Hello again from Ice Station Zebra and welcome back to the blog. Alright I’m exaggerating a bit but when summer finally buggered off on Monday afternoon and temperatures fell by some 45f in 48 hours we all felt a chill in the air (relatively speaking). Any sense of some calm hours catching lovely Autumnal weather was rudely shattered yesterday as a storm rolled in that then rumbled around the desert for the next 18 hours, the highlight being a hail storm featuring chunks of ice as big as golf balls smashing into the neighbourhood. It was all exciting to watch until I heard glass shattering, then more of the same. A number of houses and cars lost windows yesterday in the hail and my car has a series of lovely roof and bonnet dents to now show as war wounds. Exciting…? Oh yes.

More exciting though is the news that Paul Simonon, Mick Jones and some bloke from Blur are now on these shores. In fact the stage will be filled with eighteen official band members throughout the now commenced tour by Gorillaz. Then you add to the mix the revolving door of guest vocalists it will make for a bit of a chaotic seen, or will it? According to review of the opening night gig in Montreal it all went quite smoothly with more than a little flash sequencing that more than made up for a crowded stage. The whole gig review is right here and it augurs well for those of you like myself clutching bloody expensive tickets and yet not quite sure what we will get for our hard earned cash.

Paul thinks 'this ain't The Roundhouse'

Seeing half of The Clash on stage with bass and guitar in hand makes it a proposition I couldn’t say no to, and I know from emails and comments that many of you felt it would be foolish in the extreme to presume such an opportunity might present itself in the near future if indeed ever again. Though I’m sure like you I also want to enjoy the show and music and yes in my case it helps that I like Damon Albarn’s work a great deal and have done since the first time I saw Blur back in 1991 (bloody hell, even that is almost 20 years ago now…how did that happen). For others though I know you are taking a punt on Gorillaz and are there essentially to see former members The Clash, but honestly I think it will be a good concert in addition to the two chaps that will be our primary focus. I say this because the indications are that the summer festivals were mostly a chance to get the band ship-shape and the intervening weeks were used greatly to work out the kinks and refine the live experience of seeing Gorillaz, don’t forget its a new proposition as a live act. Based on the review above and clips I’ve seen and read on Twitter the show is indeed a few gears above what was trotted out this summer. Good news for us, not so much if you weathered the Glastonbury warm up gig. I’ve seen Blur enough times to know that Damon is miles better with an audience that reacts and pays attention and a bit of a sulk at other times, sounds like someone I know. Hopefully the huge scope of these gigs won’t derail the gigs into what could potentially be arena (dance) rock. I’m being optimistic and staying there, its not the time to get sour.

It did get me thinking if I’ve ever seen a band with more than a dozen members before and came up far short of anything that approaches the 18 strong Gorillaz crew. The Specials, The Men They Couldn’t Hang, Belle and Sebastian all peaked at about 7 or 8 I think so I’ve a feeling the toughest job on this tour may fall on whoever sits at the mixing desk. This (giant arena/guest vocalists) is all a bit foreign to me, I’ve never ached to be in audiences more than 3,000 strong unless it was a festival (wrong..I stumbled into Wembley Arena a few times) and I’ve forever struggled with the concept of sitting at a concert, what a trial. I’ll adjust right? It will be alright in the end.

In the meantime…I know many of you have tickets for the intervening 3 weeks at venues across North America, so please share your thoughts when you get home with your Gorillaz merchandise safely tucked away. Photos and gig notes will be happily received and reproduced and first Clash reference on stage wins a gong of some sort. Be good….and enjoy the Plastic Beach. Don’t forget Letterman tomorrow and the webcast and to get your Clash shirts laundered and pressed. Brothel creepers are acceptable footwear.    Tim

Nearly forgot – enter this competition over at Spin to win Gorillaz tickets at a selection of tour dates.

Greetings Clash maniacs ~ thanks for meandering back to the blog for another daily dose of the contents of my head. Actually hopefully there will be more to the blog tonight than the contents of my head today as they would primarily revolve around one of those Wile E. Coyote 5 ton anvils falling on top of someone I dislike (all for the greater good you understand) and my other burning desire which is to get back to California as soon as possible. I’m having serious withdrawals from city, ocean, culture, diversity and nice weather and I can quench most of that quite locally. Its a longish drive but not as much to see en route as you might get on a short burst down the Westway – hence tonight is another update of Westway Traffic - your quick and easy reference guide to shorter Clash stories on the web. Westway Traffic volume ten (first in 18 days…oh dear!)  just click on the story header for more information.

Image courtesy 'Tian'

Speaking of Topper Headon: Yesterday’s post was a good chance to take a more recent glimpse of Topper Headon and the stellar work he is doing on behalf of the Hepatitis C Trust back in the UK. Within my idle speculation I mentioned how I think he is probably quite simply grateful to be alive and well and still receiving (the very merited) recognition for the amazing body of work he achieved with The Clash. Its easy to overlook Topper as ‘just’ the drummer but the reality is that from early 1979 onwards the band’s appreciation of each others influences and of course ability is what drove The Clash to achieve such a diverse range of work on London Calling and beyond. Topper was a huge part of that – I think an understated part of that, his talent and versatility as a drummer (but guitar, piano als0) meant he was a critical part of the sound that The Clash achieved. Anyway, I’m rambling again (I’ve cabin fever and it happens daily) but I stumbled across this video you can see by clicking the header of this paragraph where Topper is awarding a drumming scholarship at the Canterbury Christ Church University music department. Its great footage to hear Topper talk about drumming, his recovery and The Clash.

Bloody good art….and it’s from France too! : I hope you’ve noticed the remarkably cool images to the left and below on the right, these canvas prints were made in four stages from the debut album sleeve and existing photographs. I stumbled upon this and an assortment of truly fantastic images that have been created by an artist named Tian who is from Le Mans, France. I’ve written to try and find out more and hopefully we can do a more in depth feature on his work on a future post but his work and style really is something you should have a look at. He has done a number of Clash pieces but the rest of the portfolio is also wonderfully conceived. More to follow soon I really hope and ideally I can get particulars if any of you are feeling a bit spendy.

Ken Livingstone, his life and music: If like me you’ve lived in London or visited extensively you know that the mayor of the Greater London Authority is a fairly important duty and perhaps especially so in helping to shape London’s approach to transport, crime and the arts. Ken Livingstone did much more than appear on the Blur track ‘Ernold Same’ - Livingstone won that position in a 2000 election and held it until 2008. You already know I fall far left of centre and I’ve always liked Ken a great deal, he’s been credited with doing a lot to reduce racism in London, reduce congestion and make it a slightly better place to live. Admittedly I’m making that observation from some distance as I left the city before he was in office. He has a record of being radical and very outspoken but when you cut through the agenda that the press have you can see he tried desperately to improve London. Now the city is under the ‘control’ of Boris Johnson, a man that deserves (and has) much longer articles written about him on other blogs. I understand Livingstone is looking to get back into office in 2012, we’ll keep an eye on that one. As for the link, a great interview recently conducted by the equally great Quietus that asks Ken to reflect on the music they play to him and reflect on it and culture during his many years in London.

I’ve just realised that I’ve got about 20 more Clash related tidbits to get through. So let me brew some coffee and I’ll get another update done soon…thanks for dropping in. Tim

Good evening, I trust your week hasn’t been shipwrecked on the rocks of a rotten Monday as you read this although it may well be Tuesday when you get to it. I’ve had one of those Mondays that you always put them down to being a Monday rather than just accepting it wasn’t the best day in any guise. It was alright, there were moments that were quite pleasant but I really needed some loud music and fresh coffee to get me started before blogging and it definitely worked, this is my 4th blog today.

My CD collection is a bit (alright a lot) out of hand these days but I just chucked it on random this afternoon and out came The La’s who I haven’t listened to in quite some time. Probably because they’re on carousel number two (Letters F-L) and I tend to be stuck on carousel one recently (The Clash). They got me thinking about that very select group of bands that have a huge impact despite only releasing one album or perhaps one decent album. In fact I immediately concocted a short list of four such bands who would make a good list of one album wonders, this was done on the fly and at very short notice so I expect you’ll be able to add to the list quite rapidly. Luckily The Clash stuck around long enough to not only follow on from their first album but many will say they improved upon it at least once if not twice. There is also a good number of people who feel they never eclipsed that debut record, I’m not one of them though as while I love the first album was very much of its time – The Clash made a punk album because they came to the fore during the punk scene. I think the band would have probably imploded early if the recipe was to keep making the same record, thus I’m not sure they were really a punk band for more than the first 18 to 24 months. They then became the greatest rock band of the era by expanding and experimenting rather than doing a Coldplay (with apologies to Coldplay..actually no…no apologies, if you like Coldplay I’m sorry that you have no taste).

So my list, it’s a bit wobbly as only two of the four truly only made one record although I’ll hopefully make a strong case as to why the other two choices are on my list. As soon as I finish this I’m sure I’ll come up with others tonight but was trying to focus on bands that were the first ‘successful’ endeavour for the artists concerned rather than some malformed/hybrid supergroup which appeared later in the artists career. If that definition makes any sense? So, in no particular order and limited to my record buying years:

1 – The Sex Pistols – Never Mind The Bollocks     1977 Virgin Records

It’s probably hard to beat this for an album with impact if you’re only going to ever release one. The Sex Pistols debut was also of course there only proper album and by proper I mean official. Strangely for an album that is completely synonymous with British punk it came out extremely late on, at the end of October 1977. The reasons for this are well documented with a combination of record company disputes and a band that were finding it hard to not only play live but in many instances to appear in public. A year earlier the Pistols were by far the head of the pack for the then embryonic punk scene, by the time the album eventually came out the reputation of the band (both created and real) had almost reached mythical status. It still managed to create unreasonable outrage due to the title although most of the tracks contained within were already completely familiar to any fan of the band. Everyone I knew growing up had a copy of this and I’m sure it still does decent business in downloads and as part of an essential collection. I’m no Sex Pistols expert but I’ve always been amazed at all the incantations of bootlegs and live albums that were to then follow the only studio recording made. I didn’t list it first on purpose but it probably deserves to be there anyway. As for why it was there only album…John Lydon / McLaren…. enemies, you know the rest.

2 – The La’s – The La’s           1990 Go! Discs

If I ever had a weakness for a record label and bands from a certain city this one would cover both for me. Hailing from Liverpool The La’s eventually became as well-known for only making one album as they did for the quality of the songs on the record. The album itself was one of those travesties that became so overdue that much of the niche market that the band had relied on had almost given up by the time it was eventually released in 1990. Famously the band worked with almost as many producers as there are songs on the album by the time it finally got completed. Ridiculously over two years had passed since the success of the early singles and the release of the debut album. Go! Discs patiently waited after signing the band initially in 1987 but by the time the album was pressed the passion for the band had moved on to other sounds and other bands such as the one coming up next. What a great label Go! Discs was though, a small but consistently brilliant roster including Billy Bragg, The Housemartins and Trash Can Sinatras it also sired (pun intended) Go! Beat records which became the stable for Portishead and Beats International.

3 – The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses          1989 Silvertone

The Stone Roses....not in court

What can I say about this record that hasn’t already been said? I was 21 when this album was released and it just blew me away, me and everyone I knew plus hundreds of thousands of others. Nothing captures the fag end of the 1980s and Manchester quite like the Stone Roses debut. When The Smiths split up it seemed in indie music was slowly marching to a grave of twee ineffectiveness but fortunately Manchester had another solution is store. Half a decade later Oasis would stimulate similar reactions but their debut doesn’t compare with the Stone Roses. I don’t think many albums compare with this one and I would be hard-pressed to not include it on any list of 20 recommended albums from the last 30 years, it might just even break my top 10. I know the Stone Roses made a second album but it was such a convoluted footnote of legal wrangling and interminable delays that by the time it was released in 1994 Second Coming was probably the most inappropriate album title ever conceived. I do believe if they had made an album even half as good as their debut they may have gone on to secure a long career but for some reason in the nearly 6 years between albums it seem they spent more time in court than writing new songs, Second Coming was simply abysmal

4 – Elastica – Elastica           1995 Deceptive

The story of Elastica reads a little bit like the story of the Stone Roses, although I wouldn’t say I quite the same level of accomplishment. At the beginning of 1995 in the Britpop shadow of Suede, Blur, Oasis and Pulp came the debut album from Elastica headed by former Suede member Justine Frischmann. The album was a huge success in the UK commercially reaching number one and also selling large quantities throughout the world. The spiky singles Connection and Line Up were on radios and jukeboxes wherever I went. It was a decent album, not brilliant but strong enough to deserve its place as one of the integral albums of the scene. What couldn’t be ignored was the intense similarity to some songs by Wire not in that lend us a riff way (which admittedly The Clash and so many others were guilty of) but just taken as if nobody would notice. It didn’t detract from an album which was good fun if a bit shaky as a live act. Then came the chasm of over five years which lets me include Elastica with an asterisk as the second album The Menace snuck out in a new era, in fact it was a new century and the scene had changed as had the interest in the band. Two members had left the band in the intervening time and Elastica had essentially wound up about two years before the second record quietly snuck out to little acclaim.

Admittedly I am limited in my list by bands that I really liked so I am sure you can bolster the contents with your own recollections and record collections. Sorry it wasn’t terribly Clashcentric tonight but I’ll get back on track with the next post. Have a good Tuesday – that’s my plan also! Tim