Midnight Special featuring; The Sex Pistols, supported by the Clash and the Buzzcocks.

updated 20 Dec 2014 - added poster
updated June 2024

Midnight Special 2CD

Sound 3.5 - 37mins - Tracks 12
Boot featuring the full gigs of all 3 bands.
Good quality. Old tapes are of much inferior quality and to be avoided.

How Can I Understand the Flies

Midnight Special - Screen on the Green 2CD

This is a recent bootleg 2CD released in early 2001 on the Punk Vault label. It features all three bands in full from the famous Screen on the Green gig in 1976. First up are the Buzzcocks and this has a average sound. The Clash's set is a bit better recording, quite enjoyable with a lot of clarity and width with just some slight over modulation and age, dampening a good sound. The Pistols is slightly better again.

The boot CD is a big improvement in sound over the previously circulating tape/cdr which was very poor. Grossly distorted, at best 2/5

The first known recorded gig

(Aug 2018)

This is a historic for it is the third ever Clash gig and the first known recorded. It is also the earliest known recorded performance and a rare recording of the Sex Pistols with Glen Matlock.

This was Malcolm Maclaren's event to showcase his band, with other bands from the new punk movement. Named the The Midnight Special because the bands had to play after the evening's films had been shown in this famous London arthouse cinema. See Marcus Gray's Last Gang in Town & Jon Savage's England's Dreaming as well. Maclaren's deal was The Clash had to build the stage themselves. Joe is quoted in England's Dreaming, "we weren't very good that night because we'd been up early unloading the scaffolding and building the stage".

The band were also nervous and there is no stage talk from Joe (he went to the opposite extreme at the Roundhouse 2 gigs later). It is suggested that the Buzzcocks and The Clash were beset by appalling sound problems that miraculously improved when the Pistols hit the stage. Though this is not entirely born out in this recording Glen Matlock and others have since confirmed that tampering may have taken place.

Press reviews

Press reviews at the time were not kind to put it mildly. Giovanni Dadomo did blame the equipment for doing the band "a grave disservice tonight, losing Joe Strummer's hard-to-mix vocals until they became an unintelligible mumble, and generally poleaxing the band's nuclear potential".

Charles Shaar Murray of the NME made his famous quote "they are the kind of garage band who should be speedily returned to the garage, preferably with the motor running, which would undoubtedly be more of a loss to their friends and families than to either rock or roll".

In subsequent interviews Joe appeared to take Murray's comments personally and was incensed, a spat that became legendary and inspired the Clash track Garageland. Perversely only two years later CSM was describing the Clash as the greatest rock band in the world in the same paper.

Screen on the Green poster

Blue Poster

Screen on Green flyer

Link

Screen on Green poster

PUNK PLACES #8 - SCREEN ON THE GREEN

NOVEMBER 15, 2018, LENE CORTINA, PUNK GIRL DIARIES

Link or archived PDF

The Screen on the Green is pretty much exactly as its name suggests; it's a cinema looking over a green space, located in Islington, north London.

On Sunday August 29th, the then tatty Screen on the Green hosted the first Punk all nighter.

Warm applause and calls for more

All of The Clash's set is here although the packaging gets the names wrong and two of the newer songs get buried in with another two of the newer songs showing a total of only 12. There are no edits and it's a very good audience recording that probably sounds like the master.

Of course we do not know whether the sound's limitations are a result of the recording, or the poor sound provided by the PA that night. Drums are clear, bass is present but not focussed, guitars are good but somewhat distant. The main short coming are the vocals which are distant (particularly Joe's) making as Dadomo said, his vocals largely unintelligible.

This a shame because this bootleg together with the 5 Go Mad In The Roundhouse (sound is better but has edits/dropouts) are the only circulating recordings of the 6 early unrecorded songs (the 100 Club 21/9/76 recording is of a poorer quality - though slight upgrades have appeared B-) . They are also the only recordings of the 5 piece Clash with Keith Levene on lead guitar, Mick on rhythm, Terry Chimes on drums and Joe solely vocals.

This recording reveals the The Clash of 1976 were a very exciting band. The punk snarl has not quite been added yet and the songs destined to be recorded lack their later subtleties but they are already playing tight and fast. The Ramones album is an obvious influence with the 1,2,3,4's and drum and bass patterns owing a lot to the brudders. The set ends with warm applause and calls for more.

Setlist

1. Deny
Same lyrics as recorded but going not to the 100 Club yet but the 69 club.

2. I Know What to Think About You
Good song with the slow Who, Can't Explain riff, lyrics "standing in the hospital room dead or alive", r'n'b type number with Gloria type middle section building back up to the chorus.

3. I Never Did It?
"I could have been as rich as you " fast and furious a Terry Chimes drum solo segues into

4. How Can I Understand the Flies?
"How can I go to sleep for the flies" Ramones like simply structured song.

5. Janie Jones
Some lyric changes but already sounds great. Mick sings the chorus (Joe later at the Roundhouse and there after). Mick sings I'm in love with Janie Jones etc not the later He. The tempo is so much slower at this point.

6. Protex Blue
Spirited Mick vocal .Same lyrics as later. A nice punchy mature version

7. Mark Me Absent
Song about schooldays written by Mick. R&B feel not to far akin to what Joe was doing with the 101ers prior to the Clash.

8. Deadly Serious (Dig a Hole)
Short fast song with a fast Can't Explain riff. Used later as basis for Clash City Rockers though the resemblance is not noticeable.

"Deadly Serious" is in fact called "Dig A Hole". Paul Simonon: "We even wrote a song about [reggae mimickry]," he says, "called Dig a Hole: 'Dig a hole, bury your guitars, dig some reggae but don't play any.'" (Interview The Guardian, 3.11.2006)

9. What's My Name
A real highlight, lyric changes. Again like Janie Jones a much slower version than it would become in 1977.

10. Sitting at my Party
Fast, furious but slight song. One of Micks old songs from the London SS days with Paul.

11. 48 Hours
Same lyrics and structure as later recorded version.

12. I'm So Bored With You
No punk snarl yet but sounds mature. A song about a girlfriend still and not the USA. Mainly different lyrics but indecipherable.

13. London's Burning
Another highlight, verses order changed and many lyric changes but nearly the fully formed classic.

14. 1977
Sounds great, another highlight, mainly same lyrics , structure but no 1977 - 1984 coda yet, instead Joe repeats the year 1977 (being in 1976 then) an Mick shouts out in between.

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29th August 1976, The Clash play a Midnight Special at Screen on the Green

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SOUNDS: Sex Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks:
Screen on the Green, Islington, London

Giovanni Dadomo, Sounds, 11 September 1976

Original, original 2 or Rocks Back Pages [paywall]

A STRANGE affair, this. And then some...

NME: The Sex Pistols / The Clash / The Buzzcocks: Screen On The Green, Islington, London

Charles Shaar Murray,
New Musical Express,
11 September 1976

Link or Rocks Back Pages - paywall or the original

Reprint and original.

Our Islington correspondent mingles with the Sex Pistols' portable audience looking for Johnny Rotten's toof. It's incisive stuff ...

"[The Clash] They are the kind of garage band who should be speedily returned to their garage, prefereably with the motor running, which would undoubtledy be more of a loss to their friends and familes than to either rock or roll."

Reprint: NME's History of Rock 1976.

John Maher (Buzzcocks)
@flyingmonkphoto · 29 Aug 2017

OTD 1976: Buzzcocks first gig in London - with the Sex Pistols and The Clash at Screen on the Green, Islington. pic.twitter.com/Jcg7XAB0Xv

— John Maher (@flyingmonkphoto) August 28, 2017

1976 #OTD @Buzzcocks on pavement outside our 1st London gig supporting Pistols & Clash at Screen on the Green. pic.twitter.com/nsQDq3izZy

— John Maher (@flyingmonkphoto) August 29, 2016

Steve Havoc (AKA Severin), Siouxsie Sioux, Debbie Juvenile, ‘Screen on the Green', Islington, London 1976. Photograph by Ray Stevenson #SiouxsieSioux #DebbieJuvenile #SteveSeverin @NewWaveAndPunk pic.twitter.com/dN8wxfEtpD

— Phil Lewis (@PhilHuwLewis) August 20, 2021

The Clash, Buzzcocks and the Sex Pistols all appeared at a showcase event at The Screen On The Green

Link

Setlist

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14	Deny I Know what to think of you I Never Did It How Can I Understand the Flies Janie Jones Protex Blue Mark Me Absent Deadly Serious (Dig a Hole) What's My Name Sitting At My Party 48 Hours I'm So Bored With You London's Buring 1977