Supported by Los Lobos
updated 18 Jan 02 - upgrade version 3.0 added
updated 7 July 2008 - added MASTER recording added & punters view (saw what was left of)
updated 12 April 2011 - added punters comments
updated July 2022 added review, added leghty new review (Tribune)
updated May 2023 added NME review
Audio 1 - extended upgraded vers.
Sound 3.5 - 82min - low - 23 tracks
Three Card Trick
Audio 2 - extended upgraded vers.
Sound 3.5 - 82min - boot cassette/m - 23 tracks
Three Card Trick
Sound 3.5 - 82min - master - 23 tracks -
Very good upgrade to MASTER - very clear
Three Card Trick
Sources
This is not only an upgrade in the sound quality but it is longer, though there are no new tracks. The old one was 72mins, and this is 83 mins. Similarly it has 23 tracks.
The first known gig circulating post Mick Jones' sacking. A reasonable recording, its clarity is spoilt by some mild distortion at the bottom end.
Some circulating tapes have only 22 tracks. Clampdown being the extra track. Interestingly Nick Sheppard sings Should I Stay or Should I go which would soon be dropped from the set.
Flyer
Upcoming Events, The San Francisco Examiner
Passes
Sticker
I lived in San Francisco years ago, and went to the January 21,1984 Clash/ Los Lobos show at the SF Civic Auditorium.
I held onto a bunch of memorabilia from the old days and have a never used sticker that was being handed out to everyone that night. Do you have an interest in adding it to your collection?
Beth, Florida, USA <bfeldman1athotmail.com>
Tickets
Clash City Collectors | Facebook
Clash City Collectors | Facebook
San Francisco Civic Auditorium CA
https://www.sanfranciscoauditorium.com
memorable night
I attended the Jan. 21, 1984 concert in San Francisco.
It was memorable for several reasons, but the highlight for me was the stellar performance by opening act Los Lobos. I didnít know until today, over 25 years later, that it was the first Clash show after Mick Jones was sacked.
I have a few good pics Id like to send your way if you could use them. Best, Duffy Johnson, Albuquerque, NM
<titusalone77[a]yahoo.com>
Strummer looked resplendent
"With the rest of the band dressed in black, Strummer looked especially resplendent in his bright red sport coat and white trousers. Tie certainly did his part, rolling around on the stage, thrashing upside down on his back, his kicking legs the only part of his body visible above the surging mass in front of the stage."
a pretty good show
Saw what was left of The Clash in '84 at the San Francisco Civic... I remember it being a pretty good show but I was only 14 at the time and high on NoDoz so who knows! ;-) I also remember everyone being extremely aggitated and vocal to have to wait through the opening act (Los Lobos). Here's an old review of the show...
Setlist: ...
Did you go? Comments, info welcome...
We are looking for scans - articles - tickets - posters - flyers - handbills - memorabilia - photos - comments / any info - you might have. Anything welcome.
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Published 1 Dec. 2003 -
by Chris Knowles pg 243
San Francisco, The Tribune, review
Embarrassingly Bad, Clash Should Give Up
Fanzine - Beano San Fran Fanzine - Feb
Joe Interview Excellent - 6 pages
Village Voice review by Greil Marcus
31 Jan 84
'ish performance in the band's career with relative ease.
text verion below
The Clash, Live (01/31/84) | GreilMarcus.net
October 6, 2014 by GM Admin
THE CLASH, LIVE (01/31/84)
“This isn’t white reggae,” Joe Strummer shouted, introducing “Police and Thieves.” “This is punk and reggae. There’s a difference. There’s a difference between a ripoff and bringing some of our culture to another culture. You hear that, Sting?”
It has been almost eight years since the Clash formed in the wake of the early Sex Pistols’ performances. On January 21, six years and one week after the Pistols played their last show in San Francisco, the Clash were back in town, not “The Only Band That Matters,” but the only U.K. punk band left. “What we play now is what we can do,” Strummer had said in 1979. “It wouldn’t be fair to do ranting music because now we’ve mastered a time change. So there’s just no point.” “We started to think we were musicians,” he told reporter Joel Selvin two weeks ago. “When we made the first record we knew we weren’t. It’s a bad thing to think; it’s irrelevant, not to the point.”
To a happy, not quite sold-out crowd of perhaps 7,000, the Clash played ranting music. Keeping Strummer’s promise to Selvin, they “went back to where we went wrong, and then forward again.” Against an industrialist backdrop and eight television sets flashing images of present-day social disaster, Strummer shook, scowled, smiled, and sung as if he and his audience had a life to make within a world they had already lost.
With guitarist Mick Jones kicked out for delusions of grandeur, the Clash is now Strummer, original bassist Paul Simmonon, drummer Pete Howard, rhythm guitarist Vince White, and lead guitarist Nick Sheppard—the latter both 23-year-old “ex-punks.” The band is ragged, Sheppard plays too many Mick Jones licks, and such rock-star flimsy as leaps from the drum riser or floodlights in the crowd’s face is still part of the show. Yet I have never seem Strummer more exhilarated, or more convincing. In 1978 in Berkeley, “I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.” was a gesture of contempt to a bourgeois audience; this night it was offered to the audience as their own, and they took it. Some of our culture to another culture.
Strummer performs not as a star but as a man who feels lucky to find himself on a stage facing people who want to hear what he has to say. The band tries to keep up with him. Maybe they won’t—and maybe Mick Jones’s Clash, which he is now trying to book, will supercede Strummer’s. But I doubt it. Jackie Wilson died on the day of this show, and in times gone by the Clash donated $6000 to his care. This Clash, I would guess—the music said so.
The Clash revitalise image
Written by Philip Elwood
About four years ago the Clash, a British punk rock quartet invaded our shores via recordings and a concert tour. Already famous in the punk-underground for their dedicated political and social rebelliousness and the urgency of their powerfully rhythmic music, they enjoyed a most successful 1980-1982 period.
Local appearances in their early U.S. days at the Berkeley Community Theater and at the Kezar Pavilion were sensational examples of what many thought to he the most exciting and provocative turn rock music had taken since its heavy electrification in the mid-1960s.
By last year the Clash had suffered from internal differences over both musical and philosophical direction, and leader-vocalist-guitarist Joe Strummer let it he known that a new Clash ensemble, this time a quintet, would pick up where the original group had left off.
On Saturday at the overcrowded Civic Auditorium (I seldom get fearful and claustrophobic in jammed arenas, but I was on this occasion) we had a chance to hear the "new-old" clash. There were three guitarists, bassist Paul Simonon (with Strummer the only original Clasher) and drummer Pete Howard plus 10 dangling, smallish video screens and a massive sound system. Nick Sheppard and Vince White were the new guitarists.
Joe Strummer has a stronger lead role in the Clash
It was a good concert although hardly of the gutty, bombastic style of old. Strummer assumed even more of leadership role than was his earlier wont and had trouble at times keeping up the frantic pace always associated with the clash. In his rhythmic guitar-playing lead, In his shouted, strident vocals and in his non-stop commentary, Strummer often becomes incoherent.
They began with "London Calling" and ended about 75 minutes later with "Jamie Jones," the third encore. In between, "Police and Thieves," "Rockin' the Casbah," [sic] "Police on My Back," "Brand New Cadillac," "Guns of Brixton", (Simonon vocal) and others came across quite well. The video screens (all the same images) projected a variety of still and motion pictures of, usually, some significance to the players and listeners - war movies, police activities, defiant placards, etc. Strummer's concern for the British black population and for their reggae and hi-life music is particularly evident in the Clash's music and in his socio-political commentary.
The sound system, though excellent for those jammed on the main floor, was muddy for the thousands upstairs.
Record producer, anthologist, comic and interlocutor Malcolm McLarenren conducted a lively dance set on stage (with many splendid local acts) before the Clash's appearance.
The evening began with a short performance by the Los Lobos band.
'New' Clash Plays Some Old Favorites
For S.F. Faithful
San Francisco Chronicle , January 23, 1984
Written by Joel Selvin
Far away from those rocky shores, that scepter'd isle the Clash calls home, in the relative obscurity of San Francisco, the prelates of punk faced the most potentially ticklish performance in the band's career with relative ease.
If the group bombed, who would know back home?
Outside of the cynical scrutiny of the British press and fad-conscious, trendy English music scene - where the Clash may already be somewhat old hat - the group could comfortably get away with the introduction of what amounts to a whole new band, in front of a nearly sold-out San Francisco Civic Auditorium Saturday, full of California teens primed for the concert by harmless radio hits like "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay Should I Go," rather than the leftist revolutionary rhetoric of "Guns of Brixton" or "White Riot."
These recently acquired fans would seem the least likely to be overly sensitive about the absence of guitarist Mick Jones, whose tough swagger and thinly veiled insolence lent so much character to the band. In his place, bandleader Joe Strummer introduced two semi-professional young British guitarists, Nick Sheppard and Vince White. Neither proved exceptional at the Civic. Far from it, in fact. Even keeping their guitars in tune proved a problem for these green additions to the world's most famous punk rock band. Nor did they show any particular skill in their brief, awkward attempts at vocals.
But the question of technical excellence matters more with other bands than with the Clash, who are the rock world's equivalent of political propagandists who spray-paint leftist slogans on walls in Berkeley.
With the rest of the band dressed in black, Strummer looked especially resplendent in his bright red sport coat and white trousers. tie certainly did his part, rolling around on the stage, thrashing upside down on his back, his kicking legs the only part of his body visible above the surging mass in front of the stage.
The program mixed familiar Clash pieces with new songs headed for the band's next album (to be recorded following the current tour). All the inevitable cornerstones of Clash concerts were present and accounted for - "London Calling," "Police and Thieves," "I Fought the Law," "White Riot" and "Rock the Casbah" in a mysteriously perfunctory rendition - but a great deal of the show was anchored on material the audience never heard before, such as "We Are the Clash," "Sex Mad War" and others which, in the great Clash tradition, were barely decipherable in live performance.
With the two new guitarists fumbling to keep up, the band never struck any rhythmic gold until late in the concert, ironically, during a bass and drums break in "Police and Thieves" when Strummer had sent one of the guitarists offstage, presumably to tune his instrument. Between drummer Pete Howard and bassist Paul Simonon, the two musicians worked up a chugging, bumping interchange that rumbled agreeably through the hall.
In introducing the number, Strummer delivered one of his trademark tirades on culture and the folk process in popular music. "This is punk meets reggae," he explained, "not white reggae. We add some of our own culture to it, so this is no ripoff. I'm talking to you Sting," he shouted, referring to the vocalist-songwriter for the Police, whose work has sometimes been accused of misappropriating Jamaican rhythmic ideas.
What's a Clash Concert without a few polemics? It helps lend a little of the delicious flavor of an anti-war rally to the proceedings and underlines the band's commitment to political struggle and rock-scene infighting. "We do have a culture," Strummer informed the crowd, "and I'm quite sure it's not Van Halen."
Actually, the band's first commitment is to rock and roll and all that it encompasses -- passion, guts, loud guitars, angry songs, anti-social attitudes and, perhaps most of all, spectacle. Helping to provide, a bit of spectacle at the Civic was Malcolm McLaren, the redoubtable manager of the defunct Sex Pistols who can always be counted on in such matters.
McLaren, hands thrust deep into the pockets of a trenchcoat, briefly preceded the Clash by supplying calls to a tape of his punk rock meets-square dance disco hit, "Buffalo Gals," while a handful of local break dancers flipped, twirled and threw their bodies around onstage, like fish out of water.
Opening the show was Los Lobos, a dream garage band of four Mexican-Americans from East Los Angeles who play like 1965 in San Bernardino. Between this lesson in Chicano rock history, McLaren's demonstrations of contemporary street life and Strummer's own lectures on art, politics and culture, the audience could at least go home feeling educated, if not entertained.
The Clash Official | Facebook
The Clash San Francisco 1984 - search results | Facebook
Marlon Daranciang I was there!
Extensive archive of articles, magazines and other from the UK and European dates on the Out of Control Tour to California, January, February 1984
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Setlist
1 |
London Calling |
Extensive archive of articles, magazines and other from the Out of Control Tour to California, January, February 1984
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The Last Days of the Clash Vince White describes this gig extensively in his Clash biog, The Last Days of the Clash We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered
Return of the Last Gang in Town, Click to read |
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