Another Imaginary Album

Last week I floated the idea of imaginary albums, albums that could have/ should have happened but didn’t- the pair I mused about were an imaginary Andrew Weatherall/ Sabres Of Paradise produced Sinead O’Connor and Jah Wobble album, building on the Visions Of You single, and also what might have happened had Andrew Weatherall actually gone on to produce The Fall in 1993, a meeting that went as far as the studio before there was a backing out. Today’s imaginary album is going back to 1986 and the aftermath of The Clash.

This is what really happened.

Mick Jones was fired from The Clash in 1983 by Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon (and Bernie Rhodes, back as manager at Joe’s insistence). Mick had become increasingly difficult to work with and there had bee major disagreements about the song selection and mixing of the album that became Combat Rock. Famously, Mick and Paul had a stand off for several hours about the level of the bass in Know Your Rights and their relationship broke down to the point where they weren’t even speaking. Joe and Paul issued a statement saying Mick had drifted away from the original intention of the group and they would now pursue this without him. Joe and Paul recruited two new guitarists, Vince White and Nick Sheppard and drummer Pete Howard who’d replaced Terry Chimes, who’d replaced Topper Headon. The five man Clash went on to tour and record a much derided album called Cut The Crap (made mainly by Strummer and Rhodes- it’s not all bad, the song This Is England is a genuine Strummer state- of- the nation classic, but much of the rest was done by Rhodes and doesn’t add much to the band’s back catalogue although some fan remixed versions have some merit). The Clash Mark 2’s highlight was a busking tour. On getting home Strummer called it a day and the band broke up. 

Mick Jones was kicked out of The Clash, the band he started in 1976, and set about proving Joe and Paul wrong. He formed TRAC (Top Risk Action Company) who then became Big Audio Dynamite. Some of Mick’s songs for the first B.A.D. album were already written while he was in The Clash and the rest came quickly. Recorded by the new band- Mick with Don Letts, Greg Dread, Dan Donovan and Leo Williams- BAD’s first album, This Is Big Audio Dynamite, is a modern, fun, genre- clash and sample- fest, packed with great tunes- The Bottom Line, e=mc2, Medicine Show, A Party and the rest, fusing rock, reggae, rap, and dance music. After that Mick moved quickly, writing songs for B.A.D.’s second album. 

Joe was full of regret and self- loathing about the way The Clash had imploded, blaming himself for sacking Mick and for being (again) seduced by Bernie’s talk. He hoped to make up with Mick and flew out to the Caribbean where Mick was staying. The legend has it that Joe cycled round the island looking for Mick, found him, presented him with some weed by way of apology and asked him to reform The Clash. Mick had no interest in reforming The Clash, B.A.D. was his future and he must have taken some pleasure at Joe’s volte face. At some point Joe told Mick that the new B.A.D. songs were ‘the worst thing I’ve ever heard’. Joe’s retrenchment into three chord rock had characterised The Clash Mark 2. Mick was fusing the questing, experimental Clash of 1980- 81 with pop music and samples and he wanted to keep pushing forward. The two made up though and both Joe and Paul appeared in the Medicine Show video, the three former bandmates friends again.

Joe signed up for co- producing the next B.A.D. album and ended up co- writing several songs- Beyond The Pale, Limbo The Law, V. Thirteen, Ticket, and Sightsee M.C. Two more saw the light of day as bonus tracks on the U.S. CD release- Ice Cool Killer and The Big V (Ice Cool Killer is drum machine beats and Scarface samples. The Big V is a cooled down version of V. Thirteen). 

Ice Cool Killer

The Big V

The Strummer- Jones writing team was firing on all cylinders on No. 10 Upping Street. V. Thirteen is one of B.A.D.’s best songs, sleek and widescreen with a great Mick Jones lyric and vocal. Beyond The Pale is a crunchy, guitars and keys celebration of immigration with Joe on backing vocals. There are two songs further Strummer- Jones co- writes from this period. Love Kills (from Alex Cox’s Sid And Nancy film) features an uncredited Mick Jones on guitar and backing vox and U.S. North, a song that sounds like a close cousin of love Kills, written in late ’86 but not released until a posthumous Joe Strummer album a few years ago. 

Mick kept going and in 1988 B.A.D. recorded and released their third album, Tighten Up Vol ’88, and then the rave influenced Megatop Phoenix in 1989. Joe worked on the soundtracks for Walker and Straight To Hell, and went to L.A. and recorded his debut solo album, Earthquake Weather. Paul formed Havana 3 a.m. and released an album in 1991. The original B.A.D. line up broke up after Megatop Phoenix and Mick formed B.A.D. II. 

But… this is what could have happened…

After No. 10 Upping Street and the success of the Strummer- Jones writing and production team, Mick and Joe could have closed ranks again and reformed their partnership. This could have been The Clash re- united. Joe probably would have done this, Mick would have been less keen, wanting to keep moving forward. Band re- unions weren’t really a thing in the late 80s, not the way they are now. But if Mick had changed his mind some time in 1987, a new Strummer- Jones band could have formed and made a killer late 80s album. They could have brought Paul back on board. Poor Topper was deep into heroin addiction and driving a taxi- he appeared with Flowered Up in 1990 but then dropped off the map again. 

The Strummer- Jones ’88 album could have cherry picked the key songs from Tighten Up Vol. 88 and Earthquake Weather. A fully fired up partnership in the studio would have brought further new songs. 

From Tighten Up Vol. 88 Mick’s Other 99, a soaring, guitar- led song about doing the best you can, not being sucked into the rat race and sometimes accepting good enough is just that. The Battle Of All Saint’s Road, a Jones- Letts co- write with banjo, reggae and a coming together of the Ladbroke Grove tribes, the rockers and the dreads. Just Play Music, 2000 Shoes and Applecart all pass muster and could all feature Mick and Joe swapping lines and singing together. The last thing the original B.A.D. line up recorded was Free, a song for the film Flashback (a Dennis Hopper and Kiefer Sutherland film adventure comedy about a aging on the run hippy and an FBI agent). A Mick and Joe version of Free would make the cut. 

Other 99 (Extended Mix)

Free (LP Version)

Joe’s Earthquake Weather is an album cursed by muffled production, a weird mix and the sometimes unsympathetic and over the top playing of the band, L.A. rock musicians (a group Joe christened Latino Rockabilly War, which is a great name and could be the name of my imagined Joe and Mick band or album). But versions of those songs with Mick Jones playing and producing would lift them much higher. Gangsterville, Island Hopping and Sleepwalk are the obvious candidates, Leopardskin Limousines and Passport To Detroit maybe. The B- sides of the Island Hopping single include a lovely stripped down, swinging acoustic- ish version of the song re- titled Mango Street so we’ll have that one too. 

Mango Street

Joe had already contributed the mighty song Trash City to the soundtrack to a Keanu Reeves film called Permanent Record, a that song would open and adorn any late 80s Strummer- Jones album. 

Trash City

U.S. North could have been dragged from the vaults, its ten minute length trimmed a little. Paul could have come back and contributed something from Havana 3 a.m.’s album- this spaghetti western song perhaps…

Hey Amigo

If we’re not careful we’re heading back into double album territory, one of the straws that broke the Clash camel’s back, but an imaginary single album, Mick and Paul co- writing and co- producing, playing and singing together, Mick back with Joe and Joe fully focussed, is a great What If? and could have been a very good (imaginary) album. They’d still have argued and fallen out again when Levi’s came calling in 1991 of course. But that’s The Clash. 

Bagging Area Book Club

The first rule of Bagging Area Book Club is, uh, you can talk about it. It’s an irregular series of music and literature crossovers starting today and heading into the next few weeks, maybe beyond. Last Monday night I attended Richard Norris in conversation with Dave Haslam at Blackwell’s bookshop at Manchester University. Richard recently published his memoir, Strange Things Are Happening, an account of his life and musical journey written as he explained to us in the first person present, a technique that gives the entire book a real immediacy and presents every scene as happening in front of you (Richard says he learned this from Viv Albertine’s autobiography Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys. He also notes that that book opened the door for many others to write their memoirs and autobiographies, the generation who grew up with punk and its aftermath, including himself). 

Dave opens proceedings by noting that him and Richard have a number of parallels in their pasts- both ran club nights called The Hangout, Richard in Liverpool and Dave in Manchester, both lost parents at a young age, there were one or two others as well but they escape me now. Both also came to music with at least half an eye on writing about it as well as participating as musicians/ DJs, Dave writing his fanzine Debris and Richard writing one titled Strange Things Are Happening- there’s a literate side to both of them that informs everything they’ve done. Dave dives into the Q&A starting in the middle with The Grid on Top of The Pops firstly in 1993 with Crystal Clear and Mancunian door face Elton on vocals. 

Richard talks eloquently about their experiences on the show, later appearing four times to promote Swamp Thing, a song they wrote as a joke which ended up becoming a smash hit, one which took them all over the world playing to huge crowds, something they eventually became tired of especially when the record company stated to put the pressure on for a follow up. Dave and Richard then go backwards, to St Albans in the late 70s and the nascent punk scene Richard becomes a mover in and the older folk crowd in the town who not only tolerate a group of fifteen year olds but encourage them. Dave says Richard’s evocation of the St Albans scene is endearing and inspiring, something that struck me when reading the book- people crating scenes in small towns, across generations, finding places to play and making music. Not long after Richard’s band, The Innocent Vicars, make a 7″ single and Richard’s dad drives him to London where they sell the entire run of singles to Rough Trade and then turn up at Radio 1, ask to speak to John Peel, meet him on the doorstep of the BBC and give him a copy of the record which he plays the following night. From that point Richard is off on a lifelong journey in the music world. 

I won’t give to much away- you should read the book if you haven’t already. Richard Norris music runs through my record collection like the writing in a stick of rock- from the psych compilations on Bam Caruso to his adventures with Genesis P. Orridge and the acid house album they made in 1987despite not having heard any acid house records at that point- Jack The Tab- to his writing in the NME which switched me onto stuff and his records with Dave Ball as The Grid. In the mid- 90s he wrote and recorded several songs with Joe Strummer, songs which were instrumental in Joe getting a band back together again. Richard is asked from the audience how it ended with Joe- ‘badly’ is Richard’s short explanation, the circles around former members of The Clash not always easy places to navigate. Yalla Yalla is one of the results of that partnership, for my money one of Joe’s greatest solo songs. After that episode Richard spirals on making music with Erol Alkan as Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve, makes psychedelic acid house as The Time And Space Machine, forms The Long Now and The Order Of The 12 releasing albums both both and then from c2019 and into lockdown and beyond, his long running series of Music For Healing/ deep listening and ambient pieces, a project still arriving on a monthly basis at Bandcamp- Richard says that he sees Bandcamp as a new Rough Trade, the conduit between artist and listener.

Richard reads from his book for us, the chapter on meeting Strummer, the arrival of Joe and his entourage at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studio and the ensuing fun and madness which followed. As he reads he causally flings each completed page aside, a piece of stage craft he points out in a tongue in cheek way he learned from someone else doing a reading. 

Richard’s book is full of other stories- the time he spent with Sky Saxon, his adventures in New York at the NME’s expense in 1986 and his encounters with ecstasy, making a record in Amsterdam with Timothy Leary, a road trip to Mexico in Joe Strummer’s Cadillac with Shaun Ryder and Bez, and more, a life well lived with music at the centre of it. At the Q&A Richard does pause at one point to question what it’s all about, what the meaning of it all is. He recounts a trip fairly recently to Spain, hiking with Penny Rimbaud of Crass. Penny, Richard says, is a wise man, someone who surely knows what the meaning of life is. He asked him and was told sagely, ‘to serve’. 

Dave Haslam is a great host, asking the right questions, clearly interested and alert and who has also lived a life with music at the middle of it. Dave has just finished writing and publishing a series of mini- books through Manchester publishers Confingo. These are short, essay length books on very niche topics, each book small enough to fit in your pocket and short enough to read in one sitting. He had a list of topics to cover and felt a series of small books was the best way to do it, not for making a pot of money but for the joy of the writing them and then publishing them. The series tackles a variety of topics starting with Dave’s decision to sell his entire record collection (something Richard has done in recent years too), then exploring specific periods of people’s lives: Keith Haring and 80s New York; the semi- mythical months Courtney Love spent in Liverpool in 1982; Sylvia Plath’s sojourn in Paris; the Angry Brigade cell that existed in Moss Side in  the late 60s; the life and times of Cresser, Manc face, and Stone Roses dancer; Picasso’s time in early 20th century Paris; and the night Grace Jones almost recorded Houses In Motion with A Certain Ratio and Martin Hannett at Strawberry Studios in Stockport in 1980. All of these are tales worth telling and tales well told (ACR will almost certainly appear at this blog again later this week). You can get all eight here or buy them individually here.  

Back to Norro, as Joe Strummer christened him- in 2016 Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve released this song,a gloriously melancholic piece of electronic pop, drums that patter away like Spacemen 3’s Big City, synths like mid- 80s New Order and Hannah Peel’s wistful vocals. For the full effect, go to the 12″ version. 

Saturday Live/ Shane McGowan RIP

Shane McGowan’s death on Thursday at the age of 65 didn’t come as a huge surprise. He’d been ill and in intensive care for some time and in some ways its amazing he lived as long as he did, given his lifestyle since being a child, but it’s still terribly sad- he was a true one off, a unique voice in modern life, a lyricist who mashed Irish folk songs together with punk and poetry to create some of the most memorable songs of the late 20th century. Through his words Shane covered all bases- he was a poet, a writer who was both a realist and a romantic, a story teller and a protest singer, a truth teller, a mythical singer/ writer who willed himself into action, wouldn’t take no for an answer and lived his own way. The riotous Pogues of the mid- 80s, their albums and gigs are the stuff of legend, an antidote to Thatcherite Britain and the generic, safe and overblown music that clogged up radio and TV. 

By 1990 and the Hell’s Ditch album, a record produced by Joe Strummer, Shane had largely lost interest in the group which he felt had become too professional and unwilling to take on his burgeoning interest in acid house. His growing love for acid house (and drug consumption to match) led to an album which many felt showed the group were past their best. It does contain several great songs though, including this one, which is one of my favourite Pogues songs (written by Shane on a Casio keyboard apparently). 

Summer In Siam

This hour long film captures The Pogues live at The Town And Country Club in  March 1988, the life affirming power of the band in full flow on St. Patrick’s Day. Joe Strummer, Steve Earle, Lynval Golding and Kirsty McColl all show up and join in. The set starts with The Broad Majestic Shannon (a song I once spent ages trying to fathom why Shane’s narrator was sitting watching the robots landing on the banks of the famous Irish river. After all the beauty in Shane’s words, tales of Ireland and drinking, rusty tin cans and old hurling balls, tears on cheeks and forgetting your fears, the appearance of robots seemed very odd to me. ‘Rowboats, Adam, rowboats’, a friend pointed out to me- via postcard if I recall correctly). From there on in it’s Pogues all the way, London Calling in the middle, a cover of Rudy A Message To You and finishing with The Wild Rover. What more could you want?

There are so many songs that I could be post to demonstrate Shane’s gift. Any Best Of… would include A Pair Of Brown Eyes, Sally MacLennane, Dirty Old Town, Streams Of Whisky, Rainy Night In Soho, Fiesta, The Body Of An American, The Broad Majestic Shannon and umpteen others. These two are as good as any of those. Boys From County Hell is from their 1984 debut Red Roses For Me, a raucous tale of drinking boys and how they deal with life and landlords. Haunted, with Cat O’Riordan on co- vocals with Shane, is from the soundtrack to Sid And Nancy in 1986, a gloriously ramshackle mid- 80s love song, a counterpoint to what accounted for love songs in the mainstream in August 1986. 

Boys From County Hell

Haunted

Shane and his post- Pogues band The Popes also did a version of Haunted with Sinead O’Connor singing alongside Shane, released in 1995, their voices sounding rather wonderful together, a more subdued version than the one The Pogues had released.

A lot of people have noted that Shane, Sinead and Kirsty McColl are now united in death, that they’ll be ‘up there’ somewhere, singing together and partying. It’s a nice idea. I don’t know how Shane McGowan might respond to that suggestion. I can quite believe he’d have had a strong belief in an afterlife and expect to see Sinead and Kirsty once again. I can quite believe too that he might clear his throat, cackle and reply ‘pogue mahone’. 

RIP Shane McGowan.

Half An Hour Of The Clash Edited, Sampled And Remixed

The Clash, remixed, edited and sampled for a thirty three minute blast of Strummer/ Jones energy and invention for your Sunday morning delectation. Best played loud. 

Half An Hour Of The Clash Edited, Sampled And Remixed 

• Return To Brixton (SW2 Dub)
• Dancing (Not Fighting)
• Rock The Spectre (Peza Edit)
• Magnificent Dub (Leo Zero Edit)
• I’m Not Down (Hold Your Head Up)
• Davis Road Blues (Don Letts Culture Clash Radio Version)

In 1990 The Clash had a number one single eight years after they split up (for the purposes of this we’ll take Mick being sacked from the band as the actual moment they split up even though the five man Clash rumbled on for two years with a largely unloved album and a busking tour that those involved seemed to enjoy). Should I Stay Or Should I Go went to number one and saw a surge in Clash related activity, one of which was the record company CBS reissuing Paul’s 1979 song Guns Of Brixton in remixed form as Return To Brixton. The remixes of Return To Brixton, three of them on the 12″, were done by DJ Jeremy Healy.

Dancing Not Fighting came out last year, a thumping, beat driven, high octane Jezebell release that  samples Mick Jones screaming at bouncers in the film Rude Boy, trying to get them to stop beating up Clash fans. The band disowned the film by the time it came out but the live footage of the band is among the finest committed to tape by anyone, anywhere. Here they are in July 1978 doing (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais at the Glasgow Apollo. 

This seven minute clip has them powering through Complete Control, Safe European Home and What’s My Name at the Music Machine in Camden a few weeks later. 

Rock The Spectre is a Peza edit, what happens when the Strummer and Jones vocals from Rock The Casbah are played over Mystic Thug’s Brocken Spectre (Mystic Thug is Tici Taci’s Duncan Gray). What happens is you get the song completely recast in a new light, reborn, Mick and Joe’s voices over a throbbing piece of slinky 2023 chug. Joe’s vocal particularly shows he gave absolutely everything in the studio. 

Magnificent Dub is a Leo Zero edit, the Magnificent Dance (a B-side to the Magnificent 7 single, released in 1981, inspired by the band’s time in New York and Mick especially being taken with the brand new hip hop culture). Some of the vocals Leo throws into this edit are from the band playing live at Bonds, Times Square and various people having a go at the bassline ((played originally by Norman Watt- Roy when Simonon was out of town filming The Fabulous Stains). Leo also inserts some sections from the unreleased, unofficial Larry Levan version of Mag 7. 

In 2005 when mash up culture was the big new thing a whole host of artists/ bedroom bootleggers threw everything they had at a completely remixed, re- edited and mashed up version of the album London Calling. The Clash found themselves (unofficially) rubbing shoulders with The Streets, Peaches, Vanilla Ice, Chuck D, Outkast and host of others sampled artists. It was massive fun. E-jitz took Mick’s 1979 album track I’m Not Down and spliced it with the vocal from Boris Dlugosch’s speed house track from 1997, Hold Your Head Up (vocal courtesy of Inaya Davis).

Davis Road Blues is a dub track by Prince Blanco with Mick’s guitar from B.A.D.’s The Bottom Line and Joe’s voice from a radio interview describing his first meeting with Mick and Paul that led to the formation of The Clash, a meeting that took place at 22 Davis Road, Shepherd’s Bush (in a squat Paul shared with Sid Vicious and Viv Albertine).

Forty Five Minutes Of Sandinista!

I think I’ve said before that while Sandinista! may not be the greatest Clash album, it is their most adventurous, their most inventive and where the spirit of the band truly lies. Once they realised that they couldn’t play 1977 and Garageland forever, they had to move on and that led them backwards into their record collections (rockabilly, blues, reggae, ska, dub) and forwards into the future (rap, hip hop, funk). They went from White Riot to Death Is A Star in six years, exploring everything they could along the way. Joe said in Westway To The World, that they went out to engage with the world in all its infinite variety (or something similar). They were never going to be stuck playing Borstal Breakout for the rest of their lives.

London Calling was the purest distillation of this, nineteen perfectly pitched slices of Clash. Sandinista! was The Clash doing whatever they wanted across the course of a year- 1980- starting with the recording of Bankrobber in Pluto Studio, Manchester and leading them back to London, to Jamaica and to New York. The idea that Sandinista! could have been a superb single disc album or double vinyl opus or a killer EP misses the point. Sandinista! is complete Clash. The roots of all of Joe’s solo career, from his soundtracks to Earthquake Weather to the three albums with The Mescaleros are in Sandinista! as are the origins of Big Audio Dynamite. Fast forward to the 21st century and Mick and Paul turn up in Damon Albarn’s touring version of Gorillaz, a band playing a hybrid, pick ‘n’ mix version of dub, pop, hip hop, funk, and whatever else- that’s Sandinista! 

Forty Five Minutes Of Sandinista!

This is not an attempt to produce a perfect version of the album, a reduced version or a best of. It’s some of Sandinista! mixed together, some of the lesser known songs and the ones where the spirit of Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Topper Headon and the rest of the cast that contributed to the sessions can be found, a cast that takes in Mickey Gallagher and Norman Watt- Roy (The Blockheads), Tymon Dogg, Mikey Dread, Ellen Foley, Don Hegarty (Darts), Gary Barnacle, Ivan Julian (Voidoids), Style Scott, Pennie Smith and cartoonist Steve Bell. There’s something about the songs too which lend themselves to being sequenced together, seguing from one to another.

• Mensforth Hill
• The Crooked Beat
• Broadway
• Rebel Waltz
• One More Time
• One More Dub
• The Street Parade
• Something About England
• Up In Heaven (Not Only Here)
• If Music Could Talk
• Washington Bullets

Mensforth Hill is Something About England played backwards, the tapes reversed and with bits of Joe’s studio chatter from New York’s Electric Ladyland dropped in, the whooshing and rushing effects fading in and out. On the album it sits between Charlie Don’t Surf and Junkie Slip. Here it is a slow, experimental entry to forty five minutes of deep Clash.

The Crooked Beat is Paul Simonon’s tribute to South London blues parties with a lovely wandering dub bassline. Recorded in September 1980 it was one of the last songs recorded for the album, produced by Mikey Dread who drops in some additional vocals at the end. 

Broadway is a Strummer masterpiece, a mellow, late night, jazz inflected song for the bars of NYC. Joe’s lyrics concern a meeting with a homeless man and former boxer in New York, Joe riffing on the sights and sounds of the city at night, a Scorcese film set to music. 

Rebel Waltz is a true hidden gem in the group’s back catalogue and the album’s tracklist. The lyrics are pure Strummer, a dream of armies and the losses of war. The music is Mick experimenting with playing a waltz crossed with dub, recorded at Wessex in London. The Clash as a folk band, in the truest sense of the word.

One More Time and One More Dub have to be taken together, the superb Clash- reggae of the first half dubbed out by Mikey Dread for the second. Joe sings of the poverty of the ghettoes, the civil rights movement and the Watts riots of 1965.

The Street Parade is another lesser known gem, hidden away at the end of side five on vinyl. On release some listeners may have taken ages to get to side five. The Street Parade is about losing oneself in the crowd, Strummer disappearing into the mass. The music is gorgeous, Topper and Mick showing by this point they could turn their hand to anything and do it well, with horns and marimbas carrying a Latin feel.

Something About England is a key Strummer- Jones song, marrying English music hall with lyrics spanning the 20th century, the wars, the Depression, the rebuilding of the cities and the British class system, Joe and Mick trading verses in character. ‘They say the immigrants steal the hubcaps/ Of respected gentlemen/ They say it would be wine and roses/ If England were for Englishmen again’, Mick sings at the start, the racism of Farage and Braverman rooted in the late 70s. 

Up In Heaven (Not Only Here) is one of Sandinista!’s few out and out rock songs, a Mick Jones guitar song with ringing lead lines and crunching riffs. Mick sings of the tower blocks he grew up in and the lives of the people that live in them. ‘The wives hate their husbands/ The husbands don’t care’.

If Music Could Talk is a New York song that began in Manchester, jazz blues of late night bars and not one but two Joe vocals. The backing track was recorded at Pluto with Mikey Dread and then added to later, sax wailing and floating on top. Joe’s words take in Bo Diddley, Errol Flynn, Isaac Newton and Samson. 

Washington Bullets seemed the perfect place to close (though I was tempted to put one of side six’s dubs last) if only because it finishes with Joe singing the album’s title over the organ as it fades out. Lyrically Joe casts his eye over the USA’s foreign policy in the 20th century, Chile, Cuba and Nicaragua (and the USSR’s too in Afghanistan and Tibet) with a mention for Victor Jara, the Chilean singer, poet, writer and activist murdered by the CIA backed coup in 1973. Musically it started as many songs did, Topper arriving in the studio first and messing around while engineer Bill Price pressed the record button. The others would turn up one by one and start overdubbing and soon, as Bill Price says, ‘we had thirty- five songs’. 

Thirteen

On New Year’s Day 2010 I started Bagging Area- which has made it very easy to remember when the blog’s birthday is if nothing else. Today the blog enters its teenage years, thirteen years old. There are several songs titled for what is often seen as the unluckiest number.

Big Star’s Thirteen from 1972 is a celebration of teenage love. ‘Won’t you let me walk you home from school’, it begins, the ache and pain of young love perfectly captured by Alex Chilton and Chris Bell.

Thirteen

Big Audio Dynamite’s V Thirteen is from 1987, co-written with Joe Strummer who also produced the album it came from (Number 10 Upping Street, according to Joe, the home of ‘an alternative, funky Prime Minister’). V. Thirteen’s lyrics take in all sorts of stuff, not least Little Jamie who writes ‘V 13’- I’ve always assumed this means writes as in graffiti- my copy of the 12″ came with a stencil for spraying V. 13 onto walls and other surfaces, still unused. V. Thirteen is one of B.A.D.’s finest moments.

V. Thirteen

Teenage Fanclub released an entire album titled Thirteen, released in 1992 following the flush of fame that Bandwagonesque brought. Inevitably it felt like a bit of a slump, the songs not quite up to par, many being fragments and leftovers from 1991/2. The experience of making it wasn’t a happy one for the group, it dragged on and became hard work. Drummer Brendan O’Hare left after they toured the album. Time has been fairly kind to Thirteen I think, it sounds pretty good today, just not a great step on in any way. One of the key songs was 120 Minutes, a Raymond McGinley song, which the group recorded acoustically for their Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It EP, released in 1995

120 Minutes (Acoustic)

Andrew Weatherall’s 2016 solo album Convenanza included a song called Thirteenth Night. The album was a wide ranging affair, spanning post- punk/ punk funk trumpets and featured Weatherall’s vocals on many of the songs including references to writers Hans Fallada and Robert Walser (Fallada wrote Alone In Berlin, the true story of a German couple who leave a series of handwritten postcards around Berlin during the Nazi years attacking the regime and who then become involved in a deadly cat and mouse game with the Gestapo). Thirteenth Night was a slightly melancholic instrumental. For the remix album that followed- Consolamentum- Thirteenth Night was remixed by Andrew’s Asphodell’s bandmate and studio engineer Timothy J. Fairplay. The Asphodells’ steam powered drum machine makes a welcome appearance.  

Thirteenth Night (Timothy J. Fairplay remix)

Taking Cover In The Bunker Tonight

I’ve said it before here and I’ll probably end up saying it again, Sandinista! may not be the best Clash album but it could well be their greatest achievement- thirty six tracks over six sides of vinyl, covering every conceivable style of music they could think of, self produced at various locations from Pluto Studio in Manchester to The Power Station in New York and Channel One in Kingston, Jamaica, with a range of guests and extra players (including but not only Ellen Foley, Norman Watt Roy, Mickey Gallagher, Tymon Dogg, Mikey Dread, Ivan Julian, Den Hegarty, Gary Barnacle, Lew Lewis and Style Scott) and the band believing they were getting one over on CBS by putting out six sides of vinyl at a pay no more than £5.99 price. 

Every side (well, almost every side, side six is admittedly an opinion splitter) has stone cold classic or genuine lost/ hidden gems and even a conservative estimate would say the following songs were essential Clash- The Magnificent Seven, Something About England, Rebel Waltz, The Crooked Beat, Somebody Got Murdered, One More Time and One More Dub, Up In Heaven (Not Only Here), Police On My Back, The Call Up, Washington Bullets, Broadway, Charlie Don’t Surf, Kingston Advice and The Street Parade. Tucked away on side five is possible the most Sandinista!- esque of all the songs on Sandinista!

If Music Could Talk

The music is from recoding session done with Mikey Dread at Pluto in February 1980, an instrumental backing track called Shepherd’s Delight (which re- appears in dub form at the very end of side six), clearly derived from juices flowing while they recorded Bankrobber in Manchester in the snow. Now moved to New York and inspired by the city, it’s nightlife and the people that live there, Joe Strummer lays down an astonishing stream of consciousness talking blues, reeling in a cast including Bo Diddley, Errol Flynn, Joe Ely, Sir Isaac Newton, the sale of London Bridge to a town in Arizona, Buddy Holly and Elvis, a voodoo shaman and Samson, Fender guitars and Mexican suits, the drummer man, wall Street and Electric Ladyland. ‘Let’s hear what the drunk man’s got to say’, he exclaims at one point. Later on, Strummer ad libs into a conversation with a girl he bumps into in a bar and asks if she needs ‘a cowboy in bus depot jeans’. 

Strummer, Jones and engineer Bill price split the vocals into the left and right channel, two Strummer’s at once. Sax comes from Clash friend Gary Barnacle, overdubbed in Wessex back in London later on and as the horn wails away and the dub backing thunders on, Joe’s voice comes in from left and right, the sound of New York at night captured and of music talking. 

Strummer Mix

Today would have been Joe Strummer’s 70th birthday had he lived. In way of a tribute and celebration of the man, his music and this event I’ve put together not one Sunday mix but two. Both mixes are post- Clash solo songs. The first is twenty minutes of solo Joe rocking, motorcycle guitars and leather jackets, and the second, half an hour of Joe in global/ dubbed out mode. Happy 70th birthday Joe, wherever you are. 

Strummer Rockers Mix

• Johnny Appleseed
• Generations
• Trash City
• Coma Girl
• Burning Lights

Johnny Appleseed is from is second album with The Mescaleros, Global A Go- Go (it was also a single). Generations was a one off song recorded with Rat Scabies and Seggs from The Ruts as Electric Dog House and released on an album called Generations: A Punk Rock Look At Human Rights. Trash City was a 1988 7″ single, Joe and Latino Rockabilly War, recorded when Joe was doing the soundtrack for the film Permanent Record. Coma Girl, a tribute to his daughter Lola and the Glastonbury festival, was on 2003’s Streetcore, his last album, recorded with The Mescaleros and released posthumously. Burning Lights is just Joe and his Telecaster, one of the key songs of his post- Clash years, a rumination on being yesterday’s man. It was in I Hired A Contract Killer, a 1990 film by Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. 

Strummer Global/ Dubby Mix 

• Mango Street
• Sandpaper Blues
• Yalla Yalla
• Yalla Yalla (Norro’s King Dub)
• At The Border, Guy
• X- Ray Style

Mango Street was one of the B-sides on Joe’s Island Hopping 12″, a single ahead of his first solo album Earthquake Weather, a largely instrumental version of the song Island Hopping. Sandpaper Blues and X- Ray Style were both on the first Mescaleros album, Rock Art And The X- Ray Style, Joe’s return from the wilderness in 1990. Yalla Yalla, written and produced by Richard Norris was the first single from the same album. Norro’s King Dub is from the 12″, Richard Norris’ dub of the song. At The Border, Guy is from Global A Go- Go.

Meanwhile, In Frestonia

The Clash’s re- issue programme continues with a forthcoming special edition of Combat Rock released for the album’s fortieth anniversary. Combat Rock, the last album by Strummer, Jones, Simonon and Headon, is the definition of uneven. Mick was holding out for another double, a sixteen song whopper/ double album. Everyone else wanted something more concise that might push them to another level in the USA. They tried mixing it while on tour in Australia and the Far East and eventually Glyn Johns was brought in to mix it, shorten some of the songs and cut the number of songs. This did nothing to repair the fracturing relationship of Mick and Joe. Mick was already smarting from the return of Bernie Rhodes. Topper was sacked by the time they took Combat Rock on tour. The end.

Combat Rock is still full of golden moments though wildly uneven as I said above- two enormous singles (one written by the soon to be ex- drummer), some funk and rap, some agit- prop, some spoken word stuff, a few killer album songs, Allen Ginsberg, Sean Flynn and the weird, stunning modern jazz/ soundtrack finale of Death Is A Star. It’s all along way from Janie Jones and White Riot. The re- issue is coupled with a bonus disc (two CDs, three vinyl although only five sides of the vinyl contain music) called The People’s Hall, an attempt to entice the collector with extra/ new material. The bonus material is pulled together from a variety of sources, much released elsewhere in previous re- issue campaigns. It’s named after the venue the group rehearsed in Frestonia, a heavily squatted part of West London that tried to secede from the UK in the late 70s and form a breakaway republic. It’s a strange collection of songs, some that aren’t even from that period (Outside Bonds and Radio Clash date from prior to the Combat Rock sessions when The Clash took over New York, played Bonds and recorded Sandinista!), some from B-sides from Combat Rock singles (First Night Back In London, Long Time Jerk- both intended for Mick’s double that never happened that he wanted to call Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg), previously unreleased alternative versions of Sean Flynn and Know Your Rights, an unreleased instrumental called He Who Dares or Is Tired, The Fulham Connection (which seems to be The Beautiful People Are Ugly Too outtake renamed), Midnight To Stevens (a tribute to Guy Stevens which was first released on the Clash On Broadway box set) and Radio One with Mickey Dread (B-side, previously released). There is a booklet and a poster. The CD is fourteen quid. The vinyl is just shy of fifty. 

*shrugs*

Two pieces of Clash related music for you today. The first is an edit of The Magnificent Seven (The Magnificent Dub actually) by Leo Zero, dating back to either 2012 or 1981 depending on how you look at it. Leo has cut the song up in fine style, looping Norman Watt Roy’s bass riff, adding some sound from a gig along with sections of Joe’s vocal and new drum loops. Nine minutes of fun. 

The Magnificent Dub (Leo Zero Edit)

Much more recently, Jezebell (rapidly becoming a weekly fixture at these pages) released a new EP called Dancing (Not Fighting), built around a sample of Joe Strummer berating the bouncers at a gig, it’s a riot of drums and bass and horns, acid punk funk, with remixes from Matt Gunn and Markus Cooper. All proceeds to assist the victims of Putin’s war in Ukraine. get it at Bandcamp. 

Without People You’re Nothing

Most years since I started this blog I’ve marked the anniversary of Joe Strummer’s death and this year more than ever I think we’ll do that. A few weeks ago I began thinking about a post about Sandinista! and how rather than being the outlier in The Clash’s back catalogue it is actually the record that contains the absolute essence of The Clash and how it is an album that makes more and more sense as each year passes. That post never got written and I don’t have the space to do it right now but we’ll do Joe anyway. 

In 1983 The Clash released Combat Rock and one of the songs was Sean Flynn, a seven minute lament (before it got cut down for the final record) for Sean Flynn, the photographer son of the actor Errol who went to Vietnam and was never seen again, murdered in 1971 either by Vietcong or Khmer Rouge. Topper plays south- east Asian drums and percussion, Gary Barnacle adds sax and Mick Jones creates texture and mood with guitar and echo box. Meanwhile Joe sings of the missing photographer, the son of a Hollywood legend, lost in the jungles of a war that consumed the USA for over a decade and that achieved nothing.

Sean Flynn (Extended Marcus Music Version)

A few years later in 1990, his band split and gone and Joe struggling to find his place in the world he recorded a song for the film I Hired A Contract Killer. Burning Lights is in the film and came out on 7″, backed on the B-side by The Pogues. On the A- side it’s just Joe and that chugging guitar sound and some hard won wisdom/ poetry. ‘And I’ve been a long haul driverMoving things but the cops don’t knowNow I can see the writingYou are the last of the buffaloBurning lights in the desertSuch a sign only you would knowYour running tires, they’re out of pressureSuch a sign only you would know.Now I’ve been to CaliforniaAnd I’ve been to New South WalesSometimes, I pull overWhen I realize I’ve left no trace’

Burning Lights

Joe came back in the late 90s after a decade in the wilderness, rebuilding his life and his music. Moving to Somerset seemed to fix him. He became a regular at Glastonbury, his campfire a home for like minded souls. His famous quote, ‘without people you’re nothing’, came from a radio interview which you can find here.