Good Morning London, Lisbon or Lima…or wherever this latest post finds you waking up with coffee and a grin on your face. I’m in fine fettle as I start this post with a strong mug of coffee following a superb Chicken Tikka earlier this evening. I’m beginning this post on Wednesday evening but I think I’ll probably wrap it up tomorrow. I’ve been sorting out my music collection in anticipation of the impending move and I am a bit embarrassed as to how many CDs I’ve got. There’s no excuse for it, some people choose booze or drugs and I’m an addict for music. I should really stop buying CDs. I thought seeing as the weather has been so nice it would be good to get an oil change, clean the windscreen and take a ride along the Westway for the first edition of Westway Traffic – our handy and easy to use guide to various Clash related snippets circulating on the internet. Its our 20th edition so let’s try and get through half a dozen or more along the A40. If you’re new to the idea it’s a series of shorter stories deserving of a mention but probably not an entire post. So…clutch is in so off we go.

Art Expo including London Calling cover shot coming to Allentown: I know we get a great number of readers from eastern Pennsylvania/Philadelphia, so some of you might want to get along to the ‘Who Shot Rock and Roll’ exhibition coming soon to the Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley from Feb. 11 to May 13. The entire exhibit sounds pretty tasty but the original Pennie Smith shots for London Calling will be included. Check the link for more and also the art museum’s site right here.

The 10th Anniversary starts here (on Facebook): Just like it says on the tin – a facebook page looking to honour, celebrate and share in the fact that 2012 marks the 10th year without Joe. The page is off to a nice start and if Facebook is your thing you’ll surely want to take part. I seem some regular faces already. Perhaps the owner of the page can mention this old blog too…

Top 10 films related to Elvis (not Costello) that aren’t Elvis films: From the STL Today website (now we know where to find people in St Louis online) comes a list of the best films related to Elvis Presley. My number one is his number two as Mystery Train which is perhaps Joe Strummer’s best appearance on film finds it’s way to number two on the list and was probably Jim Jarmusch’s finest hour. Its a good list though and I’d recommend all of the top 5 with the exception of Forrest Gump – it’s so long since I saw that and I don’t have great memories of it.

Strummerville Winter sessions down at HQ: I meant to write about this when it was posted last week but…well..it was last week. Here’s the official blurb and the video is beneath that, it is well worth a look & listen.

Here is a short video taken at our Winter Sessions 2011 gig down at our yard. We were thrilled to have Kai Fish (of the Mystery Jets) headlining proceedings alongside some of the fine talent we have supported throughout 2011:

Breadstealers
Gaz Brookfield
Huw Olesker
Hysterical Injury
Leon Fender Walker
She Makes War
The Gun$how
The Promenade

Punk Art expo starts today in Cardiff: A great story from Wales online explains how a then teenage Gerrion Jones traveled around the UK to see as many punk bands as he possibly could from 1976 onwards to escape the prevalent boredom of music at that time. Along the way he’s been carefully collecting and maintaining as much print, press and photographic memorabilia as he can to create what is now quite the archive featuring of course a fair bit of Clash. Happily hes putting it all on exhibit now in Cardiff starting today and running through Feb 2. Details are as follows: Punk Art Forever runs at the Howard Gardens Gallery at the Cardiff School of Art & Design from Thursday, January 12 until Thursday, February 2. The gallery is open Monday-Friday, 10am-6pm. Entrance is free.

Clash letterpress artwork on sale: Sometimes you see a bit of art and think I could do that and you’d probably be half right. Other times you hear music like Coldplay and you think why do they do that and you’d be completely right. As for me I’ve got a minor obsession with looking at creative ways to create art that focuses on The Clash if not the budget to acquire any. Wasted and Wounded have added a series of three punk pieces featuring The Clash, The Ramones and The Sex Pistols now for sale on their site, just click the link at the head of this paragraph.

 Clash and B.A.D. make playlists for Portlandia stars: I’ve never watched Portlandia but heard very good things about the comedy. Hopefully one person reading this can attest to that. I’m more tempted to try and watch it now as a recent piece on Stereogum revealed that the two stars have a musical taste that includes B.A.D and The Clash, even more specifically some knowledge about the bands and songs. In the case of Fred Armisen it was ‘E=MC2′ and for Carrie Brownstein it was ‘Charlie Don’t Surf’ which makes her my new pinup. To be fair she was previously a key member of sometimes good Sleater Kinney and has always been nice enough to look at.

Right then, that should be enough to be going along with. If you happen to visit anything listed above or have other thoughts I’d welcome them. Have a superb later part of the week. Tim

Sunday morning then, thanks for dropping in to the blog. If you’re of similar vintage to me and grew up in the UK and most of Europe I presume you probably remember Sunday being the sleepiest day of the week. Now it’s a bit like a watered down version of a Saturday isn’t it? In the 1970′s in England the only places open were newsagents in the morning so shopping wasn’t an option, there wasn’t any football and generally it was a day to do little other than bring the paper to the pub for a in-depth read and probably end up with a roast dinner. It was almost seemingly designed for a recovery from a late Saturday night but even that was usually not that extremely late as the pubs closed at 11pm. Seems like a very different world that spawned punk and The Clash in 1976 but when you see old video footage of practically anything from that era (try this for example) the fashion, the hair and every aspect of life looks like the hangover from the 1960′s resulted in a soupy mess of stagnation.

When you add to that the fact that the economy was entering a downward cycle the breeding ground for something new and exciting was especially fertile, particularly for youth. Inner city life had long since lost the ‘swing’ of the 1960′s and with grim job prospects and it being harder to afford a place to live made cities like London, Manchester and Liverpool perfectly positioned to support a new movement for young kids. With that said though it’s not as if punk rock in the UK replaced pop music and that hundreds of thousands were buying the earliest singles by The Sex Pistols, The Clash or The Damned. It remained a fringe scene for the better part of 12 months until the media decided it posed a huge threat to the existing morals of society. The turning point was probably The Sex Pistols appearance on the Bill Grundy show on December 1st 1976 which resulted in the daily newspapers finding a new danger to rally against and it was punk rock. You have to remember that more than television or gossip and long before the internet nothing shaped public opinion in the 1970′s like the daily paper. It’s very reasonable to assume that prior to ‘The Filth and The Fury’ headlines that 90% of UK adults had never heard of punk rock as they cuddled up to their latest ELO or Wings album and suddenly their children had to be protected from something more sinister than they could comprehend. The truth was that small punk scenes only existed in a handful of cities around the UK at that time, if you lived in Exeter or Norwich, Stoke or Bradford no such scene had even formed. Early audiences at concerts by The Clash and others outside of London were more likely to be attended by aging rockers, the curious or the local drunks than someone who already owned the first few Ramones albums. The scene came later as did the inspiration, by the second half of 1977 and into 1978 every town in the country had a new band who realised that anyone could make a record and it all fell under the umbrella of punk. A lot of crap was recorded under the banner of punk but there were also dozens of excellent new bands that realised that if you could master 4 or 5 guitar chords and get a pub willing to put on a gig a local scene could begin. For me personally, a huge ratio of the bands that have meant so much over the years formed between the start ’77 and the end of ’78. Not every band would legitimately be considered punk in sound (any more so than London Calling was) but punk in terms of attitude and creativity for sure. The biggest and best legacy of the era is what changed compared to previous- new bands on small labels became the norm and not the exception. Record labels were set up in small offices and garages and with the help of people like John Peel and the fanzine culture bands could get heard with little or no financial backing.

I think it also ushered in the most exciting spell of music we’ve yet to see as punk merged into post punk and then what was to be become ‘indie’ 1979-1987 saw a fantastic variety of bands on labels that didn’t even previously exist and the catalyst for all of this was punk. Just for fun I looked at the best selling singles in England in August 1976 and it simply demonstrates just how much punk was needed and how close music was becoming (had become?) to being a non factor for all of us. Below is a look at the top 20 at that time:

As you can see there is hardly a ‘guitar band’ in that list and most of it wouldn’t look out of place in a collection of singles for someone aged over 25 (35?) even at that time. Who were the kids of 1976 supposed to be inspired by? Elton John was top of the charts and at age 29 had ended his run of albums that were vaguely monumental, Dr Hook were soft American pop by guys in their late 30′s. David Dundas was a one hit wonder from Oxford, Tavares were a bland R&B band in their late 30′s, Jimmy James was more insipid R&B from a chap pushing 40. Even the relative excitement of Glam Rock was all but dead with the art rock of Bryan Ferry being as near to ‘alternative’ as this chart offers even those he was 31 by then. The lack of a young guitar band in that list is almost painful when you think that a decade earlier the charts were dominated by The Beatles, The Animals, The Rolling Stones and The Who – each of whom were populated by young men at that time. By 1976 it was like the sixties had never even happened, the charts were as safe as they were in 1956. The door was wide open for something fresh to happen and the impact was genuine, a year later the 40 top selling singles in August 1977 included The Stranglers, The Sex Pistols, The Jam, Television and The Ramones – none of whom would have got a look in just 12 months earlier. Not quite sure what got me started on this today but it’s important to note that beyond The Clash you could suggest that the seeds planted in 1977 saved music and by 1978 and 1979 (I’ll write about those later) the difference was incredible.

Hello once more and thanks for stopping in at The Clash Blog. We’re now entering our 27th month of Clash service and coming up rapidly on 800 posts. I’ve been checking my blog ‘to do’ list this evening and realised there’s some stuff I really need to take care of. I will be adding a forum soon so that you can discuss all things Clash when I’m not here, so to speak. It could also be a good place to share audio files or perhaps try to buy or sell rare Clash memorabilia. We may set up a Clash shop on the site ahead as I’ve got a few retailers who’d like to sell via the site, I just want to find a way so that you can sell your own art, collectibles, vinyl or whatever. Stay tuned – just as soon as I get some down time.

This week has gone by far too quickly, which I wouldn’t complain about if I was ahead with my work but that’s not the case. Therefore I better not ramble on too long this evening although I do have a something I wanted to share if you’ve got time?

Not sure if you ever saw ‘Sid & Nancy’ (of course you did), but I must confess that it must be 15 or 20 years since I saw it most recently on VHS no doubt. Can you believe that this year marks the 25th anniversary of the films release in 1986? I couldn’t either. I’d like to see it again as in real terms (mostly from reading far more books coupled with the internet) I know far more about the main pieces of the story now than I did back then, perhaps that would lower my opinion of the film to see it again? No….I should see it again anyway. Either way it does feature one of my favourite Joe Strummer tracks of all – Love Kills. Regardless, I do bring this up for a reason as the decidedly brilliant Gary Oldman is on BBC Radio 5 tomorrow (Fri Sep 16) from 2-4pm. Mark Kermode hosts it and as you can see from his latest blog post (and the video also embedded beneath) he is seemingly a bit of an Oldman nut so I expect rather strongly that the conversation will turn to Sid & Nancy at some point. It will be live tomorrow from 2pm GMT / 9am EST and if you follow this link and click ‘listen live’ you should be able to hear it. I imagine it will also be archived for a week via the same page if you search under ‘programmes’.

There was a time in the 80′s/90′s where I think Gary Oldman should have been employed to play essentially any male character that required substance, therefore it’s a shame that he’s now too old to play Joe Strummer (yes, I realise he played Sid Vicious) in either of the forthcoming Clash based films. His new film (Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Spy) is getting exceptional reviews.

I’ll be back tomorrow as there is some good/new B.A.D. stuff floating around that needs to be spotlighted. Have a splendid Friday – Tim

Joe Strummer – ‘Love Kills’