The Clash/Undertones/Sam & Dave: The Palladium, NYC
Andy Schwartz, New York Rocker, November 1979

THIS REVIEW is being turned in weeks late, and I know why. After all these years and all these bands, all the disappointing second albums and bum gigs and sad declines - after all that, it's still like a dagger in the heart to be let down by a band you once loved.

I never thought I'd be one to join the Clash backlash; certainly, their New York debut last winter more than made up for the dull songs and misguided production of Give 'Em Enough Rope. But can it really be that every band has but one fleeting moment of true greatness (usually just before their first album), never to be recaptured? Oh, say it ain't so, Joe...

This show, the first of two nights at the Palladium, didn't start that way. It couldn't have - not with an opening volley of ‘Safe European Homes’, ‘I'm So Bored With The U.S.A.’, and ‘Complete Control’. The sound was so strong, the sight so thrilling (the group's new grease/punk sartorial fusion is classic) that I was yanked up and out of my seat, singing and hollering. And after that things went slowly, inexorably downhill. I'd like to write if off as a bad night (the next one was reportedly very different and much better), but I fear the problems run deeper than that:

1) Mick Jones, one of the great rock 'n' roll guitarists of this decade, has cluttered and distorted his sound almost beyond recognition with an array of Echoplexes, reverb units, phase shifters, flangers and God knows what else. These effects not only detract from the naked intensity of his playing, but lather a kind of sheen over the total band sound. It sounds pretty silly to call the Clash "slick" in view of what mostly passes for real rock 'n' roll in this country. But compared to the band I heard at this same hall not twelve months ago, they were slick. And I didn't dig it.

2) In searching for a passage through the narrow straits of '77-style punk, the Clash are incorporating a lot of reggae into their sound. It still works on ‘White Man In Hammersmith Palais’ because the song makes real the inner conflict and frustration of a white boy in love with the myths of black music, running hard up against black reality. It worked on Paul Simonon's solo song (which he may or may not have written), because the tune and the lyric are catchy as hell, in the sing-song style of ‘Uptown Top Ranking’, and also because Paul cannot sing to save his skinny ass - thereby injecting a much-needed quotient of raw amateurism into the performance.

But ‘Police And Thieves’ dragged on overtime, and one of the encores was a dull new song kicked off by some clumsy dub sounds from Paul and Topper Headon. The few lyrics I could catch made me not want to hear the ones I couldn't: Something like "a whole lotta people gonna have to run and hide tonight/a whole lotta people won't get no justice tonight." Joe Strummer's commitment and concern are not in question - only his proven strengths as a profound and poetic lyricist. Meanwhile, organist Mickey Gallagher (from Dury's Blockheads, with whom the Clash now share a manager) smoothed over most of the cutting edge. I like reggae - though mostly in singles-sized doses - and I don't object to progress. I just don't think the Clash play this stuff very well.

There were some great moments. Mick's ‘Stay Free’ was terrific, featuring perhaps his best extended break of the set, and Topper was stunning on almost everything, especially his thunderous roll into ‘I Fought The Law’. The guy is definitely one of the two or three best rock 'n' roll drummers in the world today. But after ‘English Civil War’, the energy flagged, guitars went out of tune, and Joe gasped for breath. Another new song began with a chorus or two of ‘Stagolee’ - the Clash sounded like a bad bar band - and ‘Janie Jones’ was rushed, almost perfunctory. By the time they closed with ‘White Riot’, my girlfriend had fallen asleep and I was ready to go wander around St. Mark's Place in search of friends who might have seen the show and could reassure me that the Clash were still the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band. Instead, I found Dimitri Papadopolous, fellow rock scribe turned hard-hitting drummer, who told me: "Face it, man: they stunk!" I didn't want to agree with him, but...

At least you got a lot of music for your money. First up were the Undertones, and though I don't know how much impact they made on the rest of the Clash tour, I thought they were a gas. Okay, so the group could never have existed had the Ramones not gotten there first, but they've still got great songs like ‘Teenage Kicks’, ‘Jimmy Jimmy’, ‘Male Model’, and a new one called (I think) ‘My Cousin’ ("what I like to do, he doesn't"). Fergal Sharkey's whole body shakes when he sings, and the band bangs away enthusiastically behind him. All stage clothes are strictly from Sears Roebuck and the encore was Gary Glitter's ‘Rock & Roll Pt. 2’. Good band - get the album when it appears here on Sire.

Also appearing were Sam and Dave. If '60s soul music played for late-'70s white rock audiences is the modern equivalent of Son House and Mississippi John Hurt being trotted out of obscurity for the enlightenment of early '60s white folk audiences, at least these guys cared enough to put together a great band (including five horns) and really work the crowd. Time has slightly diminished their vocal powers (Dave Prater more than Sam Moore) but at their high-energy best - ‘You Don't Know Like I Know’, ‘You Got Me Humming’, ‘Soul Man’ - I never really noticed. The set was also a little heavy on audience participation: the P-Funk chant of "shit, goddamn, get off your ass and jam," the sing-alongs, the mugging and jiving with a couple of girls from the audience. With a fourteen-track Best Of...album like Sam and Dave's (on Stax/Atlantic), who needs this kind of padding? What the still-dynamic duo really need is a new record deal, an understanding producer, and (this is the tough one) new material on a par with their string of Porter/Hayes classics. Otherwise, Sam and Dave are in danger of becoming an educational museum exhibit for roots-conscious white rock fans.

© Andy Schwartz, 1979