Asian / Australasian Tour

updated 5 Jan 2010 - full tape review and complete edit
updated 14 Feb 2012 - added links to adverts and gig reviews
updated August 2022 added comments

Audio 1

Sound 2 - 1hr 29mins - unknown gen - 25 of 33 tracks
Tape runs way to fast. Misses everything after an edited Safe European Home

Koka Kola

Audio 2

Sound 3+ - 2hrs 9mins - wider better clarity - unknown gen - tracks 33
full, best

Koka Kola

Radio interviews - see below

Sources

Several generations of the same audience recording circulate. The first known as Koka Kola is complete, has decent clarity but is several generations off the master resulting in a loss of clarity, detail and range.

A second tape of a lower generation is more enjoyable as it has a wider stereo  sound and better clarity and detail, although not massively. It is though incomplete cutting off during Safe European Home and runs significantly fast. It still suffers from a degree of flatness and hiss from not being close to what must be a very good quality master tape.

A speed corrected version with the remaining songs from Koka Kola added provides the best complete version.

All instrumentation is there on both sources although bass is fairly low in the mix and the sound is not affected much by distance to the stage. An upgrade to the obviously very good master tape would be very welcome - come on Australia there must be Clash fans out there! 

The Clash in Australia

The Clash’s tour of Australia is the least documented part of The Clash’s history. As to why is somewhat of a mystery; despite playing 11 dates in an English speaking country, closely linked to UK culture and with a thriving music and punk scene, only one recording circulates (from Melbourne) and there are no live photos, local press articles etc

From the evidence of the Melbourne recording this is a great shame, because as at Auckland it’s another strong performance. The band appeared Down Under to be out to make a point to all the new punks in the audience and there is a real edge to the performance, the band feeding off the audience. In musical terms the later sacking of Topper (reportedly now back on heroin) is inexplicable. It’s also an essential bootleg for capturing aboriginal rights campaigner Gary Foley’s input into Armagideon Time and a unique onstage performance from Digby Cleaver on vocals!

The band landed in Sydney on the 10th  February playing the next night the first of  seven nights in the city in the baking heat of the Capitol Theatre (Spy v Spy one of the support acts). On their day off they were interviewed by Roz Reines for the NME  Tropic Of Clash article [link] Sydney had a hard core punk scene and the gigs were chaotic and violent. 

Exhausted and half deafened after the gigs the band pushed themselves further to the limit by agreeing to mix Rat Patrol post gig at a local studio. Joe admitted he had been trying not to think about the album since leaving New York and all the enmity and disunity from the New York recording sessions resurfaced, characterised by the 2 hour stand up Paul and Mick had over the bass level to Know Your Rights!

In Australia Joe’s behaviour continued to become increasingly atypical, almost manic; symptomatic of his later “breakdown” and disappearance.  He continued to not smoke weed, kept speaking of getting himself fit for action, getting up at 6, going running and using the hotel room TV for weight training! “None of this weedy, pop-star image you know, Piss on that - just because the country is falling apart that means we have to build ourselves up!” he told Roz. Or maybe it was just the hit he was getting from travelling to new places; he in particular loved the sea and climate in Australia. He continued in the interview to advocate emigration from the UK to New Zealand and Australia but not the other way round; “Now you just get carbon copies of skinheads and punks in far flung corners of the globe. They’re not dealing with their own town, they’re just wishing they could be somewhere else.”

Joe’s message to Japan “To hell with us. They’re all soaked in Americana …to hell with that, they’ve got to look to themselves” His message was be true to the original punk message of “Do it yourself”

After the Sydney gigs the band did some hard travelling playing dates in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth where Joe reportedly collapsed from exhaustion. Perth was an added date presumably on the 21st (and not the 24th as listed - Joe at Melbourne announces that this was their last night in Australia and they would have needed the 24th to travel ahead of the their Hong Kong gig on the 25th).

Gary Foley, an indigenous Australian activist

In the 2008 Clash coffee table book Paul recalls being woken in a dodgy hotel in the Kings Cross area of Sydney by 3 Aborigines knocking on the door asking if they could come up on stage to talk about their situation! Paul spoke to Joe, the band had a meeting and agreed. “We realised the power that we had because we could let these guys talk to people who wouldn’t pay any attention to them. When we played New South Wales whilst one guy was on stage the Police were beating up his wife. I didn’t really enjoy Australia because of that”

Gary Foley an indigenous Australian activist, academic, writer and actor, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Foley came on stage at the Capitol to speak about the cause of Aborigine land rights and other issues during Armagideon Time. Afterwards Joe and Kosmo took Gary back for drinks in their hotel but the bar staff would not now speak to them.

Gary had been inspired by Malcolm X and the political movement of Black Power in the USA, which emerged among African-Americans in the mid-1960s. These ideas took root in Australia when the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League invited Dr Roosevelt Brown, a Caribbean academic and activist, to give a talk on Black Power in Melbourne in 1968. The Australian version of Black Power, expressed by Foley, was about Aboriginal people defining their own problems and seeking self-determination without non-Indigenous interference.

Gary is known for co-founding the Aboriginal Tent Embassy at Parliament House in Canberra in 1972, raising the profile of Indigenous Australian issues. He was active in organising protests against the South African rugby team’s tour of Australia in 1971 and led Commonwealth Games protests in 1982. He helped establish the Aboriginal Legal Service in Redfern and Aboriginal health services in Sydney and Melbourne.

For an obituary on Joe, Gary remembered the way Joe engaged his fans in political debate instead of just concentrating on sex, drugs and rock and roll.

"No doubt there were young women who turned up at the shows and were keen to bed him, but he always deflected them from those sorts of thoughts and tried to encourage them to think about local political issues and engage them in broader political questions"

The obituary also included this terrific Strummer description of the live Clash experience. Joe likened a Clash performance to a rocket launch:

"Do you know those shots from above a rocket gantry, especially those Sixties, early-colour shots of Cape Kennedy or Cape Canaveral? There's that moment after they count down, 'Three, two, one . . .' when clouds of smoke billow from the rocket and then it begins to thrust and burn a whole in the atmosphere -- that would be the feeling of a Clash show. And it would seem about that length of time too."

Gary has kindly offered to wrote a short piece on his experiences with the band and hopefully he will get time to do this shortly.

Gary says “I got on very well with Joe Strummer and had a variety of very interesting discussions with him in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. I came to have a great deal of respect for him as a human being.”

Unfortunately Gary has only a recording of one of the several talks he did onstage. He believes both of the existing recordings were made by the Australian Broadcasting Commission and one of those recordings has been released by the National Film and Sound Archive on a CD of historic moments in Australian. history. Gary has provided a couple of photos of himself and the band taken by a Sydney photographer called Tony Mott [link] 

The Australian National Film & Sound Archive list 3 recordings relating to The Clash in Australia but unfortunately they can only be accessed with an Australian postal address! Can anyone help?

Title No: 239431  Title: GARY FOLEY AND THE CLASH
Place: Recording   Alice Springs (N.T.)
Country of Origin: Australia

Title No: 237267 Title: [THE CLASH AND GARY FOLEY]

Title No: 319276
Title: [THE CLASH : INTERVIEWED BY GEOFF KING: INTERVIEW]
Production Date: 1982
Produced as: Oral histories/interviews
Media: Recorded Sound
Summary:  An interview with Kosmo, Strummer and Simonon, recorded in Sydney 1982.

A link that is accessible is a short clip from the Green Bush film  ‘I’m a black Australian’ which features a pro sound quality recording of Gary’s talk as the band play Armagideon Time 

http://australianscreen.com.au/titles/green-bush/clip2/

A different rap to the Melbourne recording which means ABC recorded professionally one of the other shows probably a Sydney one. This is probably gathering dust somewhere on a shelf , which is a disgrace!! Can anyone help source a copy of this?  

Brian Wise wrote in 2007  Music Films At MIFF - The Future Is Unwritten:Joe Strummer of a later meeting with Joe and of attending the Melbourne 1982 gig “a performance that reminded me of the Stones in their Exile On Main Street period, ragged but brilliant.”

With Australian Aboriginal rights activist Gary Foley in 1982

The Clash Official | Facebook

The Age

date

Adverts

Tickets

Festival Hall in Melbourne

Festival Hall in Melbourne was once "the place to be seen" and the venue of many sell out sports and entertainment events. Formerly known as the West Melbourne Stadium, the original Festival Hall built in 1915 was a famous boxing and wrestling venue - known to locals as "the House of Stoush" with many a riot, some even spilling out onto the street and parking lot.

Rebuilt in 1956 after being burnt down the year before, it was the Olympic Games venue for gymnastics and wrestling. As an entertainment centre, the stage had been graced prior to The Clash by the likes of Bill Haley, Frank Sinatra and the Beatles. By the 1990s it had been overtaken by more spectacular Melbourne venues.

Joe is fired up, an angry ball of stress and energy

The speed affected better source tape starts with the Morricone intro music whilst the complete Koka Kola tape starts in with Joe announcing “London Calling to the far away towns”  Joe is fired up, an angry ball of stress and energy on stage and off! Crank up the volume, ignore the sound deficiencies and this is an enjoyable gig and sound.

A hard not loose Washington Bullets next is played at a fair lick by the band who stretch out over the ending. “Thank you ladies and gentlemen and welcome to The Clash’s last night in Australia”  The revised set’s opening songs continue  with a storming Tommy Gun. Hard fast and taut similar to the Auckland show; the  message to the new punks in the audience is we’re the original and still the best. There’s no extended ragas tonight! Each song crashes into the next.

A fine Guns of Brixton goes straight into Train In Vain, Mick in good form too.

“OK this is the cattle shed of Melbourne, lets have the lights on here Fuzzy. This is the new number Know Your Rights all three of them!” The lyrics continue to be revised and improvised by Joe; “You have the right not to be killed, murder is a crime except of course if the perpetrator is a Policeman, You have the right to food money if you don’t mind a little humiliation, investigation and aggravation.

And the judge on high says get off the streets. Finally I must read you your rights, you have the right to remain silent and make one phone call and to be warned that all you say will be taken down and used in evidence against you”

A tight, fine if unexceptional Magnificent Seven is followed by the invariably unexceptional, Ivan Meets GI Joe! An edit at the end of the song restarts with “If I was to mention the White Man in Hammersmith Palais” A strong performance Joe adlibs “the new romantics have taken over the shop. The new romantics are not concerned with what there is to be learned”  As the band stretch out over the ending Joe goes “Yes, gobbing in my face ,went out a long time ago, thank God for that if I say it myself” Joe in top form screams out over Topper’s double drum roll flourish ending.

“I just wanted to know how many people here were curious and how many people know? I know you know, what about the back row? OK this is for the Clash professors; Stagger Lee met Billy …” Topper’s particularly inventive on a fine Wrong ‘Em Boyo; no sign of his recent return to heroin use. 

Elevator goooooooing up! The band tear through Koka Kola and into I Fought The Law which gets the audience going, someone grabs the mic. The band calm it down with Broadway and at end of a fine performance as the band play on Joe goes into a great free verse “then I went to Melbourne, where it was raining just like it does in England. I don’t believe all this stuff like they tell you, like when you go over there its just like England, that’s what they said too about New Zealand, it’s more like Africa!, They’ve got nothing to do over there I can tell you that , so lets have none of this what’s? going on in London shit, we all need to bring our own identity, everybody needs some kind of identity, even the guy with glasses up there feeling all smug, the guy that works for the local paper with a grey suit on, …then runs back to his snotty little office and crawls up the boss’ arsehole a few more feet!”

Joe’s best air raid klaxon impersonation intros The Call Up not heard since Bonds  and sounds a little rusty “there is a rose I want to live for. Our natural allotted span - 65 years, yeah what about the young people”. Next it’s a great charge through to end the main set, starting with a blistering Brand New Cadillac.  Somebody Got Murdered next unusually has no variation from Mick on the intro, the song played ‘straight’ but it is a powerful performance with Joe screaming and barking over the end. Someone in the very enthusiastic  audience must have shouted for White Riot which angers Joe “You all know about White Riot but you don’t know that one shout for White Riot wipes? it off for me straight away!” The band then tear into Clampdown. Joe’s adlibs are not clear over the ending (and there are a number of tape drop outs). Topper powers it along terrifically.

An edit at the end may have been the end of main set but probably not as the band go into Junco Partner  “So cold as can be, yes he was sniffing glue, just to get high” A fine extended performance with Mick soloing over the ending before a very rare vocal occurrence! “I’d like to introduce to you this man called Digby (Cleaver - Mick’s guitar tech). …Digby Digby! Just like you once asked me, who’s up next Baker?!!” Digby comes on and sings an atonal verse and chorus. Then as the song ends the band tear straight into Career Opportunities and leave the stage - presumably the end of main set.

The recording continues as the audience clap and stomp for more. The first encore starts with an  unexceptional Charlie Don’t Surf but then picks up as Topper then takes it into Police & Thieves again played ‘straight’ but there’s a great improvised reggae ‘drop out’ instrumental section and then the band build it back up with some great lead guitar from Mick.

Mick “Had some requests for this one, it’s called Stay Free and it’s about people I know in prison” Mick’s playing is excellent on a very fine performance of his song. The band then go into a Armagideon Time and then mid song Joe goes  “justice tonight Gary , justice tonight” calling Gary Foley onstage. As the band play on Gary addresses the audience “..in time Aboriginal people discovered, exploited and settled this country over thousands of years.500 aboriginal nations developed a society here which was in complete harmony with each other and the land.  Fifty thousand years later the British ruling class brought their own people here in chains (boos) and they set out to exterminate the aboriginal people here (mix of responses) This land was ours, this land belonged to Aboriginal people.

In 1778 there were 3 groups of people in this country who were oppressed, the English working class, the women who were brought out on the boats and most of all the Aboriginal people, and today this country is pretty much the same, If all these blokes? here, like to admit it or not they’re just as oppressed as what we are and they won’t get anywhere unless all of us work together on this thing. If we are to build an Australia in the future  where everyone is free and no one is oppressed then you people  have to understand that the struggle against racism, sexism and exploitation is one struggle (big cheer)

“Next time the unemployed people march get out there and march with them, next time women are marching for their rights go out there and march with them and the next time Aboriginal people in this State march for their land rights be with them too. There is only one thing Malcolm Fraser  [Prime Minister] and what he represents is frightened of and that is unity of all the people in this country. The Clash are behind the support of the Aboriginal people the only question however is are you? Thank you”

Topper’s drum rolls and Mick’s stinging guitar then bring an extraordinary performance to an end. Immediately the band blast into a charged Safe European Home. Unfortunately the better tape cuts out 30 seconds in so there is now a resultant loss of range and some clarity, but not significant enough to affect the enjoyment too much. “Complete Control” instructs Joe and Topper

hits a drum roll then Mick blasts in, again dropping the 81 (and later in 82) longer build up. The band whip it up to end the encore.

After an edit Mick picks out the intro to Jimmy Jazz, his playing on this tonight has a harder bluesier feel. Mick, Paul and Topper continue to improvise before Joe comes in. Unfortunately Joe’s adlibs are largely unclear but he does get in a rare Engelbert Humperdink reference  “got to be joking, please release me let me go!” A highlight of the show. Then its straight into Janie Jones followed by English Civil War. Midway through Police on My  Back an edit loses the remainder but there is some awful digital noise too which has been edited out from the speed corrected compilation. The tape then cuts into Clash City Rockers losing the first third of the song.

The sound appears to improve a notch on Radio Clash, which is great when the band stretch out, with some great fills from Topper. A strum of Joe’s guitar and its a charge through London’s Burning (becoming Melbourne’s Burning) to end a fine gig and The Clash’s tour of Australia.

Did you go? Comments, info welcome...

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

super amazing night I will never forget

ailswhit - It was a last minute decision to go with 3 friends, bought ticket at the door, entered on my own but soon met up with friends. One super amazing night I will never forget, for many reasons, least of all seeing them live, absolutely amazing.

one of the best gigs I've ever seen

Spasbecker - Still one of the best gigs I've ever seen...and Strummer later said that they were rubbish on that tour! If that was rubbish, well...words fail me. The Call Up alone was mesmerising, the recorded version, though very good, has never lived up to it.

Standing room only. Brilliant gig

dalapetus - I was there - standing room only - I couldn't take my eyes off them - Radio Clash. I was there with Petrina White & a couple of other mates who's names I no longer remember. Brilliant gig.

John Dunn - I was there. The Clash were on fire. Brilliant night. Still got my ticket stub

David Varlo - yep same here.

The Age

Gig Review

The Herald

Gig Review

Photos

from Olde Stratos

Joe Strummer | Facebook - Joe Strummer at Festival Hall , Melbourne, February 1982, Photo by Wayne O'Farrell

Setlist

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

London Calling Washington Bullets Tommy Gun The Guns Of Brixton Train In Vain Know your Rights Magnificent 7 Ivan Meets GI Joe White Man in Ham Palais Wrong Em Boyo Koka Kola I Fought the Law Broadway The Call Up Brand New Cadillac Somebody Got Murdered Clampdown Junco Partner Career Oportunities Charlie Dont Surf Police and Thieves Stay Free Armagideon Time Safe European Home Complete Control Jimmy Jazz Janie Jones English Civil War Police on My back Garageland Clash City Rockers This Is Radio Clash Londons Burning