Pearl Harbour Tour supportedby Bo Diddley

updated 5 Sept 2008 - added photo

Audio 1

from 2nd gen - Sound 3 - 73min - 2gen - 19 tracks

White Man

Toronto Interview Paul Topper

part 1 - (5mins)

part 2 - (5mins)

Candian Radio Interview (20mins)

A very enjoyable recording.

A good audience recording exists of the concert; good width and clarity of sound, though not pro levels, making this one of the better tapes of the tour.

The great atmosphere of this charged gig is captured well. It’s a 2nd generation with a good deal of clarity and range. The vocals, percussion, guitars, including an excellent bass, all play off each other, though there is some slight echo/distance. Vocals are a touch distant but the guitars come through powerfully. A very enjoyable recording.

Canadian TV; City Limits - Tommy Gun [with dubbed audio]

* the clip is followed by an after gig interview with Pennie Smith about torn out seating which is from O'Keefe gig in Sep 1979

Tommy Gun footage is mistakingly identified as the O'Keefe Centre however Tommy Gun was dropped from the Take the Fifth Tour Set List and furthermore the flags in background of the Tommy Gun video are from this earlier Pearl Harbour Tour. Probably pulled from Canadian TV archives as the City Limits programme went out a few years later it was subsequently misidentified with the Pennie Smith O'Keefe footage.

Last night of the Pearl Harbour

Last night of the Pearl Harbour tour; a highly successful tour both artistically and in terms of establishing a growing reputation and following in the USA.

Pearl Harbour produced some of the best Clash concerts ever, and this was another triumph.

... and onto the Take the 5th tour

On The Take the 5th tour in September/October The Clash would be playing large auditoriums, but this was a converted cinema with the toilet doubling as a dressing room! Strummer recalls, “ The PA sounded like it was filled with hamsters on coke! Even though it sounded rough we really enjoyed it and the crowd stormed the stage at the end. There were just 2 bouncers trying to hold the crowd back”

BOOK: CULTURE, MUSIC THE FIRST TIME THE CLASH PLAYED TORONTO

Core Magazine - 01/02/2019

Archived PDF

It’s been four decades since The Clash, known for their unique fusion of punk and reggae, played Toronto for the first time. The event was caught on 35 mm black and white film by two brothers.

Ex-Torontonian, photographer Nick Smash, also known as Nick White, along with his brother Simon White, were part of the Toronto post-punk scene at the time and were there to capture history.

Nick will give a talk on opening night and he and Simon will be exhibiting photos. It’s part of an event called The Clash on the Danforth in celebration of the 40th anniversary of two memorable concerts played by Mick Jones, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon, The Clash, at the Rex Danforth Theatre in 1979.

Punk’s thrashing guitars, off-tone harmonics bred in underground bars and backrooms was beginning to take hold. The Clash had sold over 100,000 imported copies of their first album and set off on the Pearl Harbour tour to the US and Canada in 1979.

They started off at the Lyceum Theatre in London, UK with the Slits on Jan. 3 before crossing the ocean. Their second stop and first North American show was at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver on Jan. 31. Their first US show was not until Feb. 8 at the Temple, San Francisco Bay Area. Following that show, they enlisted legendary musician and rhythm & blues pioneer Bo Diddley for the larger venues.

Punk bands were able to fill the larger-size music halls by the end of the 70s. On Feb. 20 when The Clash opened up with I’m So Bored With The USA at The Rex, Nick and Simon were ready. The Clash would return to Toronto to play the O’Keefe Centre for the Performing Arts only months later on September 26.

“My brother Simon and I took photos of all the bands that played in Toronto from 1979 - 1983,” Nick tells me by text.

“Many of the photos we took are in a book I wrote called, Alone And Gone.” They published it themselves in 2015.

“We were VERY independent. All the photos are ours and we own the copyright,” says Nick - “independent and self published - NO BARCODES!” he added.

Tickets

Rex Danforth Theatre

The Rex Danforth Music Hall (originally Allen's Danforth Theatre) is a music venue and event theatre on Danforth Avenue in the neighbourhood of Riverdale in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[1] It is served by Broadview station on the TTC's Bloor–Danforth line. The building was designated as a property of historic interest under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1985.

Cinema Treasures
Link - Archive PDF

Toronto Journey 416
Link - Archive PDF

Barry Myers

We were going to drive to Toronto from New York, but we were snowed in and except for the back-line vehicle, the rest of us flew direct to Cananda. Scratchy

listen you big guys, you’re never gonna stop them dancing

Joe is very talkative throughout, apologising for the poor sound early on and at the start of the encore says “We wanna kinda apologise, we arrived in Canada about 2 weeks ago feeling full of beans, now we’ve had it if you know what I’m trying to say”. But if The Clash were worn out at the end of the tour there is no sign of it here: its highly charged and intense throughout.

Joe wins the audience over after Bored with The USA, the storming set opener, “Turn on the house lights, listen who’s the promoter? Calling Mike Cole, listen you big guys, you’re never gonna stop them dancing, they just wanna stand there and dance”. He then tells the bouncers “you’ve gotta watch for anyone going down” How many Toronto audiences had heard a band say that to the security before?

The PA sound problems improve during Tommy Gun, which Joe introduces with “ This is Topper, Britain’s answer to Bruce Lee!” To requests for White Riot Joe jokes, “that’s an old song, so Bing Crosby still has fans even in Toronto! There’s a tape change before Stay Free, which loses some of Mick’s introduction.

Capital Radio is preceded by “This is what (Toronto Radio) Q107 sounds like, just a farting noise all day, so this song is now entitled thank you Radio Q107, we are your mindless robots”.

The encore cranks up the intensity even higher and White Riot breaks down halfway through after a stage invasion. Fans shout out the chorus, and then someone grabs the microphone and screams “God Save The Queen!” The taper or someone nearby says “unbelievable” as the crowd shout for me.

The house lights come on and the recording ends with the first bars of a song that would inspire The Clash to record one of the best cuts on London Calling; Vince Taylor’s Brand New Cadillac.

"Maybe that is on the tape too."

Just a minor correction to Neil Vanhinsberg’s comment on the September 1979 Clash show in Toronto. Neil writes:

"I also seem to recall at one point Joe mentioned a radio station, could have been the OK station that sponsored the show CFNY or the awful classic rock station Q-107. He said he listened to it and it sounded like farting noises. Maybe that is on the tape too."

That actually happened at the Clash’s previous Toronto appearance, in February 1979, at the Rex Theatre. That show was promoted by Q-107, and they were the target of Joe’s ire. (I actually even mentioned the comment in a review of the February show I wrote for issue no. 2 of the Surfin’ Bird fanzine. Good luck ever finding a copy of that!)

The reason I’m sure about this is that I was at the February show in Toronto, but not the September show. I was living in the US by then, and saw them on the September tour at the Palladium in NYC, with the Undertones and Sam and Dave on the bill.

Cheers. Tycho MansonToronto, Canada

This is the best show we never played.

This is the best show we never played. We got the call from The Garys to go down to The Rex theatre on the Danforth to open for the Clash but at the last minute we got pulled in favour of the Curse! Yes - we got to stay for the show and to hang out. Link

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Sounds review

March 10th

Are "Clash" the new messiahs of Punk Rock?

Music Express (Canadian) - April 1979

A Riot of Our Own pg

photos

Setlist

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19	I’m so bored with the USA Guns on the Roof Jail Guitar Doors Drug Stabbing Time Tommy Gun City of the Dead Career Opportunities Clash City Rockers White Man English Civil War Stay Free Police and Thieves Capital Radio Janie Jones Garageland Julies been Working for /DS Complete Control Londons Burning White Riot bold indicates on video