The Clash Take the Fifth Tour
With Peter Tosh, Robert Frith, Maria Muldour,
The Mighty Diamonds, Earl Zero & Joe Ely

updated 30 Dec 2008 - added colour photo
updated 7 Jan 2010 - added BS pass
updated 18 May 2010 - added video correspondence
updated 12 Feb 2012 added tickets
updated Dec 2014 - added master audience recording

Audio 1

'Cheap Gasoline' cdr
Sound 3.0 - 57min - 2gen - 18 tracks

Audio 2 master - upgrade

Master - Sound 3.5 - 59min - master - 18 tracks

Audio 3 master - (audio 2 remixed)

Master - Sound 3.5 - 59min - master, remastered - 18 tracks

Capital Radio

Audio Source

Film footage has surfaced but exists the hands of a professional film maker. An audio tape exists which is a hugely enjoyable recording and captures the raw intensity brilliantly. The best copy and widely circulated is the Cheap Gasoline cdr, which is from a 2nd generation audience source, clear and without distortion. Vocals are very good for an audience recording, as are the drums. Bass is low in the mix as is the lead guitar until Jail Guitar Doors when presumably the soundman got his act together.

There is a degree of flatness, some echo, and a slightly harsh top end sound, which has some stereo separation. The real bonus though of this recording is that Joe’s rhythm is right upfront in the mix and crystal clear. It’s a real showcase for Joe’s attacks on his Telecaster! Joe’s playing on the first two songs is especially exciting hitting you right between the ears.

Video - full complete video exists in private collection - see below

Footage owned by cameraman. Tiny bits are included in 'The Future is Unwritten' Full gig filmed.

Video Source

A video source does exist and is in the hands of a professional film maker who at this moment in time does not wish to release the footage. see punters comments

a connection with American rock history

With London Calling only just in the can The Clash flew out to California to fulfil their last pre-Blackhill commitment at the Tribal Stomp Festival and leaving Bill Price responsible for the final mixes. Monterey was not part of the official Take The 5th Tour.

The Clash fired up by the event, and by accounts a combination of booze and speed, delivered a show of pure adrenalin. Joe flung himself back into the drum kit as if he’d been shot after the first line of I’m So Bored With The USA, causing the audience to leapt to its feet and creating the dramatic photos used in the New York Times.

The Clash at Monterey certainly made a connection with American rock history but not with the 67 Festival of the laid-back hippy era. Instead they connected right back to the 50’s heyday of Elvis, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Bo Diddley etc, delivering raw rock’n’roll but now with lyrics that connected directly with the hopes, anger and frustration of people’s lives, wiping away the years of escapist “progressive rock music”. What a shock it must have been to most of the audience.

The Festival (still being held today) was an attempt to revive the hippie heyday of the 67 Monterey Festival. To The Clash, especially Joe and Mick, the lure of playing Monterey steeped in the history of Jimi, Janis, Otis etc would have been exciting and hard to resist. Johnny Green’s book gives the background in some detail and confirms that to The Clash the gig had assumed great significance.

But when they arrived at the fairground site designed to hold 12,000 for their afternoon slot they found just 500 milling around. To make matters worse the organisers and most of the crowd were stuck in a hippy 60’s time warp including Wavy Gravy in full fancy dress.

Tickets

Programme

Poster

The Festival Programme, Poor, unreadable scan

Does anyone have a full copy?

Tribal Stomp Festival, Monterey

“We’d like to play a new song here"

Joe’s introduction to the gig gives this bootleg it’s name; “now we’ve bought some cheap gasoline with us, to sell at the side of the stage for 50cents a gallon“. The performances are all very strong with many highlights.

Bored With The USA has some lyric changes and references to Freddie Laker. Joe introduces London Calling with “We’d like to play a new song here, we just made a record of this last week so hope we don’t fuck up”, He then proceeds to do just that getting the lyrics mixed up. It s a song still in transition to its recorded form (contradicting his introduction), still having the references to the “midnight shutdown” and “time to be tough” and some different musical passages.

With the nearest he gets to sarcasm towards the audience an excellent White Man is introduced with “well since we’re in California we wanna get laid back a second”. An intense and revitalised Drug Stabbing Time follows. The older songs through to the encore are particularly intense with Janie Jones and Garageland both superb.

The encore (seamlessly edited in) starts with the first live version of the then current Willie Williams reggae hit, Armagideon Time. Another example of a cover version that The Clash would re-make as their own, but here it’s short and not yet fully worked up. With the pace dropped, there’s some guitar feedback before they blast into a brilliant fast and intense Career Opportunities. The intensity finally flags with the introduction of Joe Ely to sing his song Fingernails. It’s an unmemorable song but Mick’s lead guitar work is of interest. The set ends with White Riot, which is also lacking the earlier intensity.

Did you go? Any memories?

Info, articles, reviews, comments or photos welcome.
Please email blackmarketclash

Can't say much about the Punk crowd

Comments form the Dark Side of the Moon! I was there and had fun at the Clash performance even though it was a very difficult shoot. Can't say much about the Punk crowd however, they were very rude and obnoxious to me which I recall made the shoot suffer. I had one guy physically shoving me the whole concert and yelling "fuck you" into my ear as I shot, not cool at all. You can see me taping the band in your "Rodger Russmeyer" photos on your web site for what ever that is worth.

I am the copyright holder of the video footage of the Clash at the Tribal Stomp Festival. I also have a lot of memorabelia and thousands of photos of the event, including hundreds of the Clash performance that I took over the course of the Tribal Stomp but as a Professional Cameraman / Director, I would be looking at a commercial venture to release it. Sorry.

Your disertation on the Tribal Stomp in "BMC.com" is in-accurate in regards to the hippies at the tribal stomp not knowing who or what was coming down in regards to the performance of the Clash at the Tribal stomp.

They both knew and looked forward to the performance that is expressly why Chet Helms booked them to play the concert. He wanted them expressly becouse they were the Clash to give some added "Punk" diversity to the concert weekend which was already very diverse to say the least

We were in between the crowd and the band at the edge of the stage and I guess The Clash didn't like that even though we were supposed to be there. Beyond that in the early days the band was green and really couldn't play that well, but heck that was there charm. Really kind of like the new famly Dog that tears up all the houshold furniture but ya still love them!!!

Oh speaking of that and as a testament to Chet Helms who really was a very cool person. The Clash as a band had required a RV as a backstage dressing room becouse there were none at the Monterey Fairgrounds. They also became angered at the crowd turnout which they thought was too small.

So as a result the band as a whole took there stilleto knives to the apolstery of the RV and ruined it costing Chet Helms US $10,000. That was in 1979. Money to repair the damage as it was not covered by insurance but he never sued the band to recover the loss.

Personally I had been responsible for the RV, I think I would of sued the band to recover the losses ! But that was just how Chet Helms was. Now there is a tale from the darker side of the Clash song book for your web site that no one else will tell!(ed; we will print it if we think it's true)

BMC is a nice site, it sounds like you have worked on it for many years and beyond these inaccuracies in regards to the Tribal Stomp, the site is pretty cool for the most part !

......DD (see below for another email from him)

i do remember knocking jello biafra on his skinny ass

"i was at the monterrey '79 gig. what a strange thing that was with all the hippies and only 500 people. (joe's remark about the cheap gas was in reference to the supposed gas shortage america was going through at the time, BTW.) anyway the other bands on the bill besides joe ely and robert "firth" fripp (who was solo backed by a teac reel to reel) were reggae band the soul syndicate and the chambers brothers. ely's songwriting partner butch hancock also did a couple of numbers in between joe and the chambers' sets. i have no recollection of either maria muldahr (she might have been on the bill with moby grape that evening) or earl zero performing but i do remember knocking jello biafra on his skinny ass when he tried to slam me."
 
cheers tim

Our letter to film rights owner

Mr. ...........................,

I am in contact helping Mr. Daniel Garcia on his Clash documentary. He informed me that he has contacted you and asked me to follow up as I am helping him as needed with US contacts. I had a few questions about the footage as I have seen the brief snippet from The Future Is Unwritten -

1. Was it a multi-camera shoot?
2. Do you have audio associated with it? If so, is it soundboard quality ?
3. How much do you charge to use pieces of footage ?
4. How much would you sell the entire film for ?
5. Are you actively looking to release this footage ?

I hope this isn't a bother to you as I am guessing you probably get the same inquiry on occasion. Thank you for your time,

From the films owner in an email reply:

Who Are You ? An Attorney,an Agent, a Producer, an Interested Party, A Partner, how do you relate to this story ? Second until now all correspondence with Mr. Garcia has been a complete waist of time and not real at all from my perspective !

He was not offering anything of substance in regards to footage price,rights,indemnity, ect. ! I therefore was giving nothing back so how are you any different in this regard ? Film making my man is a business first and foremost and not a dreamy glory sport for fools folly so let us get that straight immediately if we are to continue talk at all !

I do not like Corporate or for that matter Artistic Raiders making there precious little films for nothing on the backs of Filmmakers that were in the trenches doing the hard work back in the day and now getting nothing for there hard efforts. Exploitation by Venture Vulture types exploiting to a great degree at some future date in time for there precious little new films is simply not where I'm at !

These new generation filmmakers were never there in the first place back in the day so why should I care about this project at all in my mind you are just in a long line of pretenders at best and that is not cool at all in my book especially when being unreasonable about footage value !

By the way neither would Joe Strummer like Daniels aforementioned low ball tactics in regards to footage value bless his ever loving sole ! So again tell me how you and yours are any different in the end at this point in time then you were when we first communicated in regards to footage
value ?

By the way the limited footage you saw is exactly what the whole performance looks like. There is no difference what so ever in Quality just different performance footage. In other words what you have seen up to this point is exactly what you would get in Quality but different performance action !

Now to answer all your questions in the order in which asked and by the numbers !

1) NO !

2) YES / NO !

3) A LOT / HE WHO SPEAKS FIRST LOSES !

4) I WOULD NOT SELL THE ENTIRE FOOTAGE AS A BUYOUT WHOLE NO WAY NO HOW !

5) RESPECTFULLY IT ISN'T REALLY ANY OF YOUR BUSINESS REALLY IS IT ?

Yes Andrew this could be a bother unless you and yours are going to be real in regards to your intentions and your pocketbook. I'm sorry if Mr. Gracia was or is on a low budget and doesn't have money to spend in the worlds most expensive art form !

My suggestion would be to do a hella lot of fund raising and get a budget. That is if you want any of this mostly unreleased footage for his project!

The Clash Official | Facebook

Clash USA '79 Meet the Clash

By Lowry

NME - The death of a hippie's dream

Tribal Stomp II Monterey
Michael Goldberg
29 Sep 1979 - page 60

Rash Clash Mash In Motor City Bash

Dave DiMartino, Creem,
December 1979JOE STRUMMER and I are sitting in a bar, talking about his band. I ask him about ‘I Fought the Law’ and its relatively unexpected success on American radio... (reference to Monterey as well)

Nostalgia Falls Flat in Monterey

The Los Angeles Times

Tue Sep 11, 1979

The Clash: Proclaimed 'The Cutting Edge of British Punk'.

The San Francisco Examiner
Sun Oct 7 1979

Andrew Twambley: Tribal Stomp, Monterey, California,

3/9/1979

Archived PDF

The Clash at the Tribal Stomp, Monterey Rocks #17

Link

Archived PDF

A Riot of our Own pg186

Photos

Getty Images

"The Clash," performs onstage at a 1979 Monterey, California, concert dubbed "Monterey Pop Festival II." (Photo by George Rose/Getty Images) - archived PDF

CORBIS images

archived PDF

Clash on Parole Photos

(1) Link or - archived PDF
(2) Link or - archived PDF
(3) Link or - archived PDF

Various Photos

archived PDF

PennyBlack Photos

Link

Joe with Joe Ely back stage

from Corbis Image Library, corbis.com, from where a wide selection of photos are available from this gig

A total clash of cultures illustrated by the many and excellent photos taken by Roger Ressmeyer (Corbis.com) of The Clash backstage and live.

photo unknown

Setlist

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18	I'm so bored with the USA Complete Control London Calling Jail Guitar Doors White Man in Hammersmith Drug Stabbing Time Police and Thieves Stay Free Safe European Home Capital Radio Clash City Rockers Whats My Name Janie Jones Garageland Armagiddeon Time Career Opportunities Fingernails (Joe Ely) White Riot