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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Hello again – what a day that was…..hope yours was decent, mine started with watching my Arsenal lose (again) and then a cold chilly spot of football myself and I felt like heaping revenge on the ball for this morning. Let’s just say the day continued as it started. So back to something a bit more fun. The Clash Cup Round Two – before I explain the format we have one result to share from round one -

Protex Blue defeated The Magnificent Dance 34 – 20

So we are all set with the contenders for round two. (You might want to skip this paragraph) Don’t forget we have 25 songs ‘seeded’ due to the initial voting which will be introduced in round three – let’s call them the heavyweights, the final 25 you all selected would make for the ultimate Clash CD but those votes were cast months ago so nothing is written in stone. From round one 64 songs make it through, 54 outright winners plus the 10 runners up that compiled the most most votes. From these 64 we’ll carry forward 32 winners + the 7 best runners up (percentage of all votes cast) = 39 songs + the 25 seeded songs for our final 64! It’s not as complex as it sounds but we’ll end up with 64 brilliant songs to match up head to head.

Voting I’ll leave open for a week – and the sincere goal is to run at least two matches per week. In a perfect world round two will run over the next 16 weeks (at the most) and will try and get through it a bit quicker as round three will be something else. You don’t need to register – just click to vote – one vote per match up.

I’ll mention how the song did in the prior round, you can click on the song to hear it before you vote and I’ll share an opinion if it might help the propaganda of getting the songs I want to see through (I’m kidding). Songs are selected via a random number generator which has the approval of Bernard Rhodes.

Round Two Match One

Cheapskates versus Kingston Advice

Blimey that’s a tough one to start things off I am going to hold off on voting til tomorrow but probably leaning towards one of them. Cheapskates strangely enough also featured in our first week of match ups back on August 16! Kingston Advice came out of the hat the next week.

Form -

Cheapskates won round one 27-4 over Idle in The Kangaroo Court  87.1%

Kingston Advice won in round one 27-10 over Look Here 73.0%

Odds (pure supposition) I’d say Cheapskates is a slim favourite but you may see the Sandinista! track go through as a best runner up. So every vote matters even if your preference is trailing.

Best Lyrics?

Don’t give me the benefit
Of your doubt
‘Cos I’ll bite it off and spit it out

In these days the beat is militant
Must be a clash there’s no alternative
In these days nations are militant
We have slavery under government

Listen here – Cheapskates or Kingston Advice

Thanks for voting !!!

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As promised…the Clash Cup is back, sadly I can’t same for Arsenal as we were dismantled by a Manchester United team who were far more efficient with their attacks and aided by some extremely naive defending by my club. It cast a shadow over the entire day and was only remedied when I dragged my 42 year old legs down to the park this afternoon to play some football myself. Ah well…you’re not here to learn of my malaise but to get back into The Clash Cup – our own unofficial quest to determine the best 16,8 and finally top 4 Clash songs of all time. I dusted off my spreadsheet this afternoon and learned we have one final Round One match to make our votes heard on and then this week we’ll dive into round two. The songs that remain in round two are for the most part all exceptionally good so the voting will be frantic and important.

A brief explanation if you’re new to the blog – we originally listed all know Clash songs and then took a few weeks to ‘seed’ 16 of the best Clash songs. The remaining songs (142 of them) all went into the bucket and a random number generator selected songs to be paired off and voted for. The online poll allows one vote per user and we closed the polls typically 72 hours after the posting went live. The response was great and not everyone could be happy with every result (myself included) but with one vote remaining we are now just about ready to move onto Round 2. First though that final battle -

Protex Blue versus The Magnificent Dance

Two well known tracks on the final slate so please give careful consideration. I’ll close the polls on Wednesday and plan to start Round 2 on Weds or Thursday of this week.

Protex Blue - I believe this is one of the very oldest existing songs that The Clash recorded, the original version dating back to 1975 when Mick Jones wrote it during his brief spell as London SS. Musically its one of the most raw of Clash recordings and a basic chord progression and bridge it has a real garage sound feel. Even the subject matter is a bit fifth form (condoms) but it remains a fun song. Who would have guessed that 35 years later Mick and Tony James would be a band once more writing and recording as Carbon Silicon.

The Magnificent Dance – 12″ records were as much a part of the early 1980′s as being impacted by the cold hand of Margaret Thatcher. The 12″ single evolved for the disco scene initially and became a place for bonus B sides, alternate versions, instrumental versions and the ‘remix’. I’ve always loved this remix of The Mag 7 – probably because my early excellent efforts to make mix tapes always ended with a version of this track faded out at the perfect length to finish side one of my TDK AD 90. If you’re less than 30 years old you probably wonder just what I’m on about.

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Get voting and thanks!