Hello again and welcome back to the blog. Sorry for the 48 hours of inactivity but I caught some type of bug that left me with sore throat, limited voice, hot and cold spells  and sleeping for more than 90% of the weekend. If it happened to a woman you’d say you caught a cold but as a bloke let me tell you it made for a miserable weekend. I’m about 40% now, coughing and sneezing every few minutes but not needing a nap every 90 minutes as I did over the weekend…well enough for a blog post anyway.

it just won't run without fuel....

I’ll confess I’ve not actually had time for any great research since the last post so it leaves me to share the winner of the Strummer tattoo competition that we had about a week ago – and the winner in a very close event was tattoo number 2 – The black Strummerville logo (Joe on the Diving Board) just edged out one of the most impressive tattoos I’ve ever seen. I’ll try and locate the owner and offer them a lifetime subscription to the blog via RSS feed or something. In another poll we held recently it seems that the fine readers of the blog are well clued up on things other than The Clash as our preseason premier league poll (English soccer for some readers) showed the favourite pick to win the league this season as Chelsea, which I think is wise money. I’ll still stick with my prediction that Arsenal will take 2nd spot with some aplomb – to see the full results and my banal predictions have a look at this link. I warned you at the start of the post that I’ve not got a great deal of news for you this afternoon but on a personal level I wanted to share my newest Clash related pride and joy. You may recall about six weeks ago when my car tags expired I decided to order a new (mystery) Clash themed license plate for the car. Some suggestions I received and considered myself included H8FUL   TRNVAIN  COMROCK  WMiHP  PRTXBLU  CASBAH1 4HRSMEN   JIMJAZZ  MAG 7 and others, I made my decision thinking I’d only need to wait two weeks and not six – but when it arrived last week I must confess it felt like Christmas for a 6 year old for a few hours. The results are below – sorry the photo isn’t too wonderful, I’ll take more when its on the car itself. I’ve just have had an awful time finding a 1975 Ford Cortina.

The new ClashBlog license plate

I’ll definitely be back on a more regular basis in the days ahead, we’ve got Clash Cup, Video Clash, Westway Traffic, Clash Shopping, Gorillaz tour preview part 3, an NME feature, and news from Carbon Silicon and the UK press all coming up this week plus more I’m sure. Thanks for being patient – oh and the ClashBlog cat is doing a bit better (I won’t tempt fate and say she is well yet) it is a proper infirmary around here lately.

I am back and hopefully you are too…or if this is your first visit to the blog welcome aboard, take a look around there are (remarkably) 444 other posts on the blog if you feel like getting stuck into the all of the news since June of last year. Some of the posts are good fun and hopefully pretty informative, others might be me rambling on about this and that but I try and tie it back in to The Clash. There’s not a lot of hot off the presses news tonight so I thought I’d tie up some loose ends and make sure some things that have been sitting in the inbox a while get a mention. Joe’s Birthday is just 9 days away now and I’ll get a summary of the events published this weekend. I’ll also be thrilled if you can participate with the facebook ‘Strummer Status Day‘ if facebook is your thing (details here) but the premise is simple; take any Clash or post Clash Joe Strummer quote or lyric and change it to be your facebook status for the day this August 21st.

I’ve finally got a lot nearer to a method to be able to conduct and allow me to record interviews for the blog (good news) I’m also happy to say I have a list of people who have agreed to give interviews to the blog (better news) and if I can get my act together the first of these should be appearing on the blog next month. I’ve had the best intentions with interviews since starting the blog and not yet not set aside the requisite time or found the ideal way to capture good audio. I’ll conduct the interview however it works best for the guest so ideally they will be audio streams or something podcastesque or they may be written if needed – either way starting next month I’ll be aiming to get at least one new interview per month on the blog. We’ve got some great people lined up should of interest to many of you with a variety of Clash tales and related topics.

I need help with a project that I’d like to make a special feature on the site – A Clash fan’s guide to London – I can probably get the basis put together and find images online but I might need the help of some Londoners circa 2010, its been a while since I lived in London and I don’t wanna explain Ladbroke Grove 1996 style if there are changes I should be relaying. For example every pub I knew in Shepherd’s Bush 20 years ago have been replaced by theme pubs (!?!) I receive emails at least every couple of weeks saying “I’m going to London for the first time and I’m a Clash nut, what should I see?” – so I thought it would be great to have something permanently on the blog. I also want to expand the Clash landmarks series, so if you live in a city or town where The Clash once played and can speak with some authority about the venue they played I’d love to hear from you. It brings more of the first person recollection of the neighbourhood and the venue to readers of the blog which I think would have value.

Thanks to Charlie who wrote in to point out that Carbon Silicon are heading over to Dublin next month to play in a few events for the Guinness Arthur’s Day event. The main concert is at the Olympia (Sep 23rd) and tickets are still available here at the very reasonable price of €11.70. They will also be playing earlier in the day at a secret event in a pub, I’m sure the secret will be revealed so watch the blog. Sounds like a good week for me to go and visit my cousins in Dublin. I might be able to afford airfare if I hadn’t just bough a pile of tickets to see Gorillaz on October, I know…he doth protest too much.

Last link for now is a story of an apparent personal meeting with Joe Strummer on this blog. I’ll assume it’s a true story and go with it – if it is it’s worth a read though I wasn’t aware of official dislike between Strummer and Johnny Ramone (although I wonder if the author meant Joey?). Check it out and tell me what you think.

A few short hops – if you were a fan of Orange Juice (I was and am) you surely heard about the serious health scares that Edwyn Collins suffered back in 2005. At the time

Orange Juice (image courtesy the portastylistic)

there was doubt that Collins would make even a partial recovery so to know he is recording and playing live again is heartwarming. Check out the Quietus for a story about a recent appearance he made at the 100 Club in London along with some special guests. Wishing him continued good health.

From the same wonderful site that is The Quietus comes a great article about Louise Wener and her new book. Wener was the Ilford girl who fronted a band I adored for a short while in the mid 90’s – Sleeper – who along with Echobelly constituted the female led bands of the overtly laddish Britrock scene that seemed to sweep up the country for a summer or two. Writing this blog I’ve noticed more than a few readers who swoon on a daily basis over pictures I post of Simonon and sometimes Joe and once in a while even Mick. I’m fine with that as like most Clash fans I know the Clash were the coolest looking band ever and Paul had some decided appeal just by standing still and getting in the way of a camera. Anyway….Louise from Sleeper and Sonja from Echobelly are this lad’s equivalents. Both were really rather good bands and I think probably given short shift but a music press that didn’t want someone to out cool Oasis and Blur (yeah Damon is another one you adore…I get it) especially if fronted by a girl. It was like Blondie and the Pretenders had never happened. That said Britain had offered Siouxsie…and…that was about it unless the Primitives and The Flatmates stood out for you. (I’m not discounting Kate Bush and Sinead but focusing on bands fronted by a woman)….When Sleeper came to a fairly sputtering conclusion I know Wener started writing books – and although they’ve been childrens book up til now this one recounts the highs and lows of being in Sleeper and touches on the sexism and disposable trends that remained in the mid 90’s British music press. I’d like to get a copy – and while I’m not saying Sleeper were the best band of the 90’s they were streets ahead of some of the pretenders such as Menswear and Rialto who got more press and hype at the same time.

I’ve gone on for far too long yet again, hope you made it to the bottom….I’ll be back soon. If the timer on the blog works you should see this post late on Thursday (most of this was scribed in the wee hours last night). ’til next time then  – Tim

Sleeper – Inbetweener (1994)

Hello kind people and nice to see you all again, another day in the dusty desert and I caught the goldfish out back trying to build a noose out of blades of grass that had blown into their pond. Such is the torment of a desert summer, but after feeding said fish I also explained to them that they don’t technically have necks and therefore the noose wouldn’t really serve a purpose. They went back to swimming.

A short short post again but some good stuff nonetheless and we’ll turn our attention to Mick Jones, circa 2010. First up please enjoy the video below courtesy of bunkerworld films and featuring the recent jaunt over to Naples by our beloved Carbon Silicon to appear at the the recent Neapolis Festival on July 16. I love that the band put out these video bulletins as they always show the band behind the scenes and having a good old time. I won’t spoil the video by explaining every frame so sit your bum down and enjoy the 3 or 4 minutes that it runs. I must say I enjoy seeing Mick currently bounce between projects which continues a spell of working near constantly the last few years, better than that he’s so obviously enjoying it.

I did find a few other clips online from the festival which I’ll point you towards; they’re not brilliantly filmed or recorded but still will give you a quick flavour of the event. Have you been to Naples? It’s madness…and I mean that in the best possible way. Here’s a crowd filmed clip of Should I Stay…not great audio but fun nonetheless. The second clip highlights a few acts from the festival; Carbon Silicon appear after the halfway point just after 5:20- no clues but it’s funny to watch. Due to other commitments Carbon Silicon are somewhat on ‘pause’ now for the time being but by all accounts work continues on new music.

Before I go I’ve got a favour to ask ,or at least ask that you share this with friends and family or even your facebook fan club. Some of you already know that I also write other blogs. I have a great client in Toronto; for whom we collectively blog about environmental issues and try and raise awareness of sustainable living ideas and a greener lifestyle, you know the story – so there still might be a planet worth inhabiting in 50 years time so kids can still listen to Clash albums. They sell a range of really cool eco-friendly products (stainless steel water bottles, thermals etc) and have been kind enough to extend a special discount to readers of The Clash Blog. Thus for a limited time you can take 50% off of the purchase price at checkout by entering CLASHBLOG50 as a coupon code when you shop at their online store which is here: Planet Forward.ca They are really well made products and would make great gifts plus they eliminate bloody plastic water bottles from your life. At present they ship to the US and Canada at very affordable rates, if you’re elsewhere shoot me an email and we’ll get a quote for you. Huge thanks in advance if you can give them some Clash custom - if not no worries. If you want to read some of my blogs for them here is the link to that. It might be a way to avoid me mentioning Gorillaz and Arsenal.

Cheers…..if you have any questions about the above email/facebook/twitter me ….(the usual)