Hello once more, thanks for all the visits today and the feedback on the guest review – tis kind of you. I’ve got to admit it’s time for Westway Traffic as there are quite literally dozens of recent things I’ve yet to link out to and share. If you’re new to the blog Westway Traffic is where I just give a quick 2-3 sentence link out to various Clash related stories that find their way to my feeds and are worth a look. I filter our about 3/4 of these or we’d never get anywhere so if you’re in the mood jump on the Harrow Road and we’ll zip along the Westway until we get to Acton. (Just click the bold link if you fancy a bit more)

Absolute Punk poll – The Absolute Punk site asks one of those very generic questions ‘which punk band was the most influential?‘ which of course is very broad and they only give you a choice of three; on of whom are The Clash. I won’t spoil the poll results for you but when you vote you can see the current tallies. There is also a comments board if you like that sort of thing. Absolute Punk as a site tries to be all things to all people and thus you’ll find a lot of bands written about that are punk in as much as they use electric guitars, but its an active site with some good content from time to time.

Made Manual’s 10 best punk albums – Made Manual seem to make a living out of making lists and there’s no harm in that although I’d suggest some lack of accuracy.

Image courtesy Bob Gruen

What there list does have is 5 or 6 albums that deserve at least consideration for any top 10 punk albums including Wire, The Sex Pistols, Black Flag, The Minutemen and Bad Brains. There is one Clash album on the list but somehow it’s not the debut Clash record. Thar should make makes you question the list, when you also see that The Damned and Buzzcocks are both strangely excluded you see the holes appear in front of your eyes.

Strummerville Sessions for Channel 4 – All 3 episodes are now online so put aside some time *(just like I now need to) to watch them all via the Strummerville site. I remember at first reading that this would be broadcast in the UK and assuming we’d be out of luck elsewhere. Sometimes technology really does make the world a smaller place eh? I’ll write more about these after getting current I’m sure. Speaking of Strummerville they also have the Joe Strummer painted Christmas cards back in stock and some nice holiday bundles of gifts available at greatly reduced prices. Speaking of the holidays, I also write for Planet Forward and they are currently having a huge 50% off sale of their eco-friendly gifts so please have a look there also. Tell them I sent you – these make great gifts.

Louis Simonon - More modeling from everyone’s favourite bass player’s son. Photos of Paul’s lad…I don’t need to elaborate do I? OK yeah, he nicked my haircut circa 1987….

Clash logo decal for Android phone – I have no idea what a Clash logo decal will do for your phone? Will it provide better reception and fewer dropped calls? If not I can’t say I really give a shit but perhaps you might – and it’s just $0.99. When someone has a mobile phone that doesn’t hang up on me – ever – let me know and I’ll be interested.

The tale of Wally Nightingale – Finally tonight a tale that I’m guessing 25% of you know already and the rest of you will see just how easily fate can change history by huge degrees. We all know the names of Rotten, Strummer and Simonon but one of the formative punks was the unlikely Wally. Its a short article but one that shows you can never be sure when history might have been knocking at your door. Even The Clash have a series of candidates of nearly men, a list we need to explore in future posts.

That’s all for now…which link did you like most? Tim

Good morning you terrific people and welcome back the The Clash Blog, I really couldn’t be in finer fettle this morning as Arsenal won, Chelsea lost and suddenly the season is looking ever so chirpy again. If you don’t follow football ignore that as I do have a very brief bit of news and if you live in England you need to mark your calendars for Sat January8th, 2011. Yes our first 2011 event, even writing that seems a bit odd as 2000 once seemed so far in the future (you remember!) and now we’re about to hit 2011. Incidentally I hope you refer to the year ‘twenty eleven’ or ‘eleven’  and not ‘two thousand and eleven’ it makes no sense at all and its been a pet peeve of mine now for about a decade. Nobody called The Clash song one thousand, nine hundred and seventy seven did they? Think about it – the same bloody logic applies.

The place to be Jan 8th, Strummer night in Brighton

Right, well…an event then, as you know we are heading for the holidays which means a significant number of Joe Strummer events will be adding to the calendar around that time as we try and make a good fist of the sad memory of Joe’s death in December, 2002. I can’t say that it gets any easier each year at all for me and I usually struggle a lot right around that time – celebrating his birthday seems far more of a buoyant thing but I do think his passing must be honoured too. Like so many of you that I see on Facebook you seem to celebrate Joe every single day (you know who you are) which I think is equally great and apt. Yes…the event, on the South Coast of England sits Brighton, perhaps the hippest small town in England and just a short train ride from London. The Victorian buildings and pebble beach have been upstaged in recent decades as Brighton has become a bit of a celebrity enclave and supports a very active music scene too. When I were a lad its where old people went for a cup of tea and cake while taking in the bracing sea air. In Brighton on January 8th the annual ‘Joe Strummer Remembrance Night’ will be taking place with admission running at £12.00 at The Komedia. Here’s a link to the official blurb and the details are below also:

Saturday 8th January 2011
The Komedia ‘ 7pm
Gardner St, Brighton BN1 1UN
Tickets £12.00 from:
www.komedia.co.uk
Phone Bookings on 0845 293 8480

With all proceeds to Strummerville, the Joe Strummer Foundation for New Music, the line up for the night comprises Clash tribute Rebel Truce, The Sex Pistols Experience and the sounds of Radio Clash from The Boiler. The 22nd December will mark the eighth anniversary of the untimely death of Clash front man, political agitator and world-wide inspiration Joe Strummer. In January 2003, just days after Joe’s death, a group of Brighton fans of Joe, young and old, put together a small event to mark his passing and to celebrate the life of this inspirational musician and campaigner. Saturday 8th January 2011

I’ve linked the address and website above and will add to the events page – I hope some of you will be able to get along to the seaside and pay respect as you should. Back soon – Tim

Good evening Clash types wherever you may be and welcome back to the blog. I do hope that you have had a chance to watch the first of those Strummerville session video uploads that I wrote about yesterday, it really is worth a watch and is great to see the foundation seeking to continue the work that Lucinda Strummer and Damien Hirst first outlined almost 8 years ago now. I must make some inquiries to find out the likelihood of future endeavours on this side of the Atlantic also, after appearing at SXSW this past spring hopefully the profile of Strummerville in Canada and the US can be raised even further. Like most things obviously it will come down to funding which is an understood reality but it never hurts to ask.

Image Courtesy Eric Rife

I realised the other day I was little bit harsh about US television and probably unfairly so. Where America has excelled for generations was the format and concept of late-night chat shows. Stemming back to the eras of Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson there has been a legacy carried on in more recent decades by David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and others that have come and gone (plus some new ones that remain). It’s entirely fair to say that Jonathan Ross in the UK built his entire Fridays show originally on the foundation of what David Letterman has now been doing for over 28 years and he in turn will always nod in the direction of Johnny Carson as his mentor. You can argue that late-night chat shows in the US don’t always have the edge that they used to but from time to time Letterman, and these days Jimmy Kimmel and Conan still manage to satirise at a high-level yet still acquire some of the best and more casual celebrity interviews. It’s also one of the few forums on network TV in the States where you can often see more alternative/independent acts perform live, sadly it’s usually at the very close of the show and typically just one song. Nevertheless it’s the only time you’ll ever see someone like Billy Bragg on network TV here and notably Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros which I’ll get to in just a moment. Years ago Letterman especially was also very likely to interview the musician before they played live but now days that only happens on the rarest of occasions, a really good example was with David Byrne round about 1983, at short shift I can’t find the interview but you may like this. One moment some of you may remember happened on the Monday following the death of Joe Strummer in 2002, Conan O’Brien (a genuine lifelong fan of The Clash) signed off for the evening by expressing his sadness about the loss of Joe and also played a video replay of Joe and the Mescaleros performing London Calling on his show from an earlier live appearance in ’99.

I stumbled across a blog called ‘Spool Going Round’ in association with Chicago Now and it seems the author has been compiling a list of the 10 best live performances by acts on the Letterman show over the years. At number two he had what has long been my personal number one with Joe’s appearance on Letterman performing ‘Johnny Appleseed’ in October 2001 – don’t forget that’s the very same stage that Mick Jones and Paul Simonon were on with Gorillaz just a few weeks ago. Please hop over to his blog where he pays a classy tribute to Joe and The Clash and then make sure you watch the video below. It’s one of my favorite ever live performances of Joe with The Mescaleros – every part of it is just perfect from how he sings and also tries to communicate with an audience who are primarily there to see Letterman and whatever actor he interviewed earlier. It’s a great clip and worthy of repeat viewing. This definitely opens up a series of possible posts about Clash television appearances and of course post Clash camera time, there have been a number of really good ones – if it wasn’t for bandwidth I would’ve already tried to create the best video page possible, but it really does stress the site to the limits. Maybe sometime down the road (to quote Joe). Have a good one.