Well hello again Clash people and thanks for returning to the blog. First and foremost please accept my apology for the gap between updates, it’s been a rather frantic week with a rush to find a new house in San Diego in advance of the impending move to a new town with loads of miles to drive, houses to see and negotiations to be made it’s been a pretty stressful time but luckily we found a place in the end. So effective next month ClashBlog Towers will have a new roof overhead and a new city to explore. I’m pleased as shit for dozens of reasons but getting back near the ocean and living in a city where the bands I like tend to play rather than skip is also appealing. Also we purposefully chose north of the city reducing the commute time to Los Angeles by half an hour. The bloggette’s job transfer cemented the move but I’m optimistic that I’ll find new clients there too and can still retain existing ones – so long as I have a computer I’m good to go. Needless to say the next few weeks will continue to be far more hectic than usual as we pack up our stuff and try and take care of other business but I’ll do my best to keep the blog on a near normal schedule over the coming weeks. Once I’m settled expect high volume if not high quality – the house and location is a blogger’s delight. I’ve included some road trip photos from the last few weeks of driving just for something a bit different.

Road trip photo 1, saw too many Joshua Trees. I blame Bono

I don’t think San Diego has much to offer in terms of Clash history though I could be wrong, the only musical things I know about the town is Jim Morrison grew up on Coronado Island although he’s always associated with Los Angeles. Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads also came from the same part of town.  I know the Zeros came from San Diego but I think most of the better known SoCal punk came from Los Angeles/Orange County. All I know is there are four concerts I need to see within six weeks of arrival including The Beat, The Wedding Present and Los Campesinos which works for me, I also need to explore the record shops in town. If any locals have tips please pass them my way. I previously lived in Los Angeles so this will be a similar but new experience for me. Right then, that’s enough of that – just thought I should explain why I vanished over recent days, far too much driving and looking at houses – simple as that. Now its time to pack.

So what have I missed? I’m somewhat counting on you to let me know but I did want to say thanks for emails and ideas over recent weeks. I’ll get to them and replies to you within the next week. Tomorrow I’ll definitely be back as I’ve got some sad news about one of the more inspiring websites in the early days of internet Clash fandom. I’ll explain that one tomorrow. There’s also some Strummerville news, Coachella lineup to discuss and rumours about SXSW that you might be interested in. For now I’m back in the saddle and checking all the stuff I’ve missed over the last ten days or so. Normal service is forthcoming. Cheers – Tim.

Road trip photo 2, successfully traversed this road four times in the last 3 weeks. Coachella is down at the bottom.

Good afternoon and welcome back to your sunny and warm Clash blog. Normal weather service has resumed which is encouraging as need to get out of the house this weekend and cause some trouble (which can be accomplished here just by having the wrong accent). As I wrote earlier one of my 2011 commitments was to see more live music which will finally get started on Saturday night at the Joe Strummer tribute show in town and then in February Interpol are coming which I was pleased about and then I found out the support act is pretty good too (School of Seven Bells). Despite the name being a bit naff on the surface, the origin is rather brilliant so go and Wikipedia that if you don’t know about it.

Earlier today I had a moment of great exhilaration followed by a big letdown just a few moments later but I should be used to this scenario. I was really chuffed to see that Wire (not a television show) were doing a North American tour and then deflated a few clicks later when I saw that they were not coming to Phoenix nor anywhere even vaguely close. I’ll make it over to Los Angeles or San Diego for some concerts but not Seattle. What was the furthest you traveled to see a concert? I remember in London you’d bump into people who’d traveled from all over the country to see a band, I should have appreciated it more at the time…. I’m really tempted to save my pennies and get along to SXSW in Austin this March if I can justify it – though I need to see if Billy Bragg is going to be there or something equally fun.

Two quick bits of news today then and the first from Strummerville and yet another Joe Strummer tribute night in association with the foundation. This time its over to Dusseldorf, Germany for a special night a week from Saturday – Jan 22nd. The lineup features a stack of six acts plus DJ celebrating the life and music of Joe so I hope if you are in that corner of Germany you might be able to make it along. Its not even a long journey from the eastern border of Belgium of the Netherlands if a train journey sounds appealing. Anyway here’s a link to the event on the Dusseldorf tourism site (pretty cool of them) and its organised again by actor Mario Irrek. Tickets are available from Hitsville Records, Wallstraße 21, phone 02 11 32 88 44.

Speaking of concerts once more, after a few months have passed I’d have to rank seeing Gorillaz as one of the more unique/special/inventive/impressive concerts I’ve ever been to. There have been many gigs that meant more to me (if that makes sense) but the very notion of Mick and Paul being on stage was good enough to get me to go along and then the presentation of the gig itself with Damon Albarn as the ringleader (coupled with the fact that I do like the music) made it a really memorable concert. If you talked yourself out of seeing them last year due to it ‘not being The Clash’ (what could be??) or the cost which was admittedly steep, I’d say you missed out on something really special. I still need to tie up loose ends from reports on the last shows of the tour in Australia and New Zealand but the spectacle of Gorillaz already shows up in a number of ‘concerts of the year’ lists such as this one from The Chicago Tribune.

I did have something else tonight but it escapes me now, I had it in my head and then suddenly its been replaced by thoughts of getting some sleep. I’ll be back tomorrow with more and another installment of The Clash Cup is in the making – got to complete round two soon! Cheers for dropping in and sharing the blog, saying hello and such. Spare a thought for Brazil tonight, its been a grim week….

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.