The Clash: Classic or Dud

30 years ago yesterday I saw the Clash on their 2nd US tour at the University of Maryland Richie Colisseum. Awesome show.

I'm 100% envious. Love those guys, together, separately...love em. I always enjoyed that quote of Joe's about Mick: "He wouldn't show up, and when he did it was like Elizabeth Taylor in a filthy mood." Always made me LOL. Someone said WAY upthread about how funny they were...it's true, everyone thinks of them as boring bolshy swots, or Rik from the Young Ones.

What do you remember of the show? Feel free to wax lyrical...living vicariously etc

two weeks from now is the anniversary of my seeing them in '82! I was very young and impressionable. a reggae band called the Mighty Invaders opened. They played "The Prisoner". We had to drive a couple of hours to get there. The guy I got a ride with had a Bush Tetras poster on his wall.

x-post. I had missed their 1978 DC debut as high schooler at mom and Dad's me could not get a car and it was a snowy night and the show was in a kinda bad neighborhood, blah blah blah. Bo Diddley opened for them on that tour. So in September 1979 when then 18 year-old me was just starting at the U of Md outside DC and the Clash were coming (with Screaming Jay Hawkins opening). I was there. Early. I went there with friends and met others who would become my best buds to this day. The sound was horrible in that ancient 1,800 seat (?)concrete gym, but the Clash had so much energy and charisma. Joe had various stickers on his guitar. We stood up front jammed in with many on the floor. It was hot and sweaty there but that did not matter.

The show so impressed us that come December (I think) when the Clash returned for a US tour that did not include DC, we did a roadtrip to Philly to see them. There they played some of the soon to be or just released London Calling album, which aggravated some punkers there. We stuck around afterwards and met the band and Ian Dury who was touring with them. They did not want all the food spread that was there for them and told us to take some of it with us for our ride back to DC. We did (plus a bottle of rum--that we barely touched but treasured as "the Clash rum.").

That is really cool. Great story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EUVImnHr48

I've seen tons of gigs since then, I've read Simon Reynolds and others badmouth and critique the Clash for various reasons, but those 2 gigs, especially that first one I saw, still retain a mystical memorable quality to me. I remember us going back to a dorm and just sitting there on the floor drained but ecstatic. Also, context-wise, the Clash were far from being a band that would get played on the radio then.

OTM. Hard to overstate the impact of the early singles and the first album, which still sound shockingly raw to me, even when stacked up against the big names of the first wave of UK punk.

I'm about three feet away from being immortalized on the back cover of London Calling--that pic of them at the Agora in Atlanta. We were trying but couldn't get any closer to the stage. I've always wondered if that pic was cropped and I made the original photo. The band was like a runaway freight train. I'll always rank seeing them as a highlight.

September '79 is when I saw them, too -- St. Paul (MN) Civic Center, with David Johansen and The Undertones. 1,000 people (probably every punk and new waver in the Twin Cities at the time) in a 16,000 seat hockey arena made the sound simultaneously tinny and cavernous. I wish I had pushed up closer to the stage. I can really only remember "Bored With the USA" and "White Riot." Yeah, they were doing quite a few unfamiliar-to-me "London Calling" songs on that tour. Quite honestly I thought Johansen (doing basically the set that's on the "Live It Up" album) came across much better.

wow. curmudgeon and ellagru, Dan...thanks for sharing! I love hearing about that stuff. And curmudgeon, your story probably highlights one of the big reasons that Clash are so so C in my book: I never got to see them, or even Joe ever, but the stories I heard, and the stories I read from people about the way they were with their fans, those reams and reams of stories about them giving food to kids, letting them crash, giving them rides, hanging out and talking to them...that's what keeps them from being crusty punk cliches for me. Aside from the music of course. Because there's such a huge oral history that goes with those guys, because SO many people got close to them in those early years, and those people help them still feel, I dunno...real? Sorry. Waxing lyrical too much.

worst "2001 ilx" way to start off a thread ever

Only discovered "Bankrobber" last year but MY GOD, what a song, a parallel-universe "I Fought The Law".

Classic, easy. What I find most funny about this band is how my opinion has pretty much flip-flopped on the various sides of their work since I first heard 'em. When I got really into the Clash at age 14, I could only be bothered with the first three albums and couldn't stand Sandinista in the least. Now I tend to shy away from the more classic "punk" stuff (though its good at times) and really like the dubbier experiments. Listening to "Mustapha Dance" right now and loving it.

And as I understand it, "Sandinista!" was written almost entirely in the studio, as the members filtered in and out between NYC distractions. Talk about a band at the peak of its powers, spilling over with ideas. Rarely get credit for being early (white, British) hip-hop adopters, too.

revisiting the first album...this will sound mega-goofball of me but it gives me goosebumps. It's just so 'turn everything up, go for broke'. Love it.

ugh at all the 'strummer can't sing' comments on this thread.

i mean give me 20 hours of joe barking the phone book over two seconds of jeff fuckin' buckley.

joe would have loved jeff tho

classic! (ecxept cut the crap obv)

It's better than its rep.

So my 17-year-old son likes The Clash's London Calling cd but this slightly older NPR intern is lukewarm about it (see below). They should get rid of this kid:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2011/02/11/133631581/youve-never-heard-london-calling

here's part of his review:

Ultimately, London Calling feels like a time-and-place album. If I'd been a teenager when this record dropped, I probably would sing its praises like so many others have. It's definitely a great entry point to one of the most important bands and periods in the last 30 years, and I plan on checking out the rest of the group's discography. I'm not giving up on the band, but I've come to love the subsequent bands London Calling inspired more than the album itself.

Um, that reads OK to me.

That's a bit like my take on "Big Star"...

What bands did it inspire? I preferred the Clash when they were a punk band personally. Coupla later singles aside.

Well, you have yer Alarm, yer Manics, oh god...

Yeah, I'd be curious to hear who he likes that were inspired by The Clash. If his only answer is Green Day, then I know to not take him seriously.

Well, you have yer Alarm, yer Manics, oh god...

Exactly, I don't think it inspired anyone good

It also inspired a lot of good bands that sound nothing like that album, so hey

No Doubt, sorry, no doubt

Yeah, I'd be curious to hear who he likes that were inspired by The Clash. If his only answer is Green Day, then I know to not take him seriously.

Rancid?

What about stuff like the Angelic Upstarts? Though maybe that's not what this kid is talking about. I'm thinking there were a ton of bands that sprang up in 77 from the Clash/Pistols emergence?

Yeah, I'd be curious to hear who he likes that were inspired by The Clash. If his only answer is Green Day, then I know to not take him seriously.

I hear The Replacements in "Four Horsemen" and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists in "Lost in the Supermarket." Other songs sound like they're laying the groundwork for the influx of pop-punk acts that spent the last two decades on the extreme-sports and music Warped Tour.

Grr at "if I'd been a teenager when this record dropped..."

(...unless he means "dropped onto my old-fashioned turntable", I guess)

The amount of music in London Calling is staggering, but the songs aren't all winners. For every "Spanish Bombs" or "Death or Glory," there's a "Rudie Can't Fail" or "Jimmy Jazz."

RIGHT THAT'S IT

I think I want to kill him. Not because he's not enthused, but...maybe it's the tone? agh.

Rudie and Jimmy aren't winners? GTFO.

Light your torches, people

Nah, I just clicked the link and read the whole thing. He's basically alright.

I'm okay with him being lukewarm

but Rudie Can't Fail...

I just can't

Tom's recent "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" is worth a read for the intelligent anti-Clash sentiments in the comments.

joe would have loved jeff tho

if only he'd lived long enough to hear him :(

i hope this kid gives 'london calling' a few more spins. i mean, i didn't love it all the first time i heard it either.

i'm sure the clash have had all sorts of influence on bands that don't actually sound like them, but most of the ones who actually tried to act and look like the clash were indeed pretty shitty, yes.

Rudie and Jimmy aren't winners? GTFO.

― Hardcore Bangage (Dan Peterson), Wednesday, April 13, 2011 1:41 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm still reeling over Rudie

It's just so sad, I want to help him...or beat him senseless, i can't decide

Tom's piece is fantastic and the comments cover the waterfront nicely. As someone who came to the Clash late and not wholeheartedly, I always felt that having reservations was crucial to liking them, and that the band themselves (or at least Strummer) would probably concur. They're a band who tried so many things that they were bound to fuck up some of them, but that gave their failures a certain nobility. People who profess to hate them seem to hate the myth more than the music.

watching clash live on youtube - they really seemed to not care how they sounded that much and it was still awesome - how inspiring

I love the way they look like they're going to leap into the crowd and start whaling on them, esp Joe

The Clash are probably my favorite live band ever, but is there any doubt that they did too many drugs in the studio?

As someone who came to the Clash late and not wholeheartedly, I always felt that having reservations was crucial to liking them, and that the band themselves (or at least Strummer) would probably concur. They're a band who tried so many things that they were bound to fuck up some of them, but that gave their failures a certain nobility. People who profess to hate them seem to hate the myth more than the music.

― Pop is superior to all other genres (DL), Thursday, April 14, 2011 7:50 AM (1 year ago)

this really sums it up nicely!

I've been learning all of "London Calling" with my guitar teacher, track by track, which has forced a closer listen. Remarkable how much chorus effect is on almost all the guitars, also how so many of the simple chord progressions support some awesome arrangements (organ, horns, percussion, etc.). Also amazed to discover that, for some inexplicable reason, "Lost in the Supermarket" seems to be in open E tuning, which is weird and relatively rare outside of the Allman Bros. and, I dunno, "She Talks to Angels" by the Black Crowes.