TODAY I FEEL LIKE LISTENING TO THIS LOT

Normal service is resumed after the holiday.

They’ve had the singles treatment over 19 consecutive weeks, an ICA and a handful of songs featuring on other postings. So here’s an imaginary 4-track EP with stuff I’ve not played here before:-

mp3 : The Clash – What’s My Name (live at Belle Vue, Manchester 1977)
mp3 : The Clash – Guns On The Roof
mp3 : The Clash – Brand New Cadillac
mp3 : The Clash – Rock The Casbah

Track 1 is lifted from a TV clip that was filmed for inclusion on So It Goes, the weekly music programme devised and presented by Anthony H Wilson (or plain Tony as he was known in those days). That’s why you get the added lyric of ‘here we are on TV…..‘in the middle. It’s a far more raw and energetic version than appears on the debut album.

Track 2 takes the riff from Clash City Rockers, which itself ripped off the 1965 single, I Can’t Explain by The Who, and has Joe pontificating on state-sponsored terrorism while taking its title from an incident closer to home when Paul, Topper and a bunch of hangers-on ended up in trouble for shooting at pigeons from the roof of their rehearsal rooms having been mistaken for terrorists shooting at passing trains.

Track 3, lifted from London Calling, is the well-known and well-loved cover of the 1959 song by Vince Taylor which The Clash considered to be one of the first and best British rock’n’roll records

Track 4. Nope, this version hasn’t been featured before. It’s lifted from the album that never was – Rat Patrol From Fort Knox – recorded by the band and fully produced by Mick Jones over a three-month period between November 1981 and January 1982. It would likely have been a double album, which coming on the back of London Calling and Sandinista was too much for CBS to accept, but even worse was that the rest of the band, along with newly re-instated manager Bernie Rhodes, rejected it feeling some songs were too long and others had too many overdubs and samples.

The songs were then given to Glyn Johns to rework and remix into what became Combat Rock….it was only years later when the Rat Patrol sessions were released in bootleg form did many folk come to the realisation that the strive for commercialism had been at the expense of the beginning of the break-up of the band with Mick Jones utterly devastated by what had happened.

Bonus Track

mp3 : The Clash – The Beautiful People Are Ugly

This would have been the opening song on Rat Patrol if it had been allowed to see the light of day. A touch on the pop side perhaps, but again it was Mick trying to prevent the band from pigeon-holed by critics and fans alike.

JC