few days late but a good way to get the weekend off and running eh? We started round two of the search for best ever Clash songs last week and I’d better report on the results for that match up first of all. As I explained in full on this post the song that gets the most votes automatically makes it through to round two and the runners up with the highest percentage of total votes are also staying in the competition. Its more simple than it sounds and most importantly every vote counts (where have I heard that before – Florida presidential election?), match one was a close run affair:

Kingston Advice defeated Cheapskates     27-22

This was even closer than that the first few days but a few late votes saw Kingston Advice pull away, Cheapskates might stick around with 44.90% of the overall vote. So much for my prediction, best you ignore that in future. So match up number two via the random number machine:

Koka Kola    vs    1977

Not two of the strongest songs in round two in truth so one of them reaching round three is probably a bonus. One of the very earliest Clash songs against something from essentially the exact middle of their career. .

Form:

Round One – Koka Kola beat Drug Stabbing Time 20-13 collecting 60.6% of the votes                                                                                                                 Round One – 1977 beat Dirty Punk 44-1 collecting an amazing  97.8% of the votes

Odds:

London Calling has so many songs that I think will make the final 32 but is Koka Kola one of them? I do think if you go back and listen to both songs before you vote that it will be strong enough to get more votes than 1977. That said I was wrong in the last match, though I do expect these to be close again.

Best Lyrics:

Your eyeballs feel like pinballs and your tongue feels like a fish

No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones

As for the lyrics, I think Strummer’s couplets on Koka Kola are amongst his best and they are spat out with such pace it makes for a brilliant song. That said that line from 1977 became part of Clash legacy, a line repeated in more Clash stories I’ve read over the years than perhaps any other.

Listen (and watch) here – Koka Kola or 1977

1983 for track one, from the ill fated US festival in Southern California though I think this was one of the better songs caught from that difficult evening. 1977 is that just the greatest close to a Clash song?

Thanks in advance for all of your votes, polls close next Friday and I’ll endeavour to get another match up put together by Monday!

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