Good evening and welcome back to the blog where I’m tending to a dog who didn’t realise the sliding glass door to the back garden was closed when she came sprinting back into the kitchen tonight and collided with it. She was like a Hanna Barbera cartoon with stars spinning round her head…poor girl. Sorry I’ve not posted for a few days but I was gripped by the excitement of selecting a new pope  tending to a lot of work this week but hopefully a more normal pattern will follow in the immediate future.

The last post here was a look at the most viewed Clash videos on YouTube and we’ve already looked at the lower half of the top twenty which contained a few shocks. As I mentioned last time, it’s a shame that people aren’t digging out many of the magnificent live clips and interviews when they go searching on YouTube. In fact once you break into the top 5 or 6 on the list below they’ve been viewed as many as ten times more frequently than those featured in the last post. Each of the top seven have been viewed more than 2 million times at the time of writing which pales into insignificance with some current acts but easily tops The Jam, The Stranglers and The Damned to name just three. The number one position might pleasantly surprise you as it did me with over 6.5 million plays on YouTube so far. Let’s get cracking with the top ten then:

10 – Spanish Bombs – fan upload

9 – Police & Thieves – Rude Boy

8 – Should I Stay or Should I Go – fan upload

7 – Straight To Hell – fan upload

6 – White Riot – Victoria Park

5 – London Calling – fan upload with lyrics

4 – Guns of Brixton – official video

3 – London Calling – official video

2 – Rock The Casbah – official video

1 – I Fought The Law – official video

Go on admit it, you all thought that Casbah would be number one didn’t you? Before I compiled the list I was convinced that it would be top of the pile as the one fall back song everybody knows and tend to associate with the band. Pleasant to find I was wrong. Number six was also an impressive showing. Just to bore you with some numbers – the top views for any video by The Clash stands at 6.52 million, The Jam 2 million (Town Called Malice), The Damned 1.6 million (Love Song) and The Stranglers 5.8 million (Golden Brown). Somewhat interesting I hope you’ll agree but disheartening that a song as great as this has only been played 9,000 times.

At some point in the future we’ll do the same for Joe Strummer and The Mescalaros along with Big Audio Dynamite, but I’d be curious to see what you make of this list. Back soon – stay connected below. Tim

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