supported by the English Beat

Last updated 7 July 2008 - punters view (Went to see them..)
updated 12 Feb 2012 - added new source
updated 13 Feb 2012 - added full gig review

Audio 1

Sound 2.5 - 1hr 29min - unknown gen - tracks 20
Above average sound.

Brand New Cadilac

Audio 2 - Alternate source

Sound 3 - 1hr 25min - unknown gen - tracks 20 -
Misses start of 16 tons intro, less crowd - slightly clearer.

Brand New Cadilac

Sound Quality

The new recording is from an alternate source with less crowd noise. It is slightly clearer - Sound 3 - 85min - though from an unknown gen - it has the full 20 tracks but misses the start of 16 tons intro despite being 6 minutes longer.

The older recording of this gig in circulation is a decent audience recording but best source is several unknown copies off the master. A further higher gen copy also circulates with poorer sound and runs slow. The nearer to the master source has had some of the between song audience noise edited out to fit on a single CD.

The recording has a rather flat un-engaging sound from being analogue copied a number of times and also from distance from the taper to the stage. Bass is quite clear as are the guitars, and vocals are reasonably clear.  The sound quality from the 4^th and 5^th nights at the Palladium is significantly better.

The Clash planned a 4 night residency

The Clash planned a 4 night residency at the Hollywood Palladium but having not played a gig in this LA area for 2 years, tickets sold out so fast a 5^th night was added which also promptly sold out!  This date was too late to make the printed posters but a ticket stub and music press articles confirm the 14^th as the first of the five.

Indeed almost all of the tour dates sold out, the band riding an ever increasing wave of commercial success in the US. The band had played the Palladium on the Take The Fifth tour but in 1979 they played just one night. This would of course bring forward the inevitable disintegration of the band; the self-confessed “contradictions” in their position (“a working paradox” as Joe put it in 1980) were now expanding to breaking point and feature in the music press interviews they did in LA.  Dave McCullough in Sounds could not resist pointing out was the band staying in one of LA’s most exclusive hotels, the Le Parc (albeit in the hippest part of town) in his interview article entitled with a dig; ‘Sten Guns in LA’ [link].  The band members as they have later admitted were increasingly enjoying in 1982 these “contradictions” that their rock star status now allowed. It must have been quite a shock to return home a month later to a more luke warm reception and playing to many non sold out shows in run down venues in Britain’s industrial towns!  

McCullough’s interview of Joe in particular is a revealing insight into his troubled mindset at the time. “We’re up here and our egos never let us forget that. You only get up on stage because you’ve a huge ego. I want everyone to be looking at us…I start thinking. What am I doing up here? I can’t take my mind off that feeling. I’ve been feeling pretty weird…Sometimes on the US tour and if you’d seen some dates, you’d have said to our faces we were really poxy… [as evidenced by some but by no means all bootlegs from the tour]I used to be one with the audience but lately sometimes my minds been separate.. sometimes when I see the audience I’m not interested” “I do [enjoy it still] but I can’t still shake off the feeling off. Why am I doing this still?”

McCullough ‘Maybe The Clash have stopped being a ‘protest band’ and started being a soul band?” Joe “Yeah, and it’s like we’re coming to recognise certain limitations we’ve got. Like the political thing. They insist we’re Marxists over here. They pulled the police guns on us in Atlanta. I’ve been on radio shows over here and they’ve asked me political questions I just haven’t had an answer for. What’s your great plan to save the world Joe? I dunno”

The band work hard on this first night but the performances on the last 2 nights  (which McCullough raves about) and the sound quality from their bootleg recordings are superior ; making this an inessential recording to seek out.

Joe gets spat at repeatedly and reacts angrily leaving the stage with “... I’d just like to say I was standing in this spot in 1979 nobody spat at me then, you’re going backwards”

Flyer

"Hello! We're the fucking Clash!"

The gig starts strongly with one of Joe’s best intros to a show; "Hello we're the fucking Clash!" and the band launch into a pumped up London Calling. The band is working hard delivering an energetic if unexceptional Safe European Home; the band drop it down mid song Joe adds this is the bit I can just about hear you - hear you shrieking!”

"Please welcome Mr Terry Chimes on the kit" and an OK Car Jamming followed by a more effective Guns of Brixton, Mick adds effective guitar making it as usual one of the more interesting performances giving a chance for the band to improvise a little (something they deliberately left out when Topper left or perhaps had to leave out with “Mr Terry Chimes on the kit”!

Train In Vain then; “The following is a public service announcement with guitars" Know Your Rights having an ineffective Mick intro. Magnificent Seven continues the good if unexceptional performances. 

“Who keeps throwing their father’s clothes up on here? or maybe Dad’s in the audience! Hello Dad! Hey Dad. Jackson throw some light on the matter you silly cunt. That’s better, what’s this? Is this the queue for the bar?! OK this is alcohol time! Wrong Em Boyo provides some ‘light and shade’ and is one of the more interesting performances.

Joe’s screamed “Woah, woah” again signals the start of Police & Thieves; there’s a snarl in Joe’s voice and Mick stretches out over the instrumental crescendo. No adlibs as usual just cries and wails from Joe and the ending is muddled and poor. An OK Somebody Got Murdered next then after an edit (which make have lost the Bankrobber remembered above) three 1977 songs in a row; Janie Jones, Clash City Rockers and Career Opportunities. 

Rock The Casbah is followed by Should I Stay the energy levels maintained also on Brand New Cadillac. The main set again ends with a lack lustre Clampdown; Mick’s guitar at the start is ineffective and Terry’s drumming and percussion lacks of course Topper’s swing, attack and finesse. There is though a lengthy Joe adlib mostly unclear but it takes in; “Well of all the biggest cities there’s only one that’s like a giant car parking lot with a great big turd at the centre, yes I give you Los Terminos, on Sunshit Boulevard…cruising beef burger pimps, Chief of Police, wearing those caps, Japanese Cadillac’s”

The band again plays only one encore starting with Armagideon Time. Joe loses patience with those spitting “Lotta lotta, lotta idiots at the Palladium tonight ??.. on page 29 how to be a punk rocker?? Meanwhile in the century its 1975 and Van Halen are just about to come alive and all the satin trousers, silky hair; a lot of shampoo was used in that year and then in 1976 we had Alice Cooper with a poodle ?? Then it was 1977 lot of good old boys were hanging out the 

hall 78  ?? Sex Pistols came down the through the coast hippies, Johnny Rotten where are you tonight, now its 1982 and a lot of idiots went to the Palladium because they read about how to be a punk rocker and I was here in 79 so please give me ??”

An angry Police on My Back is followed by a duff sounding I Fought The Law the gig ending after only 80 minutes on stage. An exasperated Joe says “Thank you, goodnight. I’d just like to say I was standing in this spot in 1979 nobody spat at me then, you’re going backwards”

Did you go? Comments, info welcome...

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

The best concert I never attended

Went to see them in LA at the Palladium in 1982, stupidly thought we could get tickets at the door. The show had been sold out for weeks. The security guards were nice enough to open the doors for a little bit so the rather large crowd outside could see for a few minutes. The best concert I never attended.

The Only Band That Mattered

Ticket from the gig and an account of events 

…When it was announced that the boys would be playing at the world famous Hollywood Palladium that summer there could not have been any reason for me not to be there other than death itself.

By this time in my life I had gone to see many punk bands at venues such as The Whiskey, the Roxy and The Music Machine but did not consider myself to be a punk, just a fan of the music.

I stayed clear of the mosh pits that formed at every show and enjoyed the music, the events and the scene. 

As The Clash took to the stage at The Palladium on that balmy Southern California night, the wave of young enthusiastic punks pushed me over to the left front of the stage where I found myself at arms length from Mick Jones’ combat boots, but uncomfortably close to the amp that was positioned right in front of me.

The juice of the guitars, bass and drums hummed in my ear all night long but I would not have had it any other way as I was up front at a potent Clash concert. The band had a forceful opening set as I recall with fast numbers such as London Calling, Career Opportunities, White Riot and Clampdown setting the tempo for the show.

By mid-show, Joe Strummer slowed it down a bit, took out an acoustic guitar, got on one knee and started to almost serenade the fueled and passionate crowd with what I recall was a ballad called Bank Robber. At this moment in almost slow motion, a punk from front center hocked out a loogie projected right at Joe.

From my vantage point it looked to be about 8 inches long and twisted slowly in circles in mid flight while being backlit from one of the stage lights. The projectile landed directly on Joe’s face and dangled from his ear much like a slime scene out of the yet to be released film Ghostbusters. Joe, the consummate punk, barely missed a beat where he did nothing but laugh as he wiped it off with his hand and continued with the song.

When the show ended with the punk encore of “I fought the Law”, I was loaded with adrenaline, drenched in sweat and had a horrible ringing in my left ear, a consequence which continues to this day. 

I had the good fortune to see The Clash two more times; in October of 1982 at the Los Angeles Coliseum as they opened up for The Who and then again in the summer of 1983 at the US Festival in San Bernardino, but neither matched the up front raw energy of the Hollywood Palladium show…

I still have the ticket stub from that night which is a bit odd since I was not nearly as nostalgic back in 1982 as I am today. Perhaps I knew someday 28 years later, I would still be talking about The Only Band That Mattered.

Photos