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
Video sources exist and are in the hands of professional film makers and others who at this moment in time does not wish to release the footage. See below (1) and see below (2), (3) below and (4) further down for more information.
This is a photo of me (in the center) with my friends Dwight Dolliver and Claudene James. Dwight and I were in Monterey shooting video of Chet Helms and the Family Dog’s Tribal Stomp concert.
We shot footage of The Clash, Robert Fripp, Peter Tosh, Dan Hicks, The Mighty Diamonds, Canned Heat, Big Mama Thornton with Mark Naftalin, The Blues Project 79 with Al Kooper, Country Joe & the Fish, Coke Escavido & his All Star Band, Nick Gravenities, The Chambers Brothers, Lee Michaels, Maria Muldaur, and others. @Godslove66 - YouTube - @lhasaroadrat9374 died 6 years ago...guess there go the hopes of finding that footage.
(2) 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!
(3) Comments
@josephparlato2246 - YouTube - Plenty of film was taken of The Clash's set at this gig. I did stage security there so I know. Why it hasn't been released is still a mystery. A very well known film maker shot the whole thing with pro gear, so there is a real treasure out there somewhere.
@lhasaroadrat9374 - YouTube - The video guy who shot tape of almost every act there was one Michael Vosse. All these sites with audio of The Clash's set most likely originated from his video. Another possibility is that the Tribal Stomp 's main sound guy, Boots, recorded the whole thing himself and leaked it somehow. We will never really know, but Mr. Vosse definitely has all the live footage of that show, including The Clash. Joe fell into the drums because everyone was wasted on "Red Dragon" acid. The world would really love to see that footage Mike!
@indiegroundvid - YouTube - good to know. that confirm lot's of talking about video about this gig. And yes there is few second of footage of this gig in future unwritten. the sound of this youtube i pretty good (for a Clash gig) new to me. And the only reason why this hasen't been released is beacause the guy who have all the footage want too much money of it
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.
Title: Tribal Stomp Monterey 1979 Festival Program
Date: September 8, 1979
About This Program: Program lists lineup for the festival including: Soul Syndicate, Joe Ely, The Chambers Brothers, The Clash, Nick Gravenites, Lee Michaels, Maria Muldaur, Peter Tosh
Condition: Very Good - Unused, folded along center, yellowed (See photo)
Size: 11 1/2" x 15" $42.00
Posters, postcards
Barry Simons - Facebook - Remembering one of the greatest days of my life,…45 years ago. Postcards Bruce Wheeler
David Bean - Facebook - My very thoughtful sister, Cindy Mikula, sent me this poster from the Tribal Stomp in Monterey 1979. I was there and remember seeing the Clash and Peter Tosh! Probably saw many others too
Original poster artwork
Paul Gravett - Facebook - Here's GILBERT SHELTON's original poster artwork for the 'Family Dog Presents Tribal Stomp' Rock Festival which took place in the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, CA over the weekend of September 8th and 9th 1979, including sets by Joe Ely, Peter Tosh, Robert Fripp and The Clash on Saturday, and Canned Heat, Country Joe and the FIsh and Dan Hicks & The Acoustic Warriors on Sunday. (This artwork is in the collection of Brian Peck: https://www.comicartfans.com/
Advert / poster - blue
Tribal Stomp Festival, Monterey
The Monterey Tribal Stomp Festival, held on September 8, 1979, was a unique event that brought together an eclectic mix of musical acts, including the The Clash.
A hippie-inspired gathering, organized by Chet Helms, a legendary figure in Bay Area culture. Helms, often called the "Father of the Summer of Love,"was known for his contributions†to the San Francisco music scene in the 1960s.He had taken a break from concert promotion in the early 1970s but returned with the Tribal Stomp series in the late 1970s.
The Festival featured Big Mama Thornton, the Chambers Brothers, and Joe Ely. The festival struggled to attract a significant audience, with only about 500 people in attendance.
The festival venue, Monterey County Fairgrounds, a location with a rich history of hosting music festivals hsoting the Monterey International Pop Festival, a seminal event in rock history, was held at the same fairgrounds in 1967. The Fairgrounds had an enclosed performance arena with an approved festival capacity of 7,000, though it was known to accommodate even larger crowds for popular events.
The event, while commercially unsuccessful, produced one of the most eye-catching promotional posters ever designed for a Monterey County rock 'n' roll performance, featuring a nymphet straddling rainbows against a starry sky.
Michael Goldberg, writing for The New Musical Express said, "What if they held a Woodstock and nobody came?" and Charles Davis refected on the weekend; "The big deal for me at Tribal Stomp was finally meeting up with Chet Helms," referring to Helms as "the sunny yin to Bill Graham's dark yang". Goldberg was more realsitc, "Like all the hippie pipe dreams, this one came to nothing."
"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.
The Clash invited Joe onstage and played “Fingernails”
Joe Ely - Facebook - On September 8, 1979, The Clash invited Joe onstage and played “Fingernails” at “Tribal Stomp Potluck Picnic & Dance" in Monterey, CA, a two-day festival produced by Chet Helms and the Family Dog. Photographed on assignment for Rolling Stone and NME magazines by Chester B. Simpson.
Full set in first comment. Joe joins in at the 54:20 mark. “We really wanted to play with Joe.” - Joe Strummer
Saturday, September 8, 1979, Monterey County Fairgrounds: Joe Ely, Peter Tosh, Robert Fripp, The Clash.
“The Tribal Stomp Potluck Picnic & Dance” in Monterey
Barry Simons - Facebook - What if there was an amazing 2-day concert in a historic location, with a brilliant diverse lineup of artists,…and nobody came?
There’s a lot to say about this day. Most notably was the simple fact that the world’s most exciting and best punk band was playing a hippie music festival in California, at the invitation of Chet Helms and the Family Dog. It would be the second annual Tribal Stomp, having successfully produced the first such concert the year before at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley featuring reunion sets by Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Country Joe & the Fish, Canned Heat, the Chambers Brothers, Lee Michaels, It’s a Beautiful Day, and more. (That was one of the first shows I saw upon moving to San Francisco to start law school, and the beginning of my friendship with Chet Helms.)
Equally notable was that the event would be held this time at the Monterey Fairgrounds, in the same amphitheater where Jimi, Janis, Otis, The Who etc. had played arguably the greatest show in the history of humanity.
Oh, one small problem. That week the nation was mired in a massive state of paranoia commonly referred to as the “Energy Crisis”, or as I preferred, the “gas crunch”. Due to two major increases in the price of crude oil, people were afraid to drive any great distance, people were lining up at the pump, and the country was in a state of chaos. Not a perfect scenario for getting music fans to risk life and limb to drive a couple hours from the Bay Area to the remote land of Monterey. And very few did.
Meetings of 70’s punk and 60’s hippie cultures were extremely rare and this may have been the most significant such instance. But that’s not all. Also on the same bill for the Clash’s daytime performance were reggae greats Soul Syndicate (who also backed the Mighty Diamonds on day two), Texas rocker Joe Ely (invited by the Clash) who brought along fellow Texan Butch Hancock, and the Chambers Brothers. What a beautiful eclectic four band set to start things off on a Saturday afternoon. And the rest of the two days was a mixed bag of new and old; just check out the lineup on the posters
The Clash, who were then annointed, "the only band that matters", dearly loved San Francisco. They had come to San Francisco a few months earlier and blown minds at the Temple Beautiful (1839 Geary), for the punk underground, and were anxious to do more in the Bay Area.
I was asked to volunteer by Chet, and had a vague responsibility to hang out, help out, and enjoy myself for two days. I took full advantage. I had all access, no camera, and a good memory. That included hanging out in the back of a truck and smoking hash with the Clash (which became my mantra that week). Luckily there are some great photos by Chester Simpson, Hugh Brown, and others fortunate to have been there, and ready to document this very special day performance.
That Saturday afternoon, the Clash played a daytime set in a blazing hot, dusty, near empty corral (maybe 500 people?), and played their hearts out. Their set was legend. The band debuted their new song, “London Calling”. Joe Strummer jumped into the crowd at one point to break up a fight. He also at one point fell backwards into the drum kit, and continued to play while the drums were scattered all over the stage. He brought out his new friend Joe Ely to join the band on a couple songs, and they left it all out there on the stage.
The rest of the fest was a chaotic mix of new and old, rock and reggae, with lots of cancellations, shuffling of sets, and mostly great music that was appreciated by far too few. Highlights included the reggae sets by Soul Syndicate (Earl Chinna Smith, Tony Chin, Santa, and Fully), and the first night closing set by Peter Tosh. SVT played a small second stage before a handful of people. The next day started with Robert Fripp doing his solo tape loop show, Frippertronics, in the empty dirt arena.
It was all pretty cool, but it was more than anything else, a great experience with the Clash. Thank you so much, Chet and Boots. And thanks to Joe, Mick, Topper and Paul. What an amazing memory.
Hugh Brown
Gil Warguez - Facebook - Here’s artist Ray Lowry on tour with The Clash at the Tribal Stomp festival in Monterey, CA on September 8, 1979. Ray designed the London Calling cover. What model of George Cox/ROBOT creepers is he wearing? credit: Hugh Brown, sourced from The Hand of Ray Lowry FB page
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I helped Chet Helms do the booking
Lizz Windvand - Lizz Windvand - I was there with SVT, still have the poster. Thanks for the memories. I helped Chet Helms do the booking. ...any shots of SVT...please?
Lizz Windvand - Indeed, an event quite like no other at the time. And...I got to book SVT.
Paul Wells - Starbaby was a band I was managing. Booked into a side stage. There was a plane with an electronic billboard on the bottom, flashing “Welcome to the Tribble Stomp.” Kind of summed it up…
Miguel Orgel - I was at the Tribal Stomp gig. I worked with Rock Medicine from the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic up from San Francisco.. I remember Joe playing with The Clash vividly. I’ve been a fan of Joe’s ever since.
Tom Nash - I was there with a couple buddies and wound up with our picture on the front page of the Herald sitting in the front row and the caption said something to the effect of "Only tired hippies in search of Woodstock show up for Fairground show". I still have the newspaper! One of the last shows Chet Helms produced!
Rudy Fernandez was working for Chet
Keith Rendel - My friends and I didn't go to Monterey [79] even though we were Clash and Joe Ely fans.This was the first meeting of my friend Rudy Fernandez and the Clash. Rudy was working for Chet . He picked up The Clash and drove them to the show. When they got to the back stage entrance the "stoned hippie" as Rudy described him wouldn't let them enter. Rudy said, "look, it's 4 skinny English guys, of course they're a band. When the guard still didn't open the gate Rudy drove into it and it fell away. This is what endeared Rudy to the band. He was Joe's best friend in California and after he bought an old 50s car it was parked at Rudy's house. Rudy sat at their table for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. It was through Rudy that I and many other SF people got to meet Joe and Mick.
Poorly attended, financial disaster
Blair Jackson - As I recall that show was a poorly attended financial disaster, despite some pretty good (i.e. great) bands on the bill... Tribal Stomp I at the Greek in Berkeley was more successful (but more "old school" SF bands).
Lizz Windvand - Blair Jackson You are correct about it being poorly attended. It was the weekend AFTER labor day. I give props to Chet for booking such diversify.
@loudenkliehr3633 - YouTube - I was there with only about 700 or 800 other people, including Jello Biafra. Joe falling into the drums at the during "Compete Control" is shown briefly in "The Future Is Unwritten." Joe Ely joins them for the encore. His "Fingernails" and their "White Riot". Watching a Texan in white hat, white Western shirt, and white jeans with cowboy boots playing "Riot" was classic! American debut of "L.ondon Calling". I remember thinking how different it sounded. Soul Syndicate, the Chambers Brothers, and Joe Ely opened with Robert Fripp playing Frippotronics (guitar noodling to pre-recorded 4 track Teac music) and Ely cronie, talented songwriter Butch Hancock playing short sets on a platform in front of the stage in between sets. Great day, perfect weather. Where the hell was everyone?
D Mickey Sampson - I was there Saturday. Probably closer to 400 people. Clash were -as always- great.
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
Mike Howard - This was the greatest Clash show ever (at least in California). I was down in front, and I keep trying to find pix with me in it. I've found only one that I could identify. I'm in the white shirt slightly left of center.
I actually hitchhiked to this one
Eric Predoehl - I was also at this event. I actually hitchhiked to this one. I saw some incredible bands, and Big Mama Thornton was my absolute favorite.
Marlene Metcalf - I was there!! Fantastic to see and dance to the Clash, and to experience their utter delight in getting to play with Joe Ely. From my side, didn't mind the lack of crowding, at all. It was perfect,!!!!
Jeff Roth - I’ve got photos from the Festival too, spooky how empty that huge venue was
Joan Lewis - I was there in the front. I have great pictures from it. The flag background made the pictures.
Harry Crawford - as I remember Robert Fripp opened with his "Sounds Scapes"
Charlie Atkinson - I remember that very well. 1st show that the Ely Band and the Clash played together. BTW way look just below Mick's foot and you see my camera very well. You won't recognize me as there is hair on that person holding the camera. There were very few allowed on that stage. In fact there was a hole for people to peak thru in the back of the stage. You can see it in my cover photo.
The Clash were the stand out.
Tim Devine - I was there as well and remember seeing bunch of other bands including the Chambers Brothers, Canned Heat, Peter Tosh, Robert Fripp, Lee Michaels, Country Joe, SVT and others. The Clash were the stand out. I think I saw every Clash show in California that year including the US debut at Berkeley Community Theater with Bo Diddley and Joe Ely opening.
Harry Crawford - I had a booth out at the Tribal Stomp with my Moccs. A fellow came up and put a blanket on the ground and spread out his bags of Marijuana, sat down and was promptly arrested. Very funny!
I played bass at this festival with the Devi Baptiste dancers
Bill Kelly - I played bass at this festival with the Devi Baptiste dancers. A belly dance troupe. Big Mama Thornton played too! I was so bummed I couldn’t hangout for this. But I got this poster as a souvenir. Zoom in on the epic line-up.
Samantha Cabaluna - Facebook - The Tribal Stomp was a crazy show. I lived right down the road but as a teenager in little Monterey, most of us hadn't really heard of the Clash. There were so few people there...and I didn't go. Just a month later when I went away to college and discovered The Clash and became a total devotee I was kicking myself around the block!!
The Clash changed my life
Suzi Danger Spangenberg - I was at this show! Caught a ride from Berkeley for my birthday. They changed my life.
@loudenkliehr3633- YouTube - One of the best days of my life. 19, a year into loving punk rock, and the second of three trips to see them in 1979. A fine day, Clash just killing it and five other very different acts before they hit the stage. First of many times that they shared the stage with Joe Ely. Seeing him in white Texas get-up and 10 gallon hat playing "White Riot" was enough to make the day. And thanks to the Clash, I'm now an Ely fan too.
Blackmarketclash | Leave a comment
Can't say much about the Punk crowd (4)
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 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 !
Ely joins the Clash at the Armadillo in 1979. Photo Mark Ely.
Someone described this show in Oct. ‘79 as Joe Ely and his band pouring gasoline all over the stage and then the Clash coming out and lighting a match. “There was such an explosive feeling in the air,” said Ely. “I felt it. The Clash felt it. They had been disappointed with some of their first shows in the States, because some of the crowds were hostile and confrontational.”
The Clash’s “I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.” apparently rubbed a few lunkheads the wrong way. But the Dillo crowd was ready for a great rock and roll show and the Clash, Ely and opening band the Skunks gave it to them. Then everyone crammed into the Continental Club and jammed all night.
Three years later the Clash, in town making the video for “Rock the Casbah,” would play two nights at City Coliseum, where their opening act Stevie Ray Vaughan was booed the first night and replaced the next by Alice Berry’s rockabilly band Trouble Boys. But Ely’s set wasn’t met with such wrath from diehard punks because the Clash made it clear they were fans. “Our attitude was ‘it’s Saturday night at the honky tonk and someone just shot a gun into the ceiling,” Ely said of the Armadillo show. “It was one of those dangerous night where anything can happen.”
The modern singing cowboys from Lubbock met the Clash five months earlier in London, when the scraggly punks showed up at an Ely gig at the Venue and then showed the band around London every night for a week. “I said, ‘if you ever come to Texas, we’d like to return the favor and show you guys around,’” recalled Ely. “They were all fascinated with Texas.” Joe Strummer called Ely a few weeks later and rattled off the cities the Clash wanted to play: Laredo, El Paso, Wichita Falls, the cities of cowboy movies and Marty Robbins songs. But first was the show at the Armadillo: the Clash’s Texas debut.
The Armadillo was known among fans for its nachos (a fairly new culinary concept), but touring acts loved the quality of chef Jan Beeman’s pre-show catering. Jerry Garcia so raved about the shrimp enchiladas, Van Morrison added a show so he could try them. But the Clash’s only meal request was for a toaster, a loaf of white bread and a big can of baked beans. "Beans on toast is all they ever ate," said Ely.
The Clash had just covered “I Fought the Law,” written by Lubbock native Sonny Curtis, first recorded by the Crickets and made famous by El Paso’s Bobby Fuller Four. So they spent three days in Lubbock after their Oct. 7, 1979 show there immersed in West Texas music history. “I took ‘em out to Buddy Holly’s grave and we stayed there all night,” said Ely, “just talking about music and singing songs.” The Joe Ely Band flew to London in February 1980 to open the Clash’s London Calling tour (cut short when drummer Topper Headon broke his hand) and the bands stayed close through the years. In fact, Ely and Strummer had planned to go to Mexico to make an album together when the punk icon died suddenly in 2002 from an undiagnosed heart defect. He was 50.
LONDON-The recent wave of crowd violence at punk rock concerts may soon be under control, thanks to that lovable gang of peacemakers, the Clash.
At future concerts, when a fight breaks out, the plan is to turn the spotlights on the braw- lers and then play "the most boring song we know" until the situation cools down.
Clash boss Joe Strummer is currently going through the Joan Baez songbook, looking for a tune boring enough to settle any punch-out without actually boring the participants to death.
Rick Johnson
(I'll get me thumb up that bastard's nose if it kills me!)
Creem Magazine, feature article WANTED ****
Dave DiMartino, Creem Creem Magazine, December 1979, Archive (Paywall)
Rash Clash Mash In Motor City Bash
[Mostly Detroit but ... Tribal Stomp extract] - Detroit is the Clash's fourth stop on this, their second American tour. They began at Monterey - an ex-hippie's failed attempt at recreating the 60's festival and a total financial washout - and reportedly went down a storm, pulling in encore after encore.
Hopes for a 6,000-seat sellout on Saturday in Monterey fell 5,500 tickets short.
Times photos by George Rose
COUNTRY PUNK-Texas' Joe Ely, left, joins England's Clash, featuring Joe Strummer, during surprise encore at Tribal Stomp festival.
Nostalgia Falls Flat in Monterey
BY ROBERT HILBURN
Times Pop Music Critic
MONTEREY-I guess we all should have realized on the edge of the 1980s that the 1960s were long dead. Still, the idea of a two-day music show on the site of the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival seemed to make sense.
After all, the 1967 event was one of rock's landmark events. Two years before Woodstock, it was in many ways the real dawning of the age of Aquarius.
Not only did the first Monterey gathering showcase such budding superstars as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, it also sym bolized the mainstream emergency of the hippie culture. People back then actually did wear flowers in their hair and speak of going to San Francisco-just as it said in the song.
'A Gathering of Tribes'
When Chet Helms, Helms, a a pioneer of the '60 music scene in San Francisco, announced this year's event, he wasn't trying to just relive the 1960s. The purpose of his Tribal Stomp Potluck Picnic & Dance-a '60s ti- tle if there ever was one was to bring together people of various musical persua sions in an atmosphere of celebration and good will. The acts would range from new wave rockers like the Clash to reggae star Peter Tosh.
The connection with the 1960s, howev er, was inescapable. The publicity material for Tribal Stomp stressed this would be the biggest rock festival to hit Monterey since 1967. The lineup was sprinkled with '60s names: the Chambers Brothers, Coun- try Joe McDonald, Canned Heat, the Blues Project with Al Kooper. The publicity also spoke of a "gathering of tribes from San Diego to Seattle-a kind of West Coast convergence."
But rock fans apparently felt they had Please Turn to Page 11, Col. 1
HILBURN
Continued from 9th Page
He thinks of the show first and money second. There must be some way to have a happy medium between his good Intentions and making some money."
Where '60s hits like the Beatles" "Sgt. Pepper's" and the Doors' "Light My Fire" had been played earlier in the day over the theater sound system, the British disc jockey who programmed the music before the Clash came on stressed 1979 music. The hectic sounds of new wave groups like Stiff Little Fingers and the Undertones were an odd juxta- position against the '60s social consciousness of the Cham- bers Brothers, who preceded the Clash.
When the Clash hit the stage, the four-piece British group played with enough energy and commitment to sa- tisfy an audience of 25,000. 2 The group group is is still marred by a sameness of sound that causes the impact to waver mid- way through the set, but in its most appealing moments the Clash causes an adrenalin rush in its audience that is unsurpassed by any other active rock band.
Lead singer Joe Strummer, looking more confident and comfortable on stage than in his first U.S. trip, sings with such vein-stretching intensity that any insurance sales- man would surely think twice about issuing him a policy.
The Clash-with its strong British punk identification- looked like a commercial long shot before it hit these shores early this year. But the reaction for that tour has caused them to think about this longer series of dates with confidence.
The band's stunning performance underscored guitarist Mick Jones' determination before going on stage. About this tour, he said, "This time, it's for real." The Clash will be at San Diego's Fox Theater on Oct. 10 and the Holly- e Holly- wood Palladium on Oet. 11. No word on the fate of I t the next Tribal Stomp.
The Clash: Proclaimed 'The Cutting Edge of British Punk'.
The Clash: Proclaimed 'The Cutting Edge of British Punk'
Carmel
THEY call themselves, simply, The Clash. The Village Voice called them, "the great est rock and roll band in the world." And while Rolling Stone tagged the Clash as "the most intellectual and political New Wave band," the Boston Phoenix proclaimed them "the cutting edge of British punk."
Tonight, they sit in the cramped bedroom of a small, rented cottage around a bend in the road from the Carmel Mission eating white toast covered with a thick layer of baked beans. The low rhythmic murmur of taped reggae music drifts through the cool night air from an adjoining cottage.
Earlier in the day, the Clash played the first date of their second U.S. tour when they headlined at Chet Helm's illfated "Tribal Stomp II." Though only 500 people stood in front of the stage in the 12,000 capacity outdoor arena, the Clash put on the rock and roll concert of their lives.
By Michael Goldberg
Electric guitars blazed white heat, drums exploded with the rapid intensity of machine gun fire and the group's angry lyrics shattered the mellow calm of the Monterey County Fairgrounds.
The Clash, with Mick Jones, lead guitar, vocals; Joe Strummer, rhythm guitar, vocals; Paul Simonon, bass and Nicky Headon, drums will headline at the Kezar Pavilion on Saturday.
Now, as evening slips away guitarist Mick Jones, 24, reflects on the response the group received during their first tour of the U.S., earlier this year. "They see us as a novelty act," says Jones. Scarecrow thin and attired in a second hand blood red dinner
jacket and black and blue striped suit pants, he looks like a young Keith Richards playing the part of a seedy waiter in Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil."
"People think you're a punk rocker, they expect you to have a safety pin through your nose," continues Jones. "And it has nothing to do with the music. In America they think we're a novelty act." He pauses a moment, then says bitterly. "But we're not a bloody novelty act!"
Indeed. There is nothing trite, gimmicky or geekish about the Clash. They are dead serious about their rock and roll and their anti-oppression stance. "We're totally suspicious of anyone who comes in contact with us. Totally," Strummer told Rolling Stone earlier this year.
See Page 33 - S.F. Sunday Examiner & Chronicle
'We're Not a Bloody Novelty Act'
Continued from Page 32
It's not that the Clash calcu latedly try to make some grandiose political statement. As Mick Jones says, "We write about the things we experience and the things we think about." But in the Clash's case, those things happen to be hate and war and prejudice and imperialism and fascism.
"It's only 'cause we get bored with watching football," says Strummer, 27, a stocky young man who wears his hair short and greased back like a Fifties rockabilly singer.
"If we liked to drink beer and watch TV and do nothing." he continues, "we'd just write 'I love you baby, you've been on my mind' like the usual stuff. But we get fed up so we mash up the lyrics."
Unlike their nihilistic partners-in-punk, the defunct Sex Pistols, an optimism and an idealistic faith that things will somehow improve are at the root of the Clash's philosophical stance.
In England, not only are the Clash critically acclaimed, but their albums and singles shoot right up to the top of the charts. The group has attained star status in its homeland and finds its picture on the covers of the three weekly English rock music newspapers New Musical Express, Melody Maker and Sounds with some regularity.
Formed three years ago when Mick Jones ran into Strummer, a singer in another band at the time and said, "I don't like your band, but I like the way you sing," the Clash quickly rose to the top of the English punk/ new wave heap, right behind the offensive and outrageous Sex Pistols. When the Pistols broke up in January of 1978, the Clash were heirs to the punk rock throne.
The Clash's debut album, which has only been available. in the U.S. as an import until two months ago, sold a 150,000 copies in the U.S. despite no advertising and marginal airplay. When the group finally made it to the U.S. earlier this year, following the release of their second album, "Give 'Em Enough Rope" (Epic), they found a large cult eager to hear their raw, brash rock and roll. Over 4000 fans caught the group's two Bay Area concerts and turnaway crowds greeted them in L.A. and New York.
Village Voice music editor Robert Christgau stated flatly, "No one has ever made rock and roll as intense as the Clash is making right now not Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis, not the early Beatles or the middle Stones or the inspired James Brown or the preoperatic Who, or Hendrix or Led Zeppelin, not the MCS or the Stooges, not the Dolls or the Pistols or the Ramones Wrote rock critic Greil Marcus in New West, "This is hard rock to rank with Hound Dog' and 'Gimmie Shelter' music that, for the few minutes it lasts, seems to trivialize both."
How do the Clash respond to such applause?
"I read it and I think, 'Who are these guys?" says Jones. "I feel quite disassociated from it. It sounds like they're writing about another group."
'We write about things that we experience'
Does the world's most political rock and roll band think their rock politics can change anything?
Joe Strummer looks over to Mick Jones. "Oh my God! Where did he get that question. A Chinese laundry?" They both laugh. Then Strummer puts his chin on his hand, as if in deep thought. Finally he looks up. "Umm. No."
"So there!" smiles Jones.
"And if your next question is "Then why don't you do something else?" It's because I'm not interested in changing the world. I'm only interested in rock and roll. Playing it. Singing it."
Mick Jones is franker. "May be it won't change anything, but I still believe in it," he says. "I still have a lot of faith in the
music as a really good force. Something worth doing. Perhaps we're too ambitious a band. I would say rock and roll can contribute toward some minor change. Individuals change. But it ain't going to tell the politicians what to do. It ain't gonna save people from wars.
Jones takes another slug of beer and lights up a Winston. "We're dealing with the power of music here. And it really can soothe furrowed brows and all that stuff. And it works and it can make you feel better when you have the blues. But when you ask, can the music change someone. Can an attitude change anything? I don't know ..."
Touring bands/Andrew Twambley - The Clash have always been my favourite band since seeing them a Erics Liverpool several times in 77-79 through Victoria Park London in 78 and as far away as Monteray California on 8th September 1979. The California gig was part of a Festival called Tribal Stomp was where i took this crude set of images on a 99p little Kodak camera.
In September 1979, our then 21 year old and now Manchester-based photographer Andrew Twambley, while living in California, took these rarely seen photographs of The Clash at Tribal Stomp Fesval in Monterey. The photographs, while undoubtedly raw, capture The Clash at a pivotal moment in me just three months before the release of their classic 'London Calling' album.
"When I finished my degree I needed me away so went blindly to LA looking for work," Fav Andrew recalls. "The summer of 79 was spent working at a telephone exchange in Santa Monica but took me out to drive up to Monteray to see The Clash at Tribal Stomp
Fesval."
"Having spent every weekend of the previous years at EricТs in Liverpool I was sold on punk so any chance to see the Clash again was not to be missed. I happened to have a rubbish camera with me. I would love to claim that this event turned me onto photography...... but alas that was Spandau Ballet some years later."
"I had see the Clash 3 mes at EricТs once at Manchester Apollo and Victoria Park London in the famous Rock Against Racism event supported by Tom Robinson and Sham69. The California event was a few months before London Calling. As I recall they only did 3 or 4 piss new songs. The crowds owere more interested in the standards. Believe it or not there were less than 100 people there!".
"I wish I could go back in me and shoot it again..."
Joe Strummer and the cheeky Brits from The Clash were a few months from releasing “London Calling” when they showed up in Monterey, improbably, for a hippie gathering on Sept. 8, 1979, called Tribal Stomp II. The Clash may have been known to punk fans in the United States, and they had played their first U.S. show nine months earlier in Berkeley, but they were like gypsies in the palace to a place like Monterey. While legendary in rock lore for its iconic Pop Festival, Monterey will never be remembered as an epicenter for punk-rock rage.
“Club owners here wouldn’t book punk bands because of worries about damage — not to mention the general cheapness of punk customers,” remembered Charles Davis, a Monterey journalist who was at Tribal Stomp II.
Turnout for the festival was abysmal, even as it was promoted by Chet Helms, a legend in Bay Area culture. But the 500 people who did show up were treated to one of the more memorable single performances in Monterey Bay history.
Helms was a founder of Big Brother and the Holding Company, recruiting Janis Joplin to join the band back in the day. And he was the man behind the free concerts at Golden Gate Park during the Summer of Love in 1967. He had pretty much fled the concert promotion business by 1970, but tried to get back into it later in the decade with his Tribal Stomp concerts. Even with Clash on the bill (and Big Mama Thornton, the Chambers Brothers and Joe Ely, among others), he couldn’t attract a crowd in Monterey. “What if they held a Woodstock and nobody came?” asked Michael Goldberg, writing for The New Musical Express in a snarky review titled “The death of a hippie’s dream.”
It’s tough to imagine Joe Strummer and The Clash as hippie-ish, but we get the drift. New Musical Express is a British weekly rock magazine, better known as NME, that followed the home-country boys for their second U.S. tour. The Clash launched its Take the Fifth Tour with its Monterey gig. Goldberg seemed to think that Tribal Stomp II was supposed to be the second coming of Woodstock. Wavy Gravy and Jello Biafra were in the crowd, after all. But the Monterey show was a bust. Ticket prices were too high, for one thing, and Monterey was too far from the big cities, according to Goldberg.
But The Clash, with vintage Strummer, made it all worthwhile. The band had been recording “London Calling” in Wessex up to two hours before jumping on a plane to the U.S. They wended their way into Cannery Row, where they rented a rehearsal space to prepare for their live tour, starting with Tribal Stomp. At one point, the bandmates wandered outside and noticed railroad tracks — probably where the Recreation Trail is now — grabbed a couple of sledgehammers and shed their shirts to pose as rail workers for a photographer, according to Marcus Gray in his book about the band, “Route 19 Revisited: The Clash and London Calling.”
Joe Strummer of The Clash | Photo, Charles Davis
The entire show was a mystery to Goldberg. Why was this angry British punk band even there at a hippie festival?
The story of this particular performance in Monterey should not pass without mention of the promotional poster produced for Tribal Stomp II. While the show was a commercial failure, Helms’ Family Dog production team — artist Gilbert V. Johnson, in particular — drew up what just might be the most eye-catching handbill ever designed for a Monterey County rock ‘n’ roll performance. In a nod to the deco style of Erté, the dominant art depicts a fetching nymphet straddling a couple of bright rainbows against a starry sky. With both hands, she holds a conch shell gently against her left cheek, like it’s a bar of soap in an old Ivory commercial. The scene is framed in a bright primary red, over which is printed the business intent of the poster — the who’s playing what day, where, at what time and at what cost ($40 for the weekend). At the bottom right-hand corner, the mugs of two dogs are depicted, as if in portrait. They are presumably a couple and they are dressed elaborately in classic pre-WWII style: the slack-jawed bulldog sports a bowler hat and looks like a world-weary trainer of prize fighters; the great white shaggy girl, perhaps the bulldog’s wife, wears an elegant light violet sweater and a matching hat, accessorized with a big red heart necklace on a gold chain. It’s a thing of beauty, this poster. Meanwhile, back to the show itself.
At the Monterey Fairgrounds, Strummer “looked like rock and roll incarnate,” Goldberg wrote, “with a flaming pink shirt (collar up) and hair greased up like Gene Vincent — spat out the lyrics to ‘I’m So Bored with the USA.’ Although only 500 fans crowded the stagefront, The Clash played as if the show would make them or break them.“
The Los Angeles Times’ music critic, Charles Hillinger, added that The Clash “played with enough energy and commitment to satisfy an audience of 25,000.”
At one point, early into “I’m So Bored with the USA,” Strummer reeled back and fell into Nicky Headon’s drum set, stopping the show until roadies could sort out the mess. Later in the show, a fight broke out in the audience, pitting a hippie in a cowboy hat against a punk with short hair. Davis, who was in the audience, said Strummer witnessed the fracas from the stage and called out, “Aww, c’mon mates!” He crawled down from the stage and broke up the fight. Chester Simpson, the renowned rock ‘n’ roll photographer, was also at the show; he said he remembers the incident. In his recollection, Strummer “jumped off the stage to a small stage in front, where he stopped a security guard from mistreating a fan at the show.” Simpson said he followed The Clash around the country, providing photos to Melody Maker and NME.
Cover of a bootleg recording from the Tribal Stomp in Monterey
Davis said he wasn’t a fan of The Clash at the time — he was at Tribal Stomp II as the rock columnist for the Monterey County Herald and he was more interested in seeing guitarist Robert Fripp. “The big deal for me at Tribal Stomp was finally meeting up with Chet Helms,” Davis said, referring to Helms as “the sunny yin to Bill Graham’s dark yang.” He remembered being backstage with Helms, when Al Kooper suddenly showed up and the discussion turned to why in hell nobody showed up for the show.
Meanwhile, The Clash and Strummer went all-out. And the 500 people who were there can say they were among the first to hear “London Calling.” Years later, rock journalist Marc Myers would rank “London Calling” as among the greatest songs ever written.
“When it comes to the British punk movement, it’s really the national anthem,” Myers told an interviewer three years ago. “It’s the big song for a variety of reasons. Its political context, its anger, its tapestry, this Britannia feeling. But it also sounds like they’re herding cattle; there’s also a lot of energy to it. It’s incredibly in touch and ahead of its time for British punk.”
Davis said he wasn’t especially impressed with “London Calling” at the time, but he does recall that “I’m So Bored with the USA” and “White Riot” were both memorable. And if Davis’s recollection is correct, Strummer and the boys trashed the mobile home Helms rented for The Clash that night — and the promoter got stiffed on the cleaning deposit.
The entire show was a mystery to Goldberg. Why was this chaotic British punk band even there at a hippie festival? “The military rhythms, staggered guitar lines and guttersnipe vocals defined the wrath and frustration of the late ‘70s in a way that showed just how inappropriate the hippie affectations of the Tribal Stomp really were,” Goldberg wrote.
Strummer had told Goldberg that he was a fan of Joe Ely, who was also booked at Tribal Stomp. “We really wanted to play with Joe,” he said. Strummer called Ely out during the band’s encore, and they played Ely’s “Fingernails” and “White Riot.”
The Clash/Ely thing was a bright moment in what was otherwise a dismal event. The Persuasions were supposed to be there, but they cancelled. Maria Muldaur didn’t perform, though she was on the bill, and no reason was given. Peter Tosh headlined the set that night, but the plug was pulled after five songs “due to a local curfew.” The crowd had dwindled to 400 the following day, which featured Canned Heat, Country Joe and Dan Hicks.
“Like all the hippie pipe dreams, this one came to nothing,” Goldberg concluded. “What if they threw a Woodstock and nobody came? They did and they didn’t and it was a drag.”
Except for The Clash. They were magnificent.
A Riot of our Own pg186
[Extract] Mo blustered his way into the throng. He drove me with my knees under my jaw in his tiny Fiat along the coastal road to Monterey. JI made him stop and buy me three avocado pears for the journey. I wanted to be in America, not just in an American hotel room with a rock'n'roll band, and Mo regaled me with refreshing tales of Kerouac and Vietnam.
The Clash were due to play the resurrected Monterey pop festival. The hotel, Mission Ranch, had wooden bungalows dotted around a sandy compound. I set up home with Lowry and some tequila. He was enthusiastic, shuffling around with his sketch book, quietly poking into all corners. The Baker would never share with me. He hated to be disturbed by the personal needs of band members, although he fussed and disapproved like a good mum about Topper.
We spent a day on the beach at Carmel. It was blisteringly hot and Topper was very enthusiastic. He tried to charge into the ocean, only to be repulsed by waves the size of a house good for surfing; lousy for a skinny drummer wanting a quick dip. I had to pull him into the shade.
'We can't have a drummer with sunstroke. Amuse yourself quietly. Look at Clint Eastwood's house up there!
Paul looked made for the place. He had the right girl, the right body. Even the surfer boys cast admiring glances at him. Mick had stayed in his room with his curtains drawn. When he was self-absorbed he didn't want the world to intrude. The California sunshine bored the daylights out of Mick, who was listening to music, writing music and generally preparing himself.
Over shots of tequila one night, Ray shook his head and said, 'Who are these lunk-heads?' He had been driving with Andrew King and Kosmo Vinyl that afternoon. I spotted Cannery Row. Steinbeck, you know. Not in a book. Here. I was met by two pairs of blank eyes. They hadn't a fucking clue, Johnny. Because it's not rock'n'roll, they don't know it.
Chet Helms of Family Dog had decided to re-do Monterey, revive the legend of Janis, Jimi and the flowering of the West Coast. The line-up included Robert Frith, Maria Muldaur, the Mighty Diamonds and Earl Zero from Jamaica. I was delighted to find Joe Ely on the bill. He came to see us one sunny afternoon at the Ranch, attracting admiring glances with collar tips, 'gator skin boots and a terrific white ten-gallon hat. The Clash were into his music by now and we spent a while talking Texas and looking forward to seeing him there. He said he would have some surprises lined up. We went to visit Earl Zero and the Jamaican boys, who were staying in a house down the road. We zeroed in on them as we figured they must have the best grass around. As we came round the corner we knew it was true. They were all sitting up a tree like crows, dreadlocks dangling. Mick said, 'Drive on.
The gig took place in what Americans call a 'fairground', but there weren't any ferris wheels. We went straight into a trailer as hippie staff laid out rows of seats. Paul put a little cross of lighter fuel on the stage. 'Look, this is where Hendrix set fire to his guitar. It's still burning. Cheap joke, but it broke the nervous tension. This gig had assumed a lot more importance than just another show. In fact, more importance than it deserved. The Clash were playing the afternoon shift in the sunshine, but after Finland we knew we could do it. I didn't need to gee up the band for this one. Every West Coast hippie had crawled out of the woodwork for the festival. It was Haight-Ashbury revisited. Lowry wandered into the caravan to grab another beer. 'They're mad. They've missed the point. They think it's a fancy-dress party. There's a guy dressed like Santa Claus. There's a bloke in full angel gear with wings. There's Wavy Gravy in full rainbow flares like nothing's changed.
A girl showed the band two oil paintings she had done of the Clash circa 1977. Her art looked nothing like the greasy quiffed characters who now emerged to sign the canvas. The Clash constantly changed and updated their look. These people hadn't changed their T-shirts in ten years. I dashed frantically to and from the stage. Even the backstage crowd was so laid-back it was like swimming through mud. Close to the changeover of acts, the Clash were pushing to get out of the caravan, bursting to get on-stage. I shouted, like I was stopping a child dashing across the road, 'Stay there, until I had made sure everything was ready. A black woman in a domino catsuit pinned a badge on me then yanked me four yards into the wooden toilets near the stage. She stuffed an inhaler full of cocaine in my nostril and dropped to the floor, unzipping my flies. I said, 'It's very nice of you, but...' and had to step over her to get out. Strummer screamed at me: 'Where've you been?' and I cleared the way for the band to run on-stage.
Strummer barked out the first line then careered backwards as if he'd been shot, slamming into the drum kit and wedging his shoulders between the tom-toms and bass drum. Topper's face showed stunned shock, but he kept beating the rhythm. The whole crowd stood. In my wired concentration I sprinted instinctively to protect Joe. He stared menacingly at the crowd, not moving. He whispered, 'Fuck off, Johnny. I'm all right. I had a head full of cocaine, and he gave me a heart full of adrenalin. The show was full adrenalin until the end. As we quit the stage Joe shouted, 'See you in a month.
We had fixed up Monterey ourselves, through Mo Armstrong. The tour itself was vast, and we brought our own sprawling entourage with us at great expense. We wanted to do it properly, but on our own terms, with our own trusted road crew. Warren Steadman was terrific. He played the lighting as if he was a keyboard player on the stage. The lights weren't pre-set for smooth changes but were manually operated, dramatic and at one with the music.
A little recollection of my fathers' from the first show on that tour (Monterey);
" After rehearsals in a studio on Cannery row, the bands first appearance was on the Monterey festival stage on a massive two-day bill featuring past and past it luminaries like Dan Hicks, Country Joe and the Fish, Al Kooper and Big Mamma Thornton. This was the only time I ever saw The Clash play in bright noontime sunshine and on a stage that seemed as vast and forbidding as the deck of the Titanic.
The Strummer man unnerved me as he rushed at me side-stage midway into the set pulling horrible faces and pointing to his throat! I was trying to look like I belonged to the whole circus and his bizarre gesticulations were as incomprehensible to me as if he were a whirling dervish. It transpired that the poor fellow's voice was shot and he needed a blast of his honey and Special Brew (not) throat soother. Rock and bleddy roll, what? " - Ray Lowry
The image taken from Rays 1979 tour sketch books of The Clash | Outer dimension - 23.4" x 16.5" approx | Art Dimension - 19" x 15" approx | Will fit perfectly in an A2 frame | Giclée print | Hahnemühle German Etching | 310gsm |
To give an insight into my dads' creative technique on the tour I shall pass you over. The ghost of my father visits:
" One of my drawings from Toronto bears the caption ' Done when drunk again. This is shit ' The modus operandi was to do quick sketches backstage or down in the audience and work them up with coloured inks back in various hotel rooms late into the night, whilst drunk. This cannot be faulted as a young man's working method. Except that I was a decade older than most everyone else on the road. Whiskers Green being about half a decade behind me, so far. The 25th found us in Montreal at the Orpheum Theatre where the stage was invaded when Joe stormed into " White Riot ". Just like the far off days in England. A distant memory by now " . - Ray Lowry
Taken from Ray's 1979 tour sketchbooks | Outer dimension - 24" x 17.5 approx | Art Dimension - 18" x 12.5" approx | Giclée print | Hahnemühle German Etching | 310gsm |
NME, Ray Lowry (1944-2008), his sketches and reports from Take the Fifth Tour
The Clash: Six pages of original Ray Lowry US tour diary artwork for the 'New Musical Express'
September-October 1979, pen and ink with some collage, drawings and text, full of Lowry's wry comments on events, including: Meet the Clash at the Second Annual 'Tribal Stomp' at Monterey Fairgrounds. Saturday September 8th 1979 on the very same stage Jimi Hendrix abused with his little tin of lighter fuel all those years ago.
Ahh history, Ahh bullshit.
What had happened was that at the end of the Hendrix/Otis Festival the gates were padlocked, barbed wire was strung around the arena and armed police refused to let anyone enter or leave until yesterday - the first concert of the Clash 1979 Tour Of The Americas.
Well, naturally a lot of those inside had died, many had gone insane, thinking it was still 1967, and the really clever ones had gravitated to the backstage area where they humped masses of speaker cabinets around or listlessly pushed drum risers from one side of the stage to the other.
The musicians had all escaped in private helicopters but the more impressionable members of the audience carried on applauding and shouting ''Rart On!'' or ''Oh Burother!''at any onstage activity.
After yesterday's unlocking the first survivor to make contact with those from outside was the legendary Wavy Gravy. Still at his zingy best after so many years, he stumbled around dressed in a Santa Claus outfit and demanded the answer to the always pertinent question ''What does Diddy Wah Diddy mean?'' What a cat, huh?
When the Clash arrived to play to the dazed survivors the more lively ones gathered round to marvel at their bizarre dress and photograph these outrageous English guys hairstyles..., one sheet in two sections, the largest 10½ x 13 inches (26.5x33cm)
Footnotes: This collection was won by the vendor in a competition run by the NME (New Musical Express Newspaper).
Ray Lowry (1944-2008)
was a satirist, illustrator and cartoonist. His work appeared in publications such as The Guardian, Private Eye, Punch and the New Musical Express, for whom he drew a weekly cartoon strip entitled 'Only Rock 'n' Roll'.
He had no formal art education but became known as a cartoonist in the 1970s, having contributed to the late 1960s' underground magazines, Oz and International Times. As a fan of 1950s' rock 'n' roll he was drawn to the raw energy expressed by the punk movement and attended the Sex Pistols' gig at The Electric Circus in Manchester in December 1976. There he met The Clash, with whom he became friends. He was invited to accompany them on their US tour in 1979, providing a humourous diary of the tour for the NME. It was during the tour that Pennie Smith took the now-iconic photograph of Paul Simonon smashing his bass guitar on stage in New York, the image which was incorporated into Lowry's cover design for the 'London Calling' album.
NME, Ray Lowry: The series (1-6) of sketches/tour notes
That's Family Dog meet at the second annual 'Tribal Stomp' at Monterey Fairgrounds Saturday 8th September 1979 on the very stage Jimi Hendrix abused with his little tin of lighter fuel all those years ago. Ahh history, anh bullshit. What had happened was that at the end of the Hendrix Otis festival the gates were padlocked, barbed wire strung around the arena and armed police refused to let anyone enter or leave until yesterday, the first concert of the Clash 1979 tour of the Americas. Well, naturally a lot of those inside had died, many had gone insane, thinking it was still 1967, and the really clever ones had gravitated to the backstage area where they humped masses of speaker cabinets around or listlessly pushed drum risers from one side of the stage to the other. The musicians had all escaped in private helicopters while impressionable members of the audience carried on applauding and shouting "Far out!" or "Oh brother!" at any onstage activity.
After yesterday's unlocking, the first survivor to make contact with those from outside was Wavy Gravy. Still at his zingy best after so many years in his pert Santa Claus outfit, he demanded the answer to the always pertinent question "What does diddy wah diddy mean?" We lively ones gathered as the Clash arrived to play to the dazed survivors. The more alert peered round to marvel at their bizarre dress and photograph these outrageous English guys' hairstyles.
Well catch these yeehaw! Guys huh? And after this highpoint of cultural exchange, no nation speaking with tongue unto nation, the dozen or so stretcher cases were laid out in front of the stage and, apart from Joe Ely's set, were soothed rather than inspired to anything strenuous. Despite constant reassurances that the arena would fill up, the Clash played to an audience size that would have had Hitler thinking twice about invading high garnet, never mind England, if he'd drawn as well at Nuremberg. Conspicuous by their absence they were. Still, they did their best to goddamwell bop when the Clash came out. "This is punk rock, huh? Well lemme jus show these boys what us American punk rockers can do. Yessurr. Out my way boy." Unfortunately, the time out which belongs he's got to work out his complicated reaction, your punk rockers sorted into another number and all over again.
When these people go ape they don't pogo but pull out a gun and wipeout their neighbors. The rebel yell and Eddie Cochran is in the mists of antiquity and rock roll was rather than inspired. The band were competent, rather buhow's going down the road apiece. The liaison between band and promoters, incidentally, was founder of American R.A.R., and runs a politico rock magazine along the lines of Temporary Hoarding. Unfortunately, he undermines the credibility of his good works by acting the complete acid casualty. Watch out for that brown acid, man. Next week - Minneapolis with forked 'm so bored with the U.S.A. Me too, brother shoot. And other misspelt American towns in the night, the postcards home, the noises (coming, honest) and what's behind the fear and loathing behind the who the hell are you? Behind the 'raht narce tuh meet yuh'? Meanwhile concert, bye from the Wowtorstomp Promoter
6th October, 1979 - New Musical Express, By Ray Lowry
One-off, Johnny Hestivs was blasted before the Clash came out and shredded the New York Palladium second-night audience with magnificent rock and roll. Opinions vary as to which shows stand out, but every time I’ve sat down in the audience to witness the Clash, it’s clear they are shouldering the weight of rock and roll for the rest of the world. They are doing it so well on so many levels that predecessors and contemporaries seem like slobs and jerks in comparison.
But on with the tour. From Boston to New York on a bus called "Arpeggia," fueled by great feeds like they used to make. The New York audiences were expensive and demanding, but after the Undertones and Sam & Dave got them boiling, they went outrageous for the Clash, shouting and applauding like mad.
After New York, I became embroiled in the ongoing saga of the new backdrops. This involved spending most of September 29 hunting for a 40-foot piece of sackcloth to replace the previous one. It was a fruitless mission, ending in frustration as I could only find a small boxy substitute. For all I know, the sackcloth has since been chopped into small pieces and hurled around as relics.
THE BIG CRAB APPLE
Meanwhile, after a brief stopover in Philadelphia, where fans clapped their hands together for so long that encores were fired off like cannonballs, Joe Strummer had to come out after the set to explain that they couldn’t play any more. The next day was rough—mostly spent nursing hangovers, occasionally crying into my hands while shoveling periodic quantities of water and pain pills into my system.
NEOVASTERY AND THE SOILED PILLOWS TOUR
Philadelphia left its mark, but New York was something else entirely. The Clash delivered electrifying performances at the Palladium, weaving new material like "The Right Profile," "Guns of Brixton," and "Revolution Rock" seamlessly into their older catalog. The result was a fresh yet familiar set that proved this band is still rock and roll royalty. They’re setting standards so high that any criticism from English detractors feels hollow compared to their admirable achievements.
Next week: The Meaning of Life. This corrected version organizes the text into coherent sections while maintaining its original tone and content. It highlights key moments from The Clash's 1979 U.S. tour, including their performances in New York and Philadelphia, as well as some behind-the-scenes struggles with logistics and exhaustion.
Part 3, Have you heard the news?
There's good rocking tonight!!
13th October, 1979, Clash USA '79 By Ray Lowry
Atlanta, Georgia, October 1st
I forgot to mention Philadelphia's mutants—more disturbing-looking people than even Liverpool or Warrington can boast. People with noses in their ears and hands growing out of the sides of their heads, dripping. Heads like hairy sunsets over the paraffin pillows stuffed down. There’s a metal statue of these people ostentatiously displayed. All that was left behind on to Montreal and Toronto on September 26th. The Clash aspired to the level of England, and this meant a lot for this tour.
Although from Joe, the long-awaited stage at the end of the Centre in Toronto, their legs were like a handful of stones. Faces like jelly and flaming complexions like beds. Walking potatoes with holes where their heads should be, smeared all over them like a giant clothes peg.
The Clash bus clogged for two shows on the 25th. Canuck audiences visibly displayed enthusiasm, with the first serious gobbing after a touching request. Distance throat clearing invaded the set at O'Keefe, where about twenty or thirty seats died. That's New Pop.
THIS IS AN AMAZING TOUR
The Americans had "Give 'Em Enough Rope" as the first official album release (although The Clash is said to have sold in vast quantities as an import). An amended version of the first album has only recently been released, but the lights are going on over people's heads all over the place, and the political message has obviously been picked up by many of the punters who try to get their messages of goodwill through at the end of each show.
"What I saw in the band was a concentration of all the pain and outrage lodged in my gut." To many, of course, it's just a great rock and roll show. Guided by some infallible rock and roll tribal consciousness, The Clash are looking more than ever like the bastard offspring of Eddie Cochran out of Gene Vincent and a Harley Davidson.
It’s dumbfounding to see the most intelligent, positive rock and roll on earth at present being presented nightly by a band who look like the wild ones who haunted the troubled skies of the fifties. America is being reminded of how rock and roll looks, as well as how it’s never sounded before. A girl hesitantly unveiled two oil paintings of Mick and Paul in Monterey; she was face to face with different incarnations.
But there's much more going on here than that. American kids are being given the rude awakening that was so swiftly pooh-poohed by vested interests when it happened in England. After Canada, it's marathon drives again to Worcester, Massachusetts, and Maryland—more images of America being given the message: London's calling to faraway towns.
To the abandoned drive-ins and big Macs like sleeping dinosaurs in the fog at the side of the truck stop, to the gas attendant in yellow at the all-night doorway, to the uneasy sleep of cities, to the people.
Rolling Stone has just printed the album review that was needed here in 1977. This is the beginning of the end for many things.
NEXT WEEK: WAR WITH THE U.S.S.R. This version corrects spelling errors, punctuation issues, and improves overall readability while maintaining the original message's intent and style.
Part 4, Brothel creepers over America or suedes over the States, rescue operation
The Clash are in Chicago where the streets can be intimidating if you're a goddam wimp, English white boy like me. Battered, old pimp mobiles glide around like wounded animals and the taxi style resembles seventeen size two hundred with a girder Dr. Martens for a fender. Slapped MADE IN HONG KONG style and paint scheme complete with tinted windows and driver, the false start of Monterey.
AND ON TO CHICAGO
Where I hide behind a double-locked door from the violence and intimidation which is room service emptying the ashtrays. A body of steel bridges roughly banged together from scrap metal and excess over lengths of junk. Haphazardly, rows of sewage and worse delivered The Clash to their first Chicago gig. The Aragon Ballroom is the American ranch with the Albert Hall setting it down in Blackpool this week and calling in the hordes. And love the Cloggies! The Undertones and Bo Diddley stoked up the rampant insanity and by the time The Clash darkened the stage, beat-up amplifiers...
CHICAGO CALLING
Kicked into things. Minneapolis where it rains a fair amount. Undertones and David Johannson supported and it became clear Americans do still care about Rock Music. The Brits finally, and though it's bad news for English isolation, The Clash got lost over here. Fuckers like me can example every bit as much as the horrendous alternatives doing the rounds and the impracticability of the rock and roll population. Common sense says that they have to get out here periodically to stamp their authority on the Cowboys.
Had finished their set and the audience melted down into a heap of steaming insides and thrashing around the theatre. Songs like The Right Profile, Guns of Brixton, Revolution Rock infiltrated into the older material and made for a great Clash set. This band is still rock and roll, they're setting the standards and are still so nasty. Any of the popular English criticisms of them pale against their admirable achievements. GOT TO MOVE NOW - NEXT WEEK THE MEANING OF LIFE, to be continued...
This corrected text appears to be a review or personal account of The Clash's performance at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago on September 14, 1979
What am I doing here? I got on this tour because I wanted to do some paintings about rock and roll. About what shows are like. The light and the lights, the audiences, the performers from the audience point of view, the stage. I had an idea that I could convey something that the camera and the kind of heroic, icon-like images that most rock and roll paintings have been concerned with, perhaps couldn't. That was a month and a continent ago and I've had plenty of second thoughts along the way. Simply being out of England at a time when things are getting tougher is obviously guilt-inducing. I've stood among American audiences or at the side of the stage on many nights through this tour wondering what the hell I was doing here and why the Clash were away from England as another winter and all that entails, closes in. I'm massively compromised of course, but it's never going to be 1977 again, there's such a transparent desire by the band that they galvanize the audiences out here into doing something for themselves, (what they've always been striving for in England) and the fact is that if there's anything honest and worth caring about in contemporary music, it's still best embodied in this band. And paintings. Do paintings matter at all? At the moment, I don't know.
SINCE ATLANTA, Georgia, the band have played five shows in seven nights through Texas to Los Angeles taking in the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin (one of the few American towns I've seen that I could imagine living in) Dallas and its schoolbook Depository, horrible Houston and Lubbock with Buddy Hollymania. Joe Ely has been supporting again, through Texas. It's supposed to be heresy to say so but he could be a great rocker if he got a tight band instead of the usual pedal-steel, accordion, kitchen sink and all mod cons arrangement that he has at present. After the Austin show on the 4th, he did a spot of jamming with a local band plus one M. Jones and one N. Headon for one number (Be-Bop-A-Lula) running through a bunch of straight old rockers like That's Alright, Whole Lotta Shakin' etc., in a local boozebar. Good stuff which I'd like to see him do with his own band. The Clash show in The Armadillo was a good one - the club has a nice atmosphere and I nicked a Coors beer jug. By Houston, on the fifth, I was walking in my sleep and I vaguely remember the show. Pennie Smith flew back to England with vast numbers of Clash photographs. It's a great pity that only a small percentage can be used by the weekly music press.
DALLAS, on the sixth, was another big city, another small gig, but a well-won audience and a look at the spot where John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The book depository is far closer to the point where the bullets hit the Presidential limousine than films of the event ever indicate and standing on the road in bright sunlight it's hard to believe that people wouldn't have spotted Oswald and any accomplices and nabbed them within minutes. A very surprising place and oddly disturbing to see traffic trundling along the short stretch of road and into the underpass as though nothing special had ever happened there.
What happened in Lubbock on the seventh, was that after the show at the Rox nearly everyone got wasted in their chosen fashion and made a middle of the night visit to Buddy Holly's gravestone. This was my great error of the tour because I was in such a zombie-like state that I went to sleep right after the show and missed, what to me, should have been an essential trip. Dreadful time to get knackered but I'm completely well again now and rode the famed Route 66 to Los Angeles on the famous Arpeggio rock and roll bus. The band flew it. What a bunch of softies! NEXT WEEK: I WALK HOME
P.S. I believe they're cramming their itches into smaller spaces. Write to complain now.
I GROW MY FINGERNAILS LONG SO THEY CLICK WHEN I PLAY WHITE RIOT! JOE ELY COWBOY PUNK
The final scene was farce with flight-home time nearer & no plane tickets, no luggage nobody ready, no idea what was happening. An hour or so before flight time attempts at organization were abandoned in favour of personal salvation and a dash to the plane. The band didn't make it. What does this mean?
My last dispatch was suppressed by the authorities but chronicled Clash shows in Austin Texas on the 4th October. Clash quadruped Dallas on the 5th, President Killers with Houston the world! And Lubbock on the 7th as Hollymania sweeps Clash as all this was, I've only space here to write tour from Lubbock, the band flew, and the alcoholics bussed (via Route 66) to Los Angeles and the wildest show of the whole tour. The Hollywood Palladium audience looked different - as mean and nasty and posy looking as an English audience and were determined to go all over anything onstage that wasn't the Clash and to hurl a good bit on them as well. Joe Ely (a constant presence on this tour) and the (Rockabilly) Rebels played through non-stop abuse and spit and the Mi Ely band made them a dustbin of water which understandably made the front rows even more hostile to anything on the stage a lot of this was the ritual belligerence that audiences everywhere.
I keep my fingernails long so they click when I play White Riot.
Joe Ely Cowboy Punk
At the Armadillo World Headquarters trash armoured, burrowing Clash assassinate on the 6th arsehole of - Bullocks to Lubbock Bus! Interesting and informative of the last five dates of the think that they have to display, and the Clash came on to great cheers mass jumping up and down, surges on to the stage, fighting, cursing, spitting and stomping ass (obscure Americanism - see also Gittin' Down and Kickin' Ass). At the end of the set with Joe Ely, the Rebels, a few dozen of the audience one shoulderson liggers the stage plus a constant stream of bodies being hurled off into the pulsating mass, the hall looked like one of those big Cecil B. DeMille blowouts just before Samson comes out and pulls the roof down or Moses enters on a mountain top with a message from God for all the fornicating sinners down below. Good show. San Francisco (13 Oct), Seattle (15) and Vancouver, all tried but couldn't really match Los Angeles, San Francisco was a great show but the audience were a bit less boisterous than L.A. Don't ask, Seattle, I didn't remember too much of it. Vancouver (16) a drink all night and was a quiet end to the tour with Joe Strummer again railing against passive audiences stealing his soul. The paradox here, of course, is that the reward for going over the top and showing ultimate enthusiasm by clambering on stage bundled off and out of (as the Lone Groover kind of was asking recently) is jumping up and down any intelligent response to music that aspires to deal with reality.
Questions, questions back home... and already sick of making plans for Nigel and the Seung at night and authoritarian violence near and so personal again, the soptimism and the naive hope that this optimisock and roll upsurge was actually going to change anything has gone, of course, but it's still issues cake return inward anoughnereto the pop hat the Clash ferest, or revile them that field of inte ferturn the government music failing to overturn the allash packed identomorrow we'd for fail if there le living the sole t aspires to lose roll a be anything more plescapism and they'd be andan blind es bluby something infinitely less worthy within thin weeks. I'd like to be back on the bus with the last rock 'n' roll band.
I've Heard of Elvis Presley, A Rebel I was sick beneath the Hollywood Tiggers Cans Prameri Sign - I vomited that other S of America Ca
Eric Weitzmann - This is where Joe, and Joe Ely met one another. They became fast friends! Saw The Clash the following month (10/14) at the Kezar Pavilion in Golden Gate Park. They headlined. The openers were Ray Campi's Rockabilly Rebels, the DK's, and The Cramps. Great show!
"The Clash," performs onstage at a 1979 Monterey, California, concert dubbed "Monterey Pop Festival II." (Photo by George Rose/Getty Images) - archived PDF
Singer Joe Ely in Concert With The Clash
MONTEREY, CA - 1979: Country singer, Joe Ely, performs with the British punk rock band "The Clash," at a 1979 Monterey, California, concert dubbed "Monterey Pop Festival II." (Photo by George Rose/Getty Images)
The Clash "Pearl Harbor '79" Concert Tour
MONTEREY, CA - 1979: Joe Strummer, guitarist for the British punk rock band The Clash, plays during their 1979 "Pearl Harbor '79" concert tour in Monterey, California. (Photo by George Rose/Getty Images)
Touring bands/Andrew Twambley - The Clash have always been my favourite band since seeing them a Erics Liverpool several times in 77-79 through Victoria Park London in 78 and as far away as Monteray California on 8th September 1979. The California gig was part of a Festival called Tribal Stomp was where i took this crude set of images on a 99p little Kodak camera.
Roger Ressmeyer
Facebook - Tribal Stomp Festival, Monterey California 8 Sept, 1979 photo by Roger Ressmeyer
Joe with the Clash at Tribal Stomp, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, California, September 8, 1979. “We really wanted to play with Joe.” - Joe Strummer
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
Extensive archive of articles, magazines and other from the Take the Fifth Tour of the US, late 1979
Brixton Academy 8 March 1984
ST. PAUL, MN - MAY 15
Other 1984 photos
Sacramento Oct 22 1982
Oct 13 1982 Shea
Oct 12 1982 Shea
San Francisco, Jun 22 1982
Hamburg, Germany May 12 1981
San Francisco, Mar 02 1980
Los Angeles, April 27 1980
Notre Dame Hall Jul 06 1979
New York Sep 20 1979
Southall Jul 14 1979
San Francisco, Feb 09 1979
San FranciscoFeb 08 1979
Berkeley, Feb 02 1979
Toronto, Feb 20 1979
RAR Apr 30 1978
Roxy Oct 25 1978
Rainbow May 9 1977
Us May 28 1983
Sep 11, 2013: THE CLASH (REUNION) - Paris France 2 IMAGES
Mar 16, 1984: THE CLASH - Out of Control UK Tour - Academy Brixton London 19 IMAGES
Jul 10, 1982: THE CLASH - Casbah Club UK Tour - Brixton Fair Deal London 16 IMAGES
1982: THE CLASH - Photosession in San Francisco CA USA 2 IMAGES
Jul 25, 1981: JOE STRUMMER - At an event at the Wimpy Bar Piccadilly Circus London 33 IMAGES
Jun 16, 1980: THE CLASH - Hammersmith Palais London 13 IMAGES
Feb 17, 1980: THE CLASH - Lyceum Ballroom London 8 IMAGES
Jul 06, 1979: THE CLASH - Notre Dame Hall London 54 IMAGES
Jan 03, 1979: THE CLASH - Lyceum Ballroom London 19 IMAGES
Dec 1978: THE CLASH - Lyceum Ballroom London 34 IMAGES
Jul 24, 1978: THE CLASH - Music Machine London 48 IMAGES Aug 05, 1977: THE CLASH - Mont-de-Marsan Punk Rock Festival France 33 IMAGES
1977: THE CLASH - London 18 IMAGES
Joe Strummer And there are two Joe Strummer sites, official and unnoffical here
Clash City Collectors - excellent
Facebook Page - for Clash Collectors to share unusual & interesting items like..Vinyl. Badges, Posters, etc anything by the Clash. Search Clash City Collectors & enter search in search box. Place, venue, etc
Clash on Parole- excellent Facebook page - The only page that matters Search Clash on Parole & enter search in the search box. Place, venue, etc
Clash City Snappers Anything to do with The Clash. Photos inspired by lyrics, song titles, music, artwork, members, attitude, rhetoric,haunts,locations etc, of the greatest and coolest rock 'n' roll band ever.Tributes to Joe especially wanted. Pictures of graffitti, murals, music collections, memorabilia all welcome. No limit to postings. Don't wait to be invited, just join and upload. Search Flickr / Clash City Snappers Search Flickr / 'The Clash'
Search Flickr / 'The Clash' ticket
I saw The Clash at Bonds - excellent Facebook page - The Clash played a series of 17 concerts at Bond's Casino in New York City in May and June of 1981 in support of their album Sandinista!. Due to their wide publicity, the concerts became an important moment in the history of the Clash. Search I Saw The Clash at Bonds & enter search in red box. Place, venue, etc
Loving the Clash Facebook page - The only Clash page that is totally dedicated to the last gang in town. Search Loving The Clash & enter search in the search box. Place, venue, etc
Blackmarketclash.co.uk Facebook page - Our very own Facebook page. Search Blackmarketclash.co.uk & enter search in red box. Place, venue, etc
Search all of Twitter Search Enter as below - Twitter All of these words eg Bonds and in this exact phrase, enter 'The Clash'
Video - full complete video exists in private collection - see below
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The Official Clash 
Clash City Snappers
