Hello again my good Clash people, doing a bit of the night shift tonight…it’s a windy and almost stormy night so I’m going to be poolside and wifi equipped to blog away for a bit until the energy drains or the rain starts. I’ve felt a slight pang of guilt over the last ten days or so has the blog has been greatly dominated by stories related to the Big Audio Dynamite tour and not much else. While I’d like to update the blog two or three times a day time doesn’t permit so I try and cover the bigger issues first but there is so much going on otherwise. So tonight it’s time for a ramble I think.

I had a thought today about for two series of features a bit like the Clash Cup, where we select those in the running and then vote for them to create a definitive (according to us anyway) list for the world at large. First though we need to bring the Clash Cup back to a boil so I’ll have another installment of that over the weekend – we’re almost ready for round three where you can get extremely agitated about some of the songs destined to be knocked out. The other ideas – one is ranking the 16 (or 32) most iconic moments in the history of The Clash.  There are easily 10 or 15 that come to mind such as Joe and Paul attending the Notting Hill Carnival which resulted in White Riot, The New York City Fire Department deciding that safety regulations meant The Clash had oversold Bonds and would spend the better part of a month there, deciding to work with Guy Stevens a second time on London Calling even though the first attempt had been a bit of a disaster, or Pennie Smith capturing that photo of Paul Simonon about to destroy his bass in 1979. I’m sure we can come up with a good list and then find a way to rank them. The other idea was related to best albums since 1976…or best Punk Albums or best Punk bands or something like that….still in the thought stage on that one to be honest.

So while B.A.D. and the live shows have dominated my attention of late there are other things going on which you should be aware of so let me dash through a few of them. Don’t forget the Don Letts special on BBC 6 Music looking at the career of B.A.D. has been archived and is still available to listen to online for a few more days, its really good and is linked right here. There’s no guarantee that we like the same music but I hope more than a small minority of you grew up listening to perhaps the greatest Scottish band of their generation Orange Juice? If not then you’d be a cold bastard if you weren’t touched by the effort and dedication shown by the vocalist (and his wife Grace) of that band Edywn Collins to boldly work through years of rehabilitation since he was struck by two major strokes in February 2005. Edwyn has literally had to learn to talk and walk again and although he can no longer play guitar he’s recorded a new album and is winding up a US tour. I’d have given my eye teeth (what are eye teeth?) to have seen him but it didn’t work out, here however is Spinner’s account of his performance in New York.

Not cool...not classy

Speaking of New York one of the most Clash associated things in town was defaced last month with ‘laroc’ deciding it might be a good idea to ‘tag’ the Joe Strummer mural that has become a gathering place for Clash people over the years. It’s probably already been cleaned up but if you care to see the damage done by some knob with a lime green can of paint you can check this link to the E.V. Grieve blog, if you read the comments you’ll see this person seems intent on making a name for him or herself. Lacks class if you ask me….tag if you must but not on something known as a memorial. Fucker.

Tours….! British Sea Power (who I see Saturday), The Joy Formidable and Wire are all cramped onto buses touring the US at the moment. Each come highly recommended and if you don’t enjoy them please get in touch with ‘laroc’.

James Allan (Glasvegas) is Strummer’s double….well we’ve already covered that here before but more ‘evidence’ from ‘Play it louder, Toronto‘ (play what louder?). Anyway the verdict is Strummer looked infinitely cooler and Glasvegas while decent need to do more than try and look like Joe. I’ll be kind though as I’ve yet to hear the new album, the last one was solid.

Finally for now, the OwlMag.com has a nice interview with Martin Slattery and Antony Genn who I hope you’ll know were key members of The Mescaleros. They are now in a band called The Hours who are definitely worth a listen, a good interview and of course some Joe references.

Right….that’s all I’ve got

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

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Good evening and welcome back to the best blog that I write, although today that might not be entirely true as you might find my other post today on Word Service Bulletins about the Tufty Club to be critical reading also. I was in the supermarket earlier and just as I was deciding upon which cereal to purchase the collective trio of snap crackle and pop asked me “when was I going to do another edition of The Clash Cup“. Alright I made that last bit up but it was when I was in that aisle then I remembered it was really overdue and hence it’s making a long-awaited comeback this evening. For the newly initiated to the blog is our ongoing quest to determine the best songs that Clash ever recorded, we began with more than 180 different tracks and an are now in round two which will get us closer to the finish line or more specifically the final 64. I’m making a pledge tonight that The Clash Cup will feature far more regular updates I have been able to find time for (the last pairing was back in December to my disgust). Let’s revisit that specific contest first of all before reviewing the next two tracks.

White Riot defeated Julie’s Been Working for the Drug Squad 67-10

Well, as you and I probably expected it wasn’t really a close run thing was it? With a margin of victory in keeping with the South Sudanese quest for independence White Riot bounces on to the final 64 (even money on it making the final 16) with the GTER track losing by a hefty distance. I think that the vast majority of songs recorded by The Clash stand up well to the test of time but for some reason “Julie’s Been Working…” has long sounded to me as if it belonged to a different era entirely. Poor thing. With the help of the random number generator I have a fresh twosome for your perusal tonight:

Clash Cup Round 2 Match 15

Deny versus The Guns of Brixton

While there I was hoping for an edge of the seat thriller in terms of two songs that are perfectly matched and then the random number machine manages to squeak out the equivalent of Wigan versus Tottenham. I know you’re thinking that Wigan can beat Tottenham but they really shouldn’t and nor should Guns of Brixton have much trouble beating Deny. Having said that I know that there is a huge level of support for all tracks that date back to 1976/1977 so it might be closer than I think. However I don’t think I’ve ever met a Clash fan who doesn’t have a special spot for Guns of Brixton which not only offers that famous and brilliant bass line but also a rare vocal appearance by Paul matched up with lyrics that are timeless in their menace.

Form Book

Round 1 – Deny lost to Innoculated City but remained due to best runner up with 44% of the vote
Round 1 – Guns of Brixton lost to Train in Vain but remained due to best runner up with 44% of the vote

So it turns out that this is almost the *asterisk matchup that we’ve all been hoping for. I allowed certain songs in round one that lost in the general voting to remain in the cup so that we would have to equally divisible ratios to see out the tournament (just like the FA cup or the college basketball March madness in the US) – thus I needed 8/16/32/64/128 tracks to allow for a straight knockout competition. Only songs that received a certain percentage of the vote were allowed to continue and as chance would have it both of these scrape through with 44%. Also worth noting that Guns of Brixton lost out to a far more difficult opponent in round one, I’ve got a feeling that Deny won’t repeat its early luck so I’m guessing Guns of Brixton will tally at least 70 percent of the vote. Match fixing allegations will not even be listened to however. Also why does my computer not accept the word Brixton? pffff….

Stuff

Personal preference? When I was 12 years old I would have chosen Deny simply because my listening skills at the time didn’t have the patience for slower or reggae tinged Clash songs. When I first heard London Calling it was my first experience of actually hearing Paul’s vocals and after being exposed to just Mick and Joe up to that point it also took a bit of getting used to. Thirty years of hindsight though have taught me that Guns of Brixton is the richer song of the two. I think it holds a fairly unique place in the fact that it wasn’t released as a single at the time of the original release of London Calling but was eventually released as a single in 1990 in both its original format and extended dub versions which made use of that famous bass line. I could write a whole post about the history of the song and subsequent uses by other acts, chances are I’ll get to that at a later time. As for Deny it was one of the five tracks that CBS ingloriously elected to remove from the original album when eventually they decided to repackage The Clash with extra singles, b-sides and a re-record of White Riot. Rotters!

Before you click the button below to vote (which you can only do once just like in Florida) I think it’s always a good idea to have one last listen to both songs that are on the chopping block. For Deny why not try this ancient and slightly slower version recorded at the Roundhouse in London in late summer 1976. For Guns of Brixton why not the Return to Brixton version just to unsettle you a bit and remind you why remixes aren’t always the best idea. This isn’t technically election rigging.

Polls will be open until Sunday and I hope you can take part and perhaps explain your vote in the comments section. Back with more soon – have a splendid day/night etc. Please share this one as voting is our right!!  Tim

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