Rock the Casbah video

At around 3.20 secs there is footage of the band taking the state at Austin, Texas. Would be nice if the more footage turned up?

Footage from inside The Coliseum was, according to Razze, “absolutely crazy, because they just worked us into the audience in front of the stage and shot us and the band in real time during the concert.

Over the years, many guests have told us that our pool was the site of several scenes from the Clash’s 1982 “Rock the Casbah” music video. We have had more than our share of musicians as guests, so it seemed perfectly plausible. It was only recently that I dug in to check the story out and found myself lost in online obsession, Austin lore, and a Texas-Clash connection going back decades. ~ Austin Motel

Clash = Cash protests

Anti Clash Flyer handed out outside
Disgruntled punks complaining that Clash=Cash

The flyer was handed out by a group calling themselves “the gutter snipes” voicing the same arguments as in Atlanta, that the band had sold out and that their ‘political’ lyrics were just a calculated marketing angle to boost sales. 

An amended flyer was also circulated in Seattle see link with similar arguments here; Pistols were the real thing, The Clash a fake

Ironically the flyer quotes Situationist Guy Debord (1931 -94) a big influence on Bernie Rhodes.Bernie gave Joe and Mick Situationist literature as part of their ‘education’ back in 1976. Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Lettrist International and Situationist International (SI). He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.

In the 1960s he led the Situationist International group, which influenced the Paris Uprising of 1968 (in turn a big influence on Joe). Some consider his book Society of the Spectacle (1967) to be a catalyst for the uprising.

Tickets, pass

Should I Stay Or Should I Go

Austin Motel
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Over the years, many guests have told us that our pool was the site of several scenes from the Clash’s 1982 “Rock the Casbah” music video. We have had more than our share of musicians as guests, so it seemed perfectly plausible. It was only recently that I dug in to check the story out and found myself lost in online obsession, Austin lore, and a Texas-Clash connection going back decades. more

(Almost) 30 Years Out: The Clash, Austin 1982

Link

‘I was in Austin for a movie junket and saw a bunch of people milling about the hotel who looked out of place.  You have to understand at the time, movie people had a “look” about them - feathered hair, nice clothes, fancy shoes, the whole bit.  These other people were, well, rock and roll.  Turns out they were with the Clash, in the area filming a video and performing a couple of shows at the Austin city Coliseum.  We were able to talk briefly with Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon as they came through the hotel lobby - but their management knew we were reporters so they swept the musicians away rather quickly. 

Anyway, even though the show was apparently a sellout it was easy to score a ticket (10 bucks, face price from a roadie) and I was off to the Clash’s second show [from the songs mentioned below probably the first night] Apparently Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble opened the first night but they weren’t used to being booed (in Austin, no less) so they opted out of the second show.  No matter: the Coliseum ticket taker ripped my ticket just as the last notes of the opening act were fading away. 

The Clash hit the stage roaring, with “London Calling.”  Ripping through some of their early numbers and swinging right into “Train In Vain,” I realized this was truly one of the few rock acts I’d ever seen that really did live up to the hype.  They had kicked out drummer Topper Headon and had their original basher, Terry Chimes.  Some people believed the Clash had sold out for greater fame and fortune, and unbelievably, they showed up at the concert to yell at the group.

Nonetheless, the boys ripped through the tunes and hit the homestretch with “Clash City Rockers,” an early song I remember being surprised they performed.   They also did “Brand New Cadillac,” a rockabilly throwback, and wound up the night with “I Fought The Law.”  The Austin punkers trashed the Coliseum - it was pretty run down to begin with - and provided an epitaph for the punk era.’ 

(Almost) 30 Years Out: The Clash, Austin 1982 | 30 Days Out

The band was in town to shoot the video for Rock The Casbah

‘In the summer of 1982, I met the Clash in Austin, TX. It was a brief hello facilitated by some French rockabilly cats who had befriended Paul Simonon. The band was in town to shoot the video for Rock The Casbah and play two crazed shows at the City Coliseum and handing out beer to a bunch of kids at the hotel's pool was perfectly cool by them.

Surprisingly, in hindsight, hanging with a famous punk band seemed a simple matter of course, nothing to even write home about. We weren't jaded culture junkies, we were interested. No autographs requested, no photos snapped. Meeting idols today is so different. TV and gossip rags don't make you more familiar with celebs they sadly differentiate you from them. Punk in theory was never about that. I've often thought about those shows at the Coliseum and how fucking violent it was, fighting and screaming "fuck the casbah" in the sweltering heat but I've never reflected much on the Clash sharing a poolside beer with me at the Crest Inn. That was just so normal for Austin in 1982. Things were cool. The Clash were cool. Time flies, airplanes crash.

"It was traumatic," recalls Chris Layton about Double Trouble's first-night opening slot for the Clash at the City Coliseum in 1982. "We were warned that the Clash's audience hated everyone, but we figured, 'Hey, this is good ol' liberal Austin!'"

Indeed, watching rising star Stevie Ray Vaughan being heckled mercilessly on theKnow Your Rights Tour was depressing and embarrassing, but it was a bad move fromthe start to book the local blues trio. The Clash cultivated a punk audience whovalued passion over precision, and Double Trouble was too slick for their rawstandards.

The Clash rolled into town early to scout opening bands. It was their m.o., amove that won them much respect. The day before the show, management representative Stuart Weintraub sat at the Sheraton Hotel and fielded tapes fromlocal bands vying for the opener -- D-Day, the Lift, 5 Spot. That night, the Clashwere scoping out reggae bands, dropping by the Opera House to catch Stevie, andsweeping into the Continental Club to see a rockabilly outfit called the TroubleBoys. Double Trouble got the now-infamous gig that began as badly as it ended.

"To walk out into the lights and see people throwing shit at us and shooting usthe rod, yelling 'get fucked' and 'get off the stage' was awful," remembers Layton."At Montreux, there were four or five people booing, and it felt like 400 or 500. Iremember [the Coliseum] as being venomous. Stevie was like, 'What is all thisshit?'

"Afterward, Stevie thanked Joe [Strummer] and said, 'I guess I don't understandyour audience. We're not accustomed to this, and we can't do tomorrow night.'Strummer was real apologetic, a great guy. But I'm surprised they found anyoneto open [the second night]."

Alice Berry faced the same atmosphere with decidedly different results."I was standing backstage after Double Trouble's sad departure," explains Berry."Stuart Weintraub turned to me and said, 'So, what are you doing tomorrownight?' -- like maybe asking for a date. 'Seeing the Clash?' I answered. 'How'd youlike to open for them?' he asked."

A five-piece rockabilly outfit with a chick singer, the Trouble Boys featured Berryand possessed what SRV did not: street cred in the punk community. TheTrouble Boys were untried, unrecorded, unheralded, and unknown, perfectcandidates for an audience for whom throwing beer cups and spitting meant "welove you" as often as it meant "fuck off."

"I have a vivid memory of this fellow shooting the bird at me," laughs Berry. "Idecided to 'make love' to him from the stage, doing Patsy Cline's 'Walkin' AfterMidnight' with as much gushy ooze as I could muster. At the end, he was justsmiling, and I felt we did our job. Nobody hit me with a beer cup or can. No onegobbed me. Just a guy shooting the bird."

Opening bands weren't the only political tune being played on Clash's CombatRock shows in Austin. "Clash = Cash" screamed one of the hand-scrawledanti-Clash posters, as some of the band's fans felt they had deviated from theirrevolutionary form. Neither as groundbreaking as the earlier Armadillo show noras MOR as their accompanying show at San Antonio's Majestic Theatre, theColiseum shows were full-bore Clash. They stormed the stage both nightsenergized by their increasing success and making a place in local lore by filmingthe "Rock the Casbah" video in Austin.

SRV and Double Trouble took the lesson on the chin, going on to platinum fame.The Trouble Boys had a brief run and broke up within a year. As for all the Clash audience's attitude, the highly successful Combat Rock marked the beginning ofthe end.

Revolution Rock - Music -
The Austin Chronicle

FRI., JAN. 17, 2003

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