Hello gang in all the corners of the world, how was your day then. Don’t forget if you have a special Clash related story from your particular country I’d be glad to include it on the blog. Did you start a band because of The Clash, do something out of character as a result or had your life changed by seeing them live? This is the place to share it and I’d like to start handing some of those stories over to you when possible. You already know my story for the most part, first heard them coming from my brother’s room round about my 12th birthday and 30 years on barely a day passes where I don’t think of a song or a lyric or at the very least look at my photos of the band on my bookshelf (not to mention the books about them). My continued passion for music is traced back to The Clash and I hope/think my ability to listen to almost any band objectively (almost….not Coldplay or The Police of course) stems from the fact that The Clash were so ambitious with what they recorded so long ago. How can you become addicted to London Calling or Sandinista! as a young kid and then not look for bands to push themselves to their own limits? Of all the things I appreciate about The Clash the assistance they provided in helping me spot formulaic music is close to the top of that list.

Anyway, off topic a bit but I wanted to share with you an account of a special Joe Strummer night that took place last week in Hamilton, Ontario (just along the lakefront from Toronto). In the chaos of last week I missed covering this earlier so my thanks to Skip for making sure this gets an appropriate nod on the blog. One place I’d like for the blog to excel is to make sure Clash fans know about events in advance that might be of interest, whether they are in Rennes or Rochester, Derby or Darwin we’ve got readers from literally every country and if you give me enough notice I’ll add these events to the events calendar I’ve put on the site and provide extra information to help promote where I can. Art exhibitions, tribute nights or concerts are all fair game so please share the word if you know of something that I might have missed, especially outside if the US and UK where I tend to catch wind of a higher ratio for obvious reasons. Skip wrote up the following review on his cool blog “The Hills are Alive” and allowed me to share it here. Please visit his blog to check out some more photos and videos from their 9th annual Joe Strummer tribute night in addition to some other great stuff….check it out and say hello while you’re there.

We were lucky enough to experience 2 straight nights of Joe Strummer songs at This Ain’t Hollywood this past weekend.  Great crowds (the first night was capacity packed, second one almost) and a way better experience than having to live thru an evening of Gorillaz or Big Audio Dynamite to get your 2011 Clash fix.  It was so good we already can’t wait for the next version on Good Friday and Easter Saturday of 2012.  There wasn’t a bad act amongst the lineup with a heap of supergroups, one-offs, reunions and special guests appearing.  Folk, Punk, Celtic, Rock, Reggae, Rockabilly, Thrash genres and everything in-between were all covered.  Personal highlight had to be seeing the Letdowns (ex-Wetspots) play.  Ah, so many good shows they’ve had and all the memories just came flooding back the moment they hit the stage!  Our fave song, Straight to Hell got a sweet treatment and hearing Burning Lights from the soundtrack of I Hired a Contract Killer was fantastic!  Top marks for The Saints Are Coming for bringing a great Celtic twist to some songs that we wish the video we took did more justice. And speaking of video, this event got us thinking about investing in a better camera to take videos of live music with since our current setup is hit and miss. its just an everyday digital camera and not meant for live music.  Ahhhh, there’s always a reason for more gear!

Here’s some pics and some of the best of the video evidence (ed: please visit his blog).  Visit our youtube site for all the vizness. More videos still being added as we post this.  Thanks for the memories Strummer Night #9, we’ll see u again for 10!

image courtesy FulsumPrisonBlues on Flickr

Thanks so much for sharing that with us Skip, I hope we can expect even more audio/visual goodness next year. Thanks for keeping the spirit of Joe alive and well in Ontario. I’m going to wrap it up there for tonight but will see you in the comments and tomorrow as well I’m sure. Cheers – Tim

Rockers Galore at the Strummer Tribute

Good morning everyone, seems that would make Friday then which I’m sure nobody is going to turn down especially as it has been a week strewn with rather rubbish news to say the least from around the world. That’s all going to change I’m sure of it…Ides of March and all that. Last night was drunken amateur night in the US or as its more commonly known St Patrick’s Day, which has as much in common with being Irish (for many) as me celebrating St Andrew’s Day. I can say that with confidence as I’m 50% green with my Mum being a Dubliner so I come from a mixed marriage happily, people don’t expect that news when they (Irish-Americans) slate the English…I usually suggest they keep the hatred to themselves as I’m half of what they proclaim to be. Its a weird thing, to be sure.

Right I was going to settle into a more normal routine today but I’ve instead (via Mark and emails – thanks) been made aware of a new ‘W’ hotel opening up off Leicester Square in London, which of itself doesn’t sound too exciting but there happened to be an opening night party on Wednesday that featured Mick Jones. The strange coincidence is that (after yesterday’s post) the band also featured Roger Daltrey of The Who, along with Zak Starkey on drums and a chap from Kasabian. Collectively and for one night only they went by the name The W’s. It was a bit of a star fest with Kate Moss introducing the impromptu lineup who performed a number of songs which you can learn more about here via contact music.

Kate Moss launches into Remote Control with Mick looking on...

Mick to his eternal credit seems so happy to collaborate with others even if they (Daltrey) need a lyric sheet to get through a live rendition of London Calling which I’ve got the video for beneath. Come on Roger, I can remember all the words to Magic Bus its only fair you reciprocate. In fairness though its pretty cool to see the two on a stage together but apologies for the sound and video quality. They also performed SISoSIG which featured Mick singing of course which is linked here for your viewing pleasure, Mick’s having a good time its fair to say. If you’re like me it can be hard to hear anyone but Joe Strummer (or myself) singing London Calling and even if that someone is Roger Daltrey is leaves a hollow feeling. Though I would like to have heard him take a stab at it 30 years ago when he could still belt it out. Oh and a point and a trivia question, the crowd do their best to annoy by mimicking Joe’s apparent howling at the appropriate moment and until recently I always assumed that to be a howl. In fact it isn’t, do you know what Joe was trying to do with that vocal affectation? Answers on the comments section if you will. I do need to add I think Zak’s drumming is pretty tasty. I think Kate Moss should have sang a song…but which one?

Mick Jones, Roger Daltrey, Zak Starkey and a bloke from Kasabian – March 16, 2011

Right then, I’m on holiday today so I need to get back to that. We’ll talk soon. Tim

See below for the Daily Mirror’s comments – a newspaper that doesn’t seem to even know the titles of the songs performed.

Good evening and welcome back to the blog, the more regular readers amongst you will surely be aware that in probably equal reverence to that which I reserve for The Clash I also hold a similar regard for Arsenal (a football club in London). So tonight I’m not in the best spirits although we certainly lost to the better team on the night and 4-3 over two legs isn’t abysmal although tonight’s referee was. Nevertheless I still want to get the taste of the champions cup out of my mouth so I thought it would be a good time to revisit The Clash Cup. Short explanation if you’re new to the blog; we began with nearly 200 songs and are now deep into round two where songs are picked at random and you vote for your favorite all the way through until we get down to a final 32, 16, 8 etc. The winner of tonight’s pairing in round two will make it through to the final 64 but first we have to review our last battle from February 8th which wasn’t any closer than I had anticipated.

The Guns of Brixton defeated Deny 72-17

Thanks so much for an excellent turnout in the voting even though the famous Paul Simonon track took an impressive 81% of the votes to end the short run of Deny. I don’t think there will be that many complaints as it looked like a bit of a mismatch before we even got started. So let me turn your attention to the random number generator and pick out two more Clash songs to pit against each other:

Clash Cup Round 2 Match 16

Broadway versus The Street Parade

Usually when the two songs are selected they come from very different times in the history of the band and/or you can almost instinctively predict which song will win as it may appear in your preordained vision of what the 20 best Clash songs are before you even get started. This is not one of those occasions although if you are like me a great lover of Sandinista! and all of its different flavours then this makes for quite the pairing. I also usually have my own personal preference even when I’m writing the blog but again this is another situation entirely. I have a very sentimental reason attached to Street Parade as for no apparent reason it was the first song I played on my stereo the sad day that I learned Joe Strummer had died (followed after consecutive plays by Nitcomb).

Form Book

Round 1 – Broadway defeated Do It Now with 91% of the vote

Round 1 – Street Parade defeated Stop The World with 71% of the vote

As you can see both songs were paired with lesser-known Clash tracks in round one so it’s a little difficult to imagine how they will fare against tougher opposition in each other. Just based on conversations with Clash fans over the years I think that Broadway tends to get slightly higher recognition of these two and as a result I think it will probably win a very close vote. Of the round two matches I think this might be one that goes all the way until its conclusion which will be next Monday and as I write I’m not sure which way I’ll vote although my sentimental side will probably choose the runner-up which in this case I predict will be The Street Parade.

Stuff

Although Sandinista! has 36 songs I have a feeling that deeper in the competition you’ll see many of those fall foul of stronger songs, we may even only have six or seven left in the final 32 by the time we get there. Part of that might be the very nature of the diversity of Sandinista! You can find people who will like almost any individual song on the album while at the same time there’s plenty of people who say this track or that track should’ve been omitted from the original triple album in the first place to make it a stronger double. That’s a debate for another day but I do have a strong argument for another day that suggests the best 19 songs on Sandinista! might even have been as good of an album as London Calling ended up being. Honestly….

As for these two songs both demonstrate that by 1980 Joe Strummer was a better vocalist than ever before and also that his lyrics were as versatile as Mick’s songwriting. There are probably 50 or 60 Clash songs that I can never think of a bad time to hear (okay exclude funerals and sex perhaps) and these two would both be on that list. Before you vote I encourage you to think this one through and listen one last time to both songs. No special versions for you just the standard studio recordings of each Broadway here and Street Parade , also if you are a Clash historian I wondered whether either of these songs performed live with any regularity? I think they were only featured right around early-mid 1981. I’m guessing that Broadway would be the more likely of the two, if either.

SOME LATE NEWS JUST IN…..Big Audio Dynamite added Roxy (Los Angeles) April 14 and Roseland (New York) April 18….more details tomorrow…and more info on the Clash Blog Facebook page.

Thanks for voting the polls are open now and will close next Monday by which time I’ll have recovered from today’s Arsenal’s result and hopefully celebrating a win over Manchester United. Cheers – Tim

 Loading ...