Bonds Disco & New York residency

Here is a list of known articles around the time of the tour. If you know of anything that is missing please do let us know.

Some display images are low res, the link goes to high-resolution version. Some of the links especially PDFs are *big* so please hold on!.

The Clash played a series of 17 concerts at Bonds International Casino in New York City in May and June 1981 in support of their album Sandinista!.

The site of the concerts was formerly Bonds department store which had been converted into a large second-floor hall. Promoters kept the name because there was a large Bonds sign on the outside of the building. As The Clash had not yet broken out into mass popularity, eight shows were originally scheduled: 28, 29, 30, 31 May and 1, 2, 3 and 5 June 1981. However, given the venue's legal capacity limit of 1750, the series was blatantly oversold (3500) right from the first night, leading the New York City Fire Department to cancel the Saturday, 30 May performance. In response, the band condemned the brazen greed of the promoters while demonstrating unprecedented integrity to each and every ticketholder by doubling the original booking with a total of 17 dates extending through June.

Strict interpretation of the fire laws meant that audiences were relatively small, resulting in a sense of intimacy between the band and the audience. Audience members clambered onto the stage to join in singalongs. New York musicians, including Pearl Harbor, assisted and overseen by Andy Dunkley, provided disc jockey services as the audience entered and gathered.

The band had a new opening act every night, including The Fall, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains, Lee "Scratch" Perry and many more. Many of the hip-hop groups that opened were either picketed or booed off the stage, which prompted Joe to chide the audience as soon as The Clash came on stage afterwards.

Melle Mel later said that when they tried to perform the section of "Beat Street" with the, "Say Ho!", the audience members would yell, "Fuck you!".

RIOT ON TIMES SQUARE- THE CLASH ON BROADWAY!

From the Dangerous Minds archives: 06.10.2016

In May/June of 1981, The Clash were booked to play at the curiously named “Bond International Casino”—a discotheque that was previously a swanky supper club in the 1940s, and then a low-rent clothing store called Bonds until 1977 and they just kept the sign—in New York City in support of the sprawling three record set Sandinista! album. They were meant to play just eight gigs in the smallish Times Square space—capacity 1800 people—but the performances were dangerously oversold by greedy promoters. Fire marshals and the NYC Building Department closed down both of the May 30th concerts, but the band vowed to honor each and every last ticket and so the number of shows was extended to seventeen, with matinee and evening performances added.

The Clash’s Bond Casino shows became an integral part of the rebel band’s legend and featured hand-picked opening acts like The Fall, Dead Kennedys, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, The Treacherous Three, KRAUT, Funkapolitan (who opened for The Clash when I saw them the following year), The Slits, ESG, Bad Brains, The Bloods, The Sugarhill Gang, their pal from Texas Joe Ely and others. Many of the groups were openly booed by the rowdy crowds.

One of the shows, on June 9th, was professionally recorded for an FM radio broadcast and widely bootlegged. You can easily find it and every other of the Clash’s Bond shows—all of them were bootlegged—on audio blogs. But not a lot of footage has been seen from the Clash’s Bond residency. There were some tantalizing clips that were seen in Don Letts’ excellent Grammy-winning Westway to the World rock doc (released in 2000), as well as in the abandoned short “The Clash on Broadway” (on Westway DVD as an extra), but sadly the docs didn’t give you an entire song. However, Letts’ Bond footage was apparently shot on the same day as the FM recording was made and an enterprising Clash fan has restriped the stereo audio from that source and synced up some other angles found in various other places (mostly Letts’ docs). The results are probably the best glimpse we have at what went on at these shows. Ain’t the Internet great?

At least three contributors to this blog were there and saw one, or more, of the Bond shows. Dozens of personal accounts of the shows can be found in several places, just Google it. One of the things that comes up is from a camera operator who claims that most, if not all of the Bonds shows were documented. From the now defunct Facebook page “I saw the Clash at Bonds”

“My partner John Hazard and I were fortunate enough to be hired by Don Letts and The Clash to produce and shoot the documentary of Bonds and beyond that is the Clash on Broadway film featured at the end of Westway to the World. What started out as a one week shoot to get six songs live in the can became a year of our lives. The video for “This Is Radio Clash” was a lift from the 10 minute trailer for the unfinished film that we shot on 16mm and went all the way to a 35mm blowup to show potential distributors. Needless to say - the project was never completed as the band disassembled after Combat Rock. Clash on Broadway is the rough cut we had finished by the time to project was wrapped and went back to the UK.”

“We shot one complete show with multiple cameras and a 24 track mobile recorder. We also shot most of every show with one camera and in house 8 track recording. The band wore the same gear every night and Topper was such a consistent drummer - and the band well rehearsed - that we were able to build edits from different nights with no trouble at all.”

“Sadly - we never shot the opening acts. We started the gig with the intention of doing a six song DVD EP - not a full scale documentary. Shooting expanded as the story expanded and the shows stretched on.”

“We were not making a concert movie per se - and my part in the post production ended when the material left the US after doing the Combat Rock video which John shot in Texas.”

Additionally, over 50 reels of Letts’ NYC Clash footage, including their day as extras on the set of Martin Scorsese’s King of Comedy and a shitton of live Bond Casino footage was found in a South London basement in 2007 when Julien Temple was making his Joe Strummer doc and nearly ALL of it was in good shape. Hopefully we’ll see more from these shows in the future. Based on what you can see below, it must be blistering!

First up, “Safe European Home.” I love how “the only band that matters” walk onstage like a street gang to the spaghetti-western sounds of Ennio Morricone’s “6 Seconds To Watch” (from the soundtrack to For A Few Dollars More). What band today could pull off swagger like that and not look like complete dickheads? None of them, that’s who…

The Clash Official | Facebook

40 years ago Joe and The Clash were on the eve of playing a series of 17 concerts at Bonds International Casino in New York City in May and June 1981 in support of ‘Sandinista!’.

Arrival

The New York Times: Bonds preview

Sunday May 24, 1981 / Late City Final Edition

By DEBRA RAE COHEN

The Clash - who will be at the Bond International Casino in Times Square for eight performances starting Thursday - emerged along with the Sex Pistols in the British punk rock explosion of 1976.

Both bands played music that was fast and furious, brash and bitter, in response to the seeming hopelessness of the British economy. But while the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten turned each song into an apocalypse -proclaiming ''no future'' for himself, for society, and for rock and roll - the Clash made each song a battle that might, conceivably, be won.

Above the guitarist Mick Jones's insistent power chords, Joe Strummer used his raspy vocals like a rallying-cry. One of the group's early singles, ''Complete Control,'' even found them taking a heroic stance in response to an argument with their record company. ... Read the full article ...