Blurry (sorry) video capture from live Clash performance in 1977

Hello good people, any excitement at your end? I neglected to mention earlier the week the passing of Doug Fieger from the Knack. The Knack weren’t a band that changed the world but at the tail end of the 1970’s they were one of the first American bands to takes a pop/punk sound (let’s just call it New Wave I suppose) to the top of the charts. Remarkably ‘My Sharona’ was #1 in the US for six weeks and also in the UK for five weeks! I remember the song being everywhere for a while when I was a kid but was it that huge? Fieger died in his home at the age of just 57 from cancer last Sunday, more details here in the Washington Post.

Right then… I know this is a few days late but a good way to get the weekend off and running eh? We started round two of the search for best ever Clash songs last week and I’d better report on the results for that match up first of all. As I explained in full on this post the song that gets the most votes automatically makes it through to round two and the runners up with the highest percentage of total votes are also staying in the competition. Its more simple than it sounds and most importantly every vote counts (where have I heard that before – Florida presidential election?), match one was a close run affair:

Kingston Advice defeated Cheapskates     27-22

This was even closer than that the first few days but a few late votes saw Kingston Advice pull away, Cheapskates might stick around with 44.90% of the overall vote. So much for my prediction, best you ignore that in future. So match up number two via the random number machine:

Koka Kola    vs    1977

Not two of the strongest songs in round two in truth so one of them reaching round three is probably a bonus. One of the very earliest Clash songs against something from essentially the exact middle of their career. .

Form:

Round One – Koka Kola beat Drug Stabbing Time 20-13 collecting 60.6% of the votes                                                                                                                 Round One – 1977 beat Dirty Punk 44-1 collecting an amazing  97.8% of the votes

Odds:

London Calling has so many songs that I think will make the final 32 but is Koka Kola one of them? I do think if you go back and listen to both songs before you vote that it will be strong enough to get more votes than 1977. That said I was wrong in the last match, though I do expect these to be close again.

Best Lyrics:

Your eyeballs feel like pinballs and your tongue feels like a fish

No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones

As for the lyrics, I think Strummer’s couplets on Koka Kola are amongst his best and they are spat out with such pace it makes for a brilliant song. That said that line from 1977 became part of Clash legacy, a line repeated in more Clash stories I’ve read over the years than perhaps any other.

Listen (and watch) here – Koka Kola or 1977

1983 for track one, from the ill fated US festival in Southern California though I think this was one of the better songs caught from that difficult evening. 1977 is that just the greatest close to a Clash song?

Thanks in advance for all of your votes, polls close next Friday and I’ll endeavour to get another match up put together by Monday!

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.