Tuesday evening, no clouds, cooler temperatures and some unfinished business to attend to. Overall not a bad day to drop in at the blog although I’m at sixes and sevens about what I want to be when I grow up. Follow your heart of follow the money, I’m electing to follow my heart and try and make a living out of this writing thing. So if you know anyone who needs help with website content, setting up a blog or SEO for an existing site just point them in my direction. Consider that advertising and it didn’t cost you a penny. I was reading more about the economy and the various ‘occupy protests’ swelling up everywhere and it made me write at length about the fact that some drastic change is needed soon and I don’t think either of the existing parties in the US (nor many of the standard choices elsewhere) are going to get things ‘fixed’. Too much water under the bridge and too many politicians have already been bought and sold if you ask me. Our local #occupy event takes place this Saturday, if I had my beat reporter costume I’d go down and interview some of those who are mad as hell and don’t think they can take it anymore.

As for The Clash Blog; I thought tonight would be a good opportunity to finally share some of the video footage of Mick Jones and a collection of others performing in Liverpool for the ‘Don’t Buy The Sun’ event that took place recently. I realise this is overdue but other things kept popping up so if you’ve already seen all of the footage below pretend you haven’t but better still please let me know what you thought. Some have said it was ‘as near to spirit of The Clash as you can get’ which is really saying something.

I really like this still from the video - Mick looks like his 1981 Clash gangster fashion age

Regardless I wish I was able to attend this one in person as it did look special. Above and to your left you’ll see a quote from The Farm (I assume Mr. Hooton) sent to me via Twitter, it did seem to have been a special night for Mick and one that apparently continued until dawn the next day. There is some photographic evidence of that at Liverpool Lime Street Station which I really must include in a future post. Until then however all that’s left for you to do is hit the play button on the videos beneath and for me to thank IcicleWorker and Whichway for the videos. Cheers.

Mick Jones & Pete Wylie – ‘Train in Vain’ Olympia Liverpool 24/9/11

Pete Hooton, Mick Jones & Pete Wylie – ‘(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais’ Olympia Liverpool 24/9/11

Pete Hooton, Mick Jones & Pete Wylie ‘Armagideon Time’ Olympia Liverpool 24/9/11

The entire evening looked to have been top shelf and you can also see ‘Stay Free’ and ‘Rush’ performed plus a host of other great tracks from the evening if you follow the links I provided just before we got to the videos. Were any of you there that night? What did you think? If (perhaps due to age) you missed out on The Mighty Wah! and The Farm check them out as they were both excellent, shit my list of Liverpool bands is as long as my arm. Echo and The Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes (+ Julian Cope solo), The Pale Fountains, The Lightning Seeds, The La’s, Shack, The Boo Radleys, The Icicle Works, Benny Profane, Wild Swans to name just a few. Viva Merseyside!

That’s me done for now – more tomorrow I’d imagine.

It’s almost down to 90f in the desert tonight, the ClashBlog dog is looking at me expectantly and demanding we go for a late night wander. Thus I told her let me put together a quick update for the blog and then we’ll see if it’s cool enough out. Yes it’s been that sort of summer where 88f is going to feel pleasant, indeed these are the conversations I have with the dog.

A few updates on the wires that I wanted to share with you this evening because as ever you can find Clash related tales on the interwebs which is good as it keeps you informed and me out of trouble. First up then is a really enjoyable read from the Sabotage Times which takes an extract from ‘Shadowplay – The Rise and Fall of Factory Records’ (I need to buy this book!) and it looks back at the punk/post punk days of the The Factory at The Russel Club in Manchester, Tony Wilson’s live music fledgling venture that had a history so colourful I wish I had a time machine. The extract itself is brilliant and well worth a read if you bought a lot of records in the late 70′s even if you were miles from Manchester. Of course there is a reference/anecdote about The Clash which you’ll find just below the video on the post. Here is a list of the bands that visited just during the second half of 1978 and into 1979:

Magazine, The Fall, The Passage, Ultravox,Wire, Pere Ubu, Ludus and Penetration, while 1979 saw visits from Gang of Four, Crass, Stiff Little Fingers, The Cure, Cabaret Voltaire, Skids, Throbbing Gristle, The Human League, Mekons, Pink Military, The Raincoats, Simple Minds, The Cramps, Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen, B-52s and Joy Division.

Can you even fucking imagine twelve months like that?

I know a lot of you enjoyed the article about Joe Strummer’s daughter Jazz the other day which looked at her cutting edge involvement with the textile industry. It made me smile more than a little (my grandfather was a tailor so clothing/fashion has always had a soft spot with me). Published this week the London Evening Standard also took a look at what the younger Strummer has been up to which you should take a look at.

Dog is now pacing….

Remind me to get back to this but I’m still on my quest to read eighteen books this year, book 13 is called ‘Bloody Confused’ which is about an American sportswriter throwing himself headlong into discovering the joys of proper (futbol, soccer) football when he moves to England. He becomes a supporter of Portsmouth (poor sod) but the book is so far an excellent investment of time and it just so happens that the author is a bit of a Clash nut. The book automatically seems better, even though it’s good anyway. Two glowing references to our boys and I’m only 80 pages in, what a coincidence and one I knew nothing of at the time of purchase. I’ll need to contact him about that when I complete the book.

Right, that should do for now – I will have more soon, time to put the dog in a better mood. Be Good…Tim

Hello…..anyone there? I just thought I’d briefly check in from my cold syrup induced stupour and get a quick post composed. How on earth I catch a stinking cold when it was 105f outside this week I’ll never know. Hope your week is going better than mine and unless you’re in jail or surrounded by members of Coldplay (or both!!) chances are it is.

I’m going to make this a very short post but ideally will be back to something more substantial shortly. (lie…I continued it the next day) You know that video clip of the interview with The Clash where Bernie Rhodes is asleep? That’s how I feel this evening. Speaking of Bernie Rhodes please drop in soon for a chance to get your hands on a very special bit of Bernie related Clash memorabilia, I don’t quite know what the owner is asking for it but I think it will create quite a bit of interest.

In the meantime I’ve a few good things to share. Put your hand up (with me) if you are old enough to remember fanzines? Before the dawn of the internet and blogging back in my youth fanzines were the journals of the youth when it came to punk music for a while, into the 80′s some bands even had their own (very good) fanzines full of typically 32 pages of xeroxed content stapled together. The content was often good especially for the obsessive fan, special interviews, gig reviews, rumours and opinions. In the same decade fanzines became really popular in the world of football (soccer for some) with loads of excellent choices full of funny and insightful writing. I can remember a time when Arsenal had no fewer than 10 different fanzines being published and sold around the ground or down at Sportspages on Charing Cross Road (is that still there?). Fanzines had a wonderful DIY mentality and still contained lots of excellent writing the like of which wasn’t available elsewhere. When starting this blog creating something akin to a fanzine was always a goal – opinions, ideas and some strange stuff mixed in but essentially focused on a specific topic to be shared with like minded people. How important were fanzines to punk? Hard for me to say because of my age but I think if you look at the idea behind the music that anyone could do it, you didn’t need to be connected and versed to start a band then the fanzines were the written equivalent. I’ve been drawn into that long diatribe by a cool feature currently in The Guardian that looks at the ’50 key events in the history of indie music’ there’s been a number of good features but do go and check this one out which looks at Mark Perry’s (and Danny Baker’s) important contribution to the punk/indie landscape by starting up ‘Sniffin’ Glue’ back in 1977. Worth remembering The Clash were treated like lepers for signing to CBS at the time in the oracle, also worth remembering there was no Rough Trade or Factory Records in 1977 the only proper independent options were Chiswick Records (who signed The Damned), Stiff and arguably Island or Virgin but if memory serves me they were already associated with EMI by that time. I wondered if any of you still have any of those old fanzines? I bet they fetch a tidy sum on eBay now, I’ve got some old Echo and The Bunnymen and Wedding Present ones and a pile of football ones but nothing that predates about 1985. Check out the entire feature ‘A History of Modern Music’ on the Guardian, it will keep you occupied for ages.

The other link which is definitely worth your time is over at Dangerous Minds.net who look back at The Clash performance at The Elizabethan in Manchester in November, 1977. This makes many lists of great earlier concerts although it helped that Granada TV had cameras there to capture some of the best quality footage of the band that year for ‘So It Goes’. I recommend the article as it’s some of my favourite footage of the band, as if you shook up a bottle of Koka Kola and twisted the lid off….explosive, amazing. A couple of clips are on that page. Thank goodness for Tony Wilson.

I’ll have more soon, perhaps too soon to make up for the gap. I also will probably be adding a forum to the blog next week so you can make friends with each other and play nicely.  Thanks for stopping in and don’t forget to say stop by the comments section or on Facebook and Twitter. You can also have a daily blog fix mailed direct to enjoy with a nice spoonful of cough syrup by subscribing to my RSS Feed here. Cheers – Tim