Hello all, hoping your weekend was well above average. Just a few short notes and then next week I’ll try and get on to a more regular schedule with Clash Landmarks, The Clash Cup, some questions about Glastonbury and some other reviews of things that took place while the site was temporarily down. I trust the site navigation is working much better now, I do test the page load times and links and it seems to be much smoother that it was before we took it down for the refit. If you have any problems with the site just let us know at the usual address and if you have any ideas for the blog please email me at Tim (at) TheClashBlog.com — cheers.

For those of you who can’t stomach football I’ll simply ask that you accept that the blog will have a bit more reference than usual in the weeks ahead as the World Cup gets going. Its only every four years so surely you can feign interest for a few weeks? Knowing the blog is read all over the world might leave me on thin ice in the weeks ahead so take what I say with a pinch of salt. To be honest though I prefer club football by far over international football so my allegiance often will turn to whoever has the most Arsenal players in the team, which in the case of England will be nobody at all. For example when France won it all in 1998 I was thoroughly happy as they had a cluster of Arsenal players lifting the trophy. Banter though is welcome, I don’t share the mad optimism about England who I think will be overachieving to reach the final four and will probably go out before that stage. My money is on Spain, Italy, Holland or Germany in that order. Denmark a dark horse for the semi-finals.

Speaking of the World Cup let me direct you to this interview with former New Order bassist Peter Hook (it truly looks like New Order have split up for good this time) and Mani formerly of the Stone Roses and Primal Scream. They are interviewed together as they’ve formed a new band called Freebass which also included Andy Rourke from The Smiths. An unlikely lineup if my opinion but these are strange times we live in. Their official site is here and the interview is here, I wanted to share the interview as they talk at length about World Cup songs, the tournament itself and strangely the estate of Joe Strummer. If you are not from the UK you might not be familiar with our long standing tradition of official (and unofficial World Cup songs). While awful records with the players singing dominated the 70′s and 80′s I think the trend to actually have records made by proper and sometimes good bands really kicked off in 1990 with New Order and the track World in Motion. More songs followed although I really remember and still have the 12″ single of the Colourbox official World Cup Anthem, arguably the pinnacle was The Lightning Seeds ‘Three Lions’ which seems to tug at the heartstrings of supporting a constantly failing England team. In the last few years there hasn’t been much of note but the 1990′s – 2002 were the heyday of WC songs and finally here is why I bring it up….

I think I’ve got my order of events right (mostly from memory) below but correct me if I’m wrong. Joe Strummer’s first ‘football’ hit was co-writing credits on Black Grape’s England’s Irie in 1996 which was a big hit during the European Championships, this stemming from his friendship with Bez formerly of Happy Mondays. The video is below. He even broke that Clash cardinal rule of never appearing on Top of The Pops to promote the single, which more than made back the costs outlaid. Joe Strummer wasn’t at his most active in the mid 90′s but the friendships he formed at The Groucho Club in that spell led to him being behind a huge ‘England’ hit – Fat Les doing Vindaloo. Along with Damien Hirst, Alex James from Blur and Keith Allen, Strummer pumped a lot of time and perhaps a significant amount of money into Vindaloo which became the big hit for the 1998 World Cup.. In 2000 for the European Championships a version of Jerusalem was released for the tournament to lesser success. The fascinating thing is that while Strummer was never really a huge football fan (that title would belong to Mick Jones within the band) his friendships led him to be part of some of the songs most associated with England and The World Cup. Let’s not forget it was during his time working with Fat Les that he met Anthony Genn which was another key component of Joe’s ‘wilderness years’ coming to an end…

So, I guess I’m trying to say we can partially thank the World Cup for Joe Strummer getting back to recording and touring during those final 4 years. I meant to write more tonight, but that all proved rather lengthy. Check out Joe with Black Grape (about 1:20 in) red shirt and sunglasses and apologies for poor video:

Night….oh and if you can click and share any of the groovy icons below it really helps the blog out. (twitter it of Digg it especially)