Hello you lot, hope your week is off to a reasonable start. I know there are 52 Mondays in every year so why does it seem like they come around even more often than that? I was listening to something on a podcast over the weekend about the music industry and the state of cd sales and how singles no longer really exist as a physical option. It was interesting and a bit worrying to hear just how much the market for music has changed, I’ll do some extra research but the inference was essentially this. To reach #15 in the British Charts in 1982 would have taken more sales than it now takes to reach number one. If that’s true you wonder if the single should officially be laid to rest?

Let’s look at then versus now (I’ll base it on the UK as that’s where my experience lays). In 1982 a 7″ single was about £1.25 – or just about $2.00 in US terms. Don’t forget the spending value of a pound or a dollar was also significantly higher then than it is now. So for your money you got a 7″ slab of vinyl, a B-side and ideally a picture sleeve. Remember the annoyance of going out to purchase a single and finding that it was just a plain white paper sleeve? Still annoys me to this day. Today you can download essentially any song for a quid or a dollar, no side, no artwork and nothing to actually touch and hold. I still have two long boxes of 7″ singles from around 1978-1991 and while I don’t play them as often as I once did I still dig them out every few months to look at the artwork…am I alone in this? I don’t think so. Somehow I don’t think someone who is growing up on music today can possible look at their hard-drive, I-pod or MP3 player and be touched with the same romance about their singles collection. Seeing 125 icons in a folder marked ‘singles’ on your computer would leave me feeling just hollow really, and even before I complete this sentence I see I’m showing my age.

Singles used to be real events, they were a preview of where a band might be heading with a forthcoming album or offered a track on the b-side (or ideally both sides) that you had never heard before. The best bands (it seemed) made a point of singles providing value, a different version new tracks or alternate versions, if the band made the singles valuable you were even more likely to want to purchase it. There were a few bands that I would purchase every single by from around 1979 (London Calling and every subsequent Clash single) until about 1992. I measured my level of commitment to a band by whether I’d buy all the singles too. When did it all change? I think it began with CDs and the cost of singles getting far too high – plus  the CD single didn’t compliment an album the same way a 7″ or 12″ seemed to be a child of the album. It may have been the fact that CD singles were often in crappy cases or impossible to file as a separate part of your collection but it was around that time that I started to buy less singles.

The market was in decline throughout the 1990′s despite Blur and Oasis making singles hip once more for a short time, but soon after the digital age arrived singles you could see were essentially a thing of the past. We’ve gone full circle now as album sales outweigh singles sales by a huge margin, in the 1960′s the opposite was true. With artists now offering whichever track you want for a direct download the vague notion of a ‘single’ is all but gone. It’s sad but it seems inevitable.

Amazingly in the UK for example, due to downloads 2009 represented the most sales of ‘singles’ (one track downloads) in the history of the industry. On the other hand less than 2% of those singles were CDs – the album market by comparison still relies on actual CDs – over 85% of album sales in the UK in 2009 were CDs with the remainder being downloaded digital versions.That ratio suggests there is still hope for ‘the album’ I’m sure those ratios change greatly dependent on the age of the consumer too.

I’d meant to write about the choice of singles that The Clash/CBS Records made over the years – as an album by album feature. I’ll still write those articles but seemingly not tonight! More soon ~ thanks for coming by. Tim

Good evening Clash people, I hope you each had a decent day and welcome back to the blog. Today has been a good day and taught me that with patience and fortitude karma will eventually catch up with even the biggest scoundrels. For reasons of discretion I can’t really expand on that but those are my words of wisdom, never give up when you know you are right about something, giving up just lets the bastards of this world continue to act like bastards. That always applies but its always good to see some evidence that never giving up has merit. I’ve been going through my list of Clash related topics this evening and realised you’ll have to join me on the A40 straight over the rooftops of West London otherwise we’ll never get through all this stuff, so turn up the radio as we venture into Westway Traffic once more. I’ve made a rule to cap these out at around 1000 words so you don’t think I’ve lost my mind, plus I know you’ve got other things to do.

Strummer tribute season begins: As we get nearer to August we traditionally enter into one of the two times of year that we can expect to see Joe Strummer tribute shows. Apart from the anniversary of Joe’s death in December his birthday quite rightly sees a flurry of activity designed to commemorate his work. We’ll start the summer events with one just outside of Detroit in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ann Arbor is a great little college town and is the site of a tribute night in a few weeks at The Blind Pig, 208 S 1st Street.  Doors are at 9pm – $10 gets you in and a host of bands include Duppy A Jumba, Arrogant Bastards, Bootknife and others. Learn much more about the venue via their facebook page.

Gorillaz not so Rotten: I found this article quite interesting, apparently John Lydon was approached by Damon Albarn to work with Gorillaz on the same Plastic Beach project that obviously netted Paul and Mick. Interesting both that Lydon turned it down to but more for his reasons for doing so – chiefly “I really don’t want to be dabbling in other people’s gene pools” This from the man who borrowed and mixed a whole spectrum of sounds (to his immense credit) in all of this years fronting Public Image. Not too mention some of the excellent gene pool dipping that led to some of the collaborative work he enjoyed. I’d suggest that ego/supporting Damon were probably the larger issues but I’m sure there will be more on this story.

Album Review – London Calling: This is a great little site which encourages and receives some really good product reviews, not just music. I’m sure you’ve all read many reviews of The Clash album that almost always is listed as their finest hour (that’s a discussion we’ll have on the site at a later date), but regardless I always enjoy reading other people’s opinions and you’ll find some well informed and researched pieces on that site. Four different reviews appear via the link provided and each is worth a read.

The Big Pink Clash Book: I know this book has been available at some Borders recently for $6 but some of you have had trouble finding it. I’m still prepared to try and get my hands on some more copies if you’ll cover postage and packing (just email me and let me know). Failing that there is a site now offering if at $24.99 (see the link) or Amazon have now chopped it down to $30 from the original $45. Either way its a lovely coffee table book, perfect for your first Clash book – perhaps a little lacking in new information if you are a collector.

Things you should hear – Jimmy Cliff concert: Second mention for NPR this week, I promise I am not on a commission. But if you have 90 minutes of time near your computer this weekend you could do many worse things than listen to this Jimmy Cliff at this years Bonnaroo Festival. Also, things you shouldn’t hear – this is a great site of bad cover versions. If you’re anything like me you’d ask if Paul Young trampling all over Love Will Tear Us Apart makes the site? It does of course and hence I provided the link to the site.

Clash on the list: Making an admittedly decent list of greatest album covers of all time, the readers of Wired.Com do include a Clash album on the list. No points for guessing which one makes it – but go and check anyway. Unknown Pleasures is also on there and while I treasure the music I think that may be one LP sleeve where the artwork is even better than the contents.

Bookmark this – The Big Takeover: One of the nicest men I know and one of the most knowledgeable people around when it comes to music that matters is Jack Rabid. His music magazine The Big Takeover comes out twice a year and is like buying a great novel, 200 pages of the best music journalism this side of 1985. In depth interviews, amazingly sturdy commentary about music and our society and hundreds of reviews. Leaning toward indie, punk and post punk but lots of new artists and retro pieces to satisfy all tastes. Please purchase his magazine, you’ll not regret it. In the meantime bookmark the website, its just been revamped and looks great and has more content than a lorry load of Rolling Stone. 30 year old this year, but never too late to discover.

Around the Strummerville campfire at Glastonbury: I highly recommend this account from Glasto this Summer, if you’ve never been it gives a really evocative telling of some of the best things about the festival. The story hinges around Strummerville also which makes it even better. Good blog by the way.

Right that’s my lot for tonight….thank you to so many of you who read the blog and have brought support, ideas and most importantly friendship. It’s nice to know I’m not typing into an empty chasm – it’s been an emotive day for me…and sharing it with some of you has been more value than you know.

Good Morning Clash people around the world. Its the small hours of the night as I get this scribed which tells you that A) My internet had service issues earlier in the day B) I’m anxiously to see what time the temperature here will finally fall below 90f as of now 12:30am it has not happened. It was a scorcher here today but that’s to be expected in late June if you live in a desert, doesn’t mean you have to like it though. I think I need a  road trip to the Pacific in the coming weeks and I’ve got some excuses to be in Los Angeles too…so a mobile Clashblog is perhaps in the offing next month or August. Where are you lot spending your Summer holidays? Send a postcard…take a snap of yourself in a Clash shirt in some far off clime and we’ll start a collection!!

I’ve just noticed that every time I think I’ve emptied the pile marked CLASH INBOX another half a dozen things come on in from near and far. In over a year of postings I don’t think I’ve come across anything quite as unlikely as this. In Melbourne Australia an annual ‘celebrity’ game of Australian Rules football has been taking place for charity. The match takes places between people who work for a local radio station Triple R (The Megahertz) and those who work in the music industry (The Rockdogs). Fair enough so far, but this doesn’t seem to be your average celebrity sporting event as costumes and streakers are the order of the day as well as bands playing on stages within the arena throughout the day. Better still the annual theme for this Winter’s match was The Clash – and each of the 5 bands who attended had to play at least one Clash number. More than 10,000 people attended the event which raised in excess of (AUS) $160,000 for the charity Reclink with provides sports and arts opportunities to disadvantaged people. Amongst the five bands were Melbourne’s own The Living End who played storming versions of Tommy Gun and London Calling to the delight of all. A cool little event which does a lot of good and this year made more people aware of the influence of The Clash. Full story is via this link.  The video below features The Living End playing London Calling at The Clash Community Cup and I have to say his vocals are good for a song that often sounds dreadful if anyone other than Joe barks it out. All this and a stand up bass ~ and we need more video from Australia/New Zealand!! Link here to see them play Tommy Gun.

I’m glad they didn’t just take the name The Clash Cup ~ I’ve got copyright for that I think…somewhere. Proper Clash Cup later in the week. Incidentally I was listening online to the radio station represented by one of teams and linked above and they play some good stuff.

More in the morning as I’ve got to sleep, sorry for short short post. Finally its dropped to 89f better grab my hat    – Tim – Internet issues resulted in this not posting last night….sorry! Hope I can get it fixed today…