The Clash Cup (noun) 1. An online vote by of some of the most knowledgeable fans of The Clash ever assembled in one place (that’s you) aimed ultimately to determine the best 32,16 and 8 Clash songs ever recorded.

The concept is as simple as the execution of course and may I remind you that all of the pairings that I need you to vote on are created entirely at random. The polls only have three rules, they are open for five days, every vote matters as the best runners up in terms of total percentage are eligible to remain the competition and you can only vote once so please make your decision carefully. We’ve been doing this for a long time and I know the intervals between voting have been too long, long enough to suggest I’d be better equipped to run the political system of a banana republic than any sort of online voting system but its been a year of resolutions for me and another is to get The Clash Cup back on track – starting tonight.

We’re currently in round two and before introducing the songs I’d appreciate you voting on it would be time to look back at the result of our last gathering which took place quite some time ago, it was a close vote and an all Sandinista! affair.

The Street Parade defeated Broadway 35-27

Two strong songs that both exhibited a style that The Clash had never really experimented with prior to the fourth album and both provide good evidence of the quality of songs ‘tucked away’ on that triple album. I’d suggest just with hindsight that if either song were on Combat Rock instead it would be considered amongst the best songs of the album. The setting of Sandinista! in it’s extravagant 36 song breadth sometimes makes you forget how many great Clash songs were on there. While it won’t quite (today, for me) make the category of ‘best Clash album’ I still think it has aged the best and holds excellent lasting appeal. The Street Parade winning shocked me a little as I thought Broadway would edge a very close vote. Tell me I’m wrong but I think Street Parade has taken on a more elegant or special place since the death of Joe Strummer. It has for me but there’s no reason to assume it did for you.

Let’s get straight down to business with the next pair and please forgive me for the shorter than usual pre-match festivities but I’m knackered tonight. The random number generator is buzzing away so let’s see what we have:

Clash Cup Round 2 Match 17

Living in Fame versus This is England

Quite an interesting pairing and if memory serves (or I could just double check) This is England is the only song from the last Clash album to make it into round two, which probably surprises only a small minority of you. I’ve a feeling that through the randomness of the draw that it will make it through to round three now as well. Both songs however will have their fans but there are many who say that famous line that ‘This is England” was the last great Clash song, whether enough people feel that way to see it make the final sixteen remains to be seen. I’m not one of them, in fact I think Living in Fame is a song I’ve returned to more frequently in the intervening years. I should profess though that I’m not in a position to be as objective as I should be about The Clash Mark II, without Mick Jones or Topper Headon I struggle still to hear them as the same band but I appreciate that’s only one opinion.

Form Book

Round 1 – Living in Fame squeaked past The Harder They Come with 51% of the vote

Round 1 – This is England beat Version City with 67% of the vote

So neither song had especially impressive wins in round one, particularly the former so it might be a vote of attrition. I’m never sure how these things turn out but the first round round results suggest Living in Fame may struggle to get 30% of the vote. I hope it is a lot closer than that.

Stuff

The cynic in me would probably include This is England in what I plan to do later – The (post) Clash Cup which would throw together B.A.D., Joe’s solo work, Carbon Silicon, Mescaleros and assorted bits although I’m not sure how confusing the prospect might be. Although it would be interesting I think. This is England to be fair does have some wonderful lyrics but I can’t get far beyond the production and drum machine. Living in Fame, what can I say? How many ‘rock’ bands have not just good but close to excellent dub versions of their songs appearing on albums? I actually like Living in Fame as much as If Music Could Talk and I hope it (along with other tracks) destroys any concept that The Clash just plugged into dub music and stole a few ideas. Clash sound sweeter. (RIP Mikey Dread)

Before you vote I usually link to a few versions to get you in the mood although I don’t think it’s needed with these two as much. Living in Fame with cool photos by Albert Watson then — here you go. This is England sounds better as a demo and without drums, here’s the proof. I do like that version. Thanks in advance for your voting and careful consideration, there will be no coalition governments on this blog.

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Good morning it’s Saturday at last I believe? Must be otherwise the usual detritus of life would never have afforded me the eleven hours sleep I’ve just had, either way I needed it and feel refreshed for a weekend of football, music, watching Walker again and garage converting tactics. It did mean I didn’t get a new post out last night but we’ve been inundated with fair weather Les Paul fans the last 48 hours anyway.

Tomorrow I’ve got some guest input from the recent Joe Strummer exhibition at the frankly wonderful Subway Gallery in London and news of a forthcoming Clash exhibition on the other side of the Atlantic too. Tonight should see the long overdue return of The Clash Cup to the blog as firstly its proven to be rather enjoyable and secondly I really want to get the idea progressed to round 3 and 4 when the decisions get harder. In fact now that the football season is over I should have more time to blog both here and elsewhere seeing as I’m not getting up at 5am at the weekends to watch Arsenal lose another match.

I’ve a few quick things this morning which will go nicely with your coffee although its probably siesta time already wherever you’re reading this.

Endless Strummer Tour: I don’t mind a slice of plagiarism if its coming from the right place and in this case it is so it would be worthy of a mention. The Surreal McCoys are back on America’s stages for the first time in years with a tour they’ve deemed ‘Endless Strummer’. The band tag themselves quite accurately as Johnny Cash meets The Clash and having listened I’m on board with that definition and also agreeable to the resultant sound. Check out this review of their gig in Los Angeles last week which featured a cover of the cover ‘I Fought The Law’ and see if they are playing in a barn on pub near you soon.

Clash bootlegs without the downloading: If I had enough time in my life I’d probably already have a giant collection of Clash live bootlegs and I admire those who have amassed such collections over the years from tapes and bootleg vinyl back in the 80′s, burned CDRs in the 90′s and of course downloads since then. I’ve never been a fan of downloading music and at Camden Market I was always saving my cash for vinyl rather than tapes of recorded concerts. As a result my music collection of studio work by lots of artists has grown and grown but I’ve few Clash live recordings. Black Market Clash is the place to go for downloads with a remarkable collection gathered over years. If you’re like me and don’t want to fill your hard drive(s) with downloads YouTube is becoming increasingly more reliable as a place to find live versions from these same recordings. Of course you’re going to need to weed through duplicates but one of the primary sources on YouTube is TheDudeStrummer’s YouTube site (Nicola from Italy) who has recently added Clash concerts in Tucson, Jamaica and San Antonio. Check out the link below with a typically electric version of Magnificent Seven from San Antonio on May 22, 1983. Make sure and comment if you can as these people spend a lot of time adding these clips online and helping spread the availability of the music.

Ted at the Controls: From the Daily Mail (sorry) comes a rather cool tale about a 12 year old boy (below) named Ted Lavender (dilly dilly) who is a DJ with a growing pedigree. He recently manned the deck at a Strummerville event organised by Lucinda Strummer and today will be the DJ at the wedding of Joe Strummer’s god-daughter Lily Allen today. You can read the whole story via this link and then of course clear your browser cache so nobody can accuse you of reading the Daily Mail – fascist!

Ted at the Controls (image courtesy Solent News)

Books to get: In addition to trying to see more concerts this year I’ve been also trying to make sure I read more books and drag myself away from the computer more often (also a success, 15 books read since September). I’ve been trying to brush up on my music history especially 1975-1990 and I’ve found another that sounds like it would be worth the time called ‘Retromania’ by Simon Reynolds. Much of the focus looks to be pre-punk but I’d like to read more about his ideas based on this review in the Telegraph. It may help answer why music seems to many to have stalled in its progress. If you get to it before me let me know.

Finally a small favour to ask, as you know I want to make sure as many people as possible know about the blog and help keep it growing. You’re already aware of the help you can give it via facebook, twitter and the other icons at the top of each post. I’ve just added another one called Google+1 which is google’s answer to ‘facebook likes’ but will also appear in search engines. So if you have a google/gmail account I’d appreciate if you can click on the +1 button if you like the post you read. If you don’t like the post you read…comment and tell me why. Thanks.

Enjoy the weekend, do something out of character. You can catch up with the blog in the comments, on Facebook and Twitter. You can also daily blog fix mailed direct with a nice cup of cocoa by subscribing to my RSS Feed here.

Nice poster on ebay until tomorrow (May 3)

Hello again, it’s late, after 10pm and I’ve yet to research or compile thoughts for tonight’s post. That kind of day I think, some distractions and a simultaneous intense need to ignore the media today and just focus on website design and statistics….you might have had a similar day? When I start a post like this it sometimes rolls into something useful and other times not so much, I can’t promise which but let’s see where we go. I’m a bit buried, I thought the blog would have provided a very tasty assistant to help me by now but most days its just me with the cat and dog looking at me all day as I blog away both here and elsewhere. Maybe I ought to monetize this a bit by selling ClashBlog mugs and fridge magnets, to pay the salary of my imaginary personal assistant, hosting costs and a ticket to Lollapalooza….then again not the last bit.

There are many loose threads of news that you may have caught elsewhere in recent days and weeks but with the B.A.D. tour I put it all on the ‘to do’ pile. There are a number of interviews with Mick Jones that we need to get to, a number of other concerts that we’ve yet to preview for the aforementioned band, some official news on the next B.A.D. reissue of No. 10 Upping Street which I’ll talk up at length. If there is one era of the story of Mick and Joe that definitely has a little left to be explored it was that spell where Joe worked on the second album by the band. They struck up something approaching the best chemistry they’d experienced since the earliest writing sessions for Sandinista! and not everything made it onto the record that was released. Short of a better live testament of The Clash on stage and the oft-rumoured extras that exist from Joe’s time with the Mescaleros (not sure how credible that story is) no other previously unreleased work would interest me more. I don’t know if there are much more than demo versions of what was worked on during that time but even at that stage of completeness it will be fascinating to see just what is included in the forthcoming legacy edition. I’ve no official word on the timing yet and the sudden activity of Mick and Don Letts this year will surely have some bearing on the release date but it is something worth looking out for.

We’ve also got Strummercamp 2011 coming up at the end of the month, a chance to look back at some Clash relevant gigs over the last week and I’ve not had half a chance to work on the usual features such as The Clash Cup, Video Clash, Lost in The Supermarket or Clash Landmarks. As ever if you fancy knocking out a guest post let me know as that will help the blog to keep ticking along while I get my other ducks in a row. I’m also hoping to relaunch and maintain the podcast in the weeks ahead…the end of the football season will carve out more time for that to be honest as the weekends suddenly get notably less interesting around here as the the temperature soars above 100F over the next four weeks. Some other late news, if you’re trying to decide where to see B.A.D. over the summer, the V Festival Aug 20/21 is now sold out. That poster up on the left is on ebay right now, auction closes tomorrow. Yes please! They’ll have it again, don’t panic.

As always thanks for supporting the blog, sharing ideas and posts and making sure the community stays active and grows. Last month was the busiest for total visits in the last three and I really do appreciate it. I’m going to cut it short for today and then bash through all of the other topics above as soon as I can. In the meantime some short but really enjoyable footage of Mick Jones with some fans outside the recent Los Angeles concert at the The Roxy. One last question, did anyone make it down to The Big Busk with Billy Bragg in London the other day? I must make it over for that soon, you bring your acoustic along and Bragg leads the assembled guitar slingers with the aid of signs with the correct chords on them so you can all busk along. It’s even more daft that it sounds…..have a look. Cheers, see you in the comments and let me know if I’ve missed other stories lately – Tim

Mick Jones meeting the people in Los Angeles April 14. 2011