Out of Control Tour '84
updated 2 Sept 2016 with better audio information
updated August 2022 - added articles
Updated Augist 2022 added Unicorn Times
updated June 2024 added review
Audio 1
Very bass heavy - Sound 2.5 - 1hr 22mins - ?? gen - 24 tracks
In the Pouring Rain
In the Pouring Rain
Sound quality
A extremely bass heavy sound which dominates the sound, though the top end, whislt being distant, has quite a bit of clarity. the sound has some width as well and remixed come be much better. However it is not bad, spoilt somewhat by too much bottom end. Link to Satch's
Previews
Note: All reviews were written by Steve Morse and syndicated.
* Some had the concert review taken out.
Best one to read is the Boston Globe.
Most of the reviews were written by Steve Morse, the long time rock critic for the Boston Globe and clearly a fan of the clash (he traveled to NY, NJ and Wash DC to review the band).
As a native of Boston and a 25+ year fan of the Clash I have always enjoyed and agreed with his reviews.
That can't be said for Jim Sullivan who wrote the Sept. 7, 1982 review. I was at that show and I have never had such a disagreement with a review and to this day, I can't hear (or write!) the words Jim Sullivan with out thinking about how far off the mark that review was (call me obsessed!), other's radio DJs at the time agreed. I thought it was a great show. I have included Sullivan's review just for the historical record. If you post it I may send my own memories of the show at a later date.
Setlist from the gig
Blain Myhre – 22 December 2020 - Clash City Collectors
Setlist I snagged when the Clash II played DC April 8, 1984.
List was written on the back of a show flyer. Great gig.
The Clash reconstituted but still intensely political
The Central New Jersey Home News
Wed Apr 18 1984
Steve Morse, syndicated.
No concert review 
Prophet of Punk Strummer has some Clashing views
Advert
Clash City Collectors | Facebook
Blain Myhre was good enough to share these items with us a couple of years ago (advert, setlist)
Tickets
George Washington University, Smith Centre, Washington DC
The Charles E. Smith Center is a 5,000-seat multipurpose arena iat George Washington University.
Setlist from Washington DC gig 8 April 1984
Clash City Collectors | Facebook
Blain Myhre was good enough to share this couple of lovely 5 Man Clash items with us a couple of years ago. Blain Myhre
Clash City Collectors | Facebook
The setlist is actually on the other side of the flyer pictured.
It was a great day, and beautiful weather on a DC spring. The next day was a Monday, with the reality that we had to drive back 2 hours south for classes.
40 years ago today, I saw the Clash II in DC
Clash City Collectors | Facebook
The burden of Mythology
City Paper, April 20, 1984
Washington concert review -
2 pages
Return of The Clash
Unicorn Times, May 1984
Washington concert review -
3 pages
The Clash is still a band with a mission
WASHINGTON - It was after I o'clock in the morning and Joe Strummer, lead singer of the intense-ly political British band the Clash was walking down a deserted stretch of sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue, only five blocks from the White House.
Steve Morse, syndicated. Contains concert review
The Clash Official | Facebook
(20) The Clash Washington 1984 - search results | Facebook
'Rock will save the world'
The Dispatch
Sun Apr 29 1984
Steve Morse, syndicated.
Contains concert review
The Clash concert a dispointment
The Hatchet Thursday 12 April 1984 - cover - review
Boston Globe review
THE CLASH REBELS OF ROCK RETURN
Author(s): Steve Morse Date: April 12, 1984
Page: ????? Section: CALENDAR
It is after 1 o'clock in the morning in Washington, D.C. and Joe Strummer, lead singer of the intensely political British band the Clash, is walking down a deserted stretch of sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue, only five blocks from the White House. Stummer's black leather jacket and combat fatigues, his coldly fixed eyes and a stark mohawk haircut, form a fierce impression as he struts toward a nearby bar. His methodical stride is only broken when he looks up in shock to see nine derelicts sleeping under tattered blankets and sleeping bags, lying side by side behind pillars that front a glamorous hair salon.
"What is Reagan doing about people like that?" Strummer snaps tersely, referring to President Ronald Reagan whom he later labels in a barroom interview a member of the old guard who prefers to spend money on nuclear power, instead of people.
Strummer has just turned 30 and just fathered his first child, a daughter Gabbie, but it is clear he has not mellowed. Although he does not read Karl Marx by candlelight as some claim he still believes rock 'n' roll is a force that should change the world, not succumb to it.
"Rock 'n' roll is ours, not theirs," he says, differentiating between the young and old, between Punks and the Establishment, between the Clash and Ronald Reagan.
"That's the vital part of rock 'n' roll. It's got to be ours and not theirs," he says, plopping into a seat in O'Henry's Bar where most customers glare at his mohawk though a bold few ask for his autograph.
"Young people have got to feel that, and that's why I don't agree with the new British Invasion - the Boy Georges, the Duran Durans, Spandau Ballets and even the Eurythmics. I don't agree with it because it's not ours, it's theirs. But the record companies love it. It's video hyped. It's controlled. It's predictable. It's two good songs on an album with eight fillers. It's a ripoff. It's for 10-year-olds."
Obviously Strummer is not pulling any punches. A man with a mission, he's leading the Clash back from a nearly two-year absence during which they've fired charter guitarist Mick Jones, who has since sued the band; hired guitarists Vince White and Nick Sheppard and drummer Pete Howard, all of them 24 years old; and begun a low-key American tour ranging from college gigs to arenas dates at such sites as the Worcester Centrum, where they perform tomorrow, and the Providence Civic Center, where they'll headline next Tuesday over the Boston band the Neighborhoods.
Although the Clash sold a million and a half copies of their last album, "Combat Rock," and had a big dance hit in "Rock the Casbah," a humorous swipe at Ayatollah Khomeini's ban on rock music, they're touring this time without a new record and without much publicity or record label support. There will be a new album out in the autumn.
But the tour is just fine with Strummer, who only wants to prove that the reconstituted Clash are as committed or more so than the vintage Clash that kicked the punk movement into high gear in the late '70s and was hailed as the "rock band that mattered the most."
"We don't accept an audience. We fight for an audience," says Strummer, whose words pour out in a grimly determined rush. "We realize you can't be a stuck-up pussy in London congratulating yourself. You have to scream for an audience if you seriously want to make an alternative to heavy metal and devil worship and all this generic rock. We know we've got to fight. I mean, whoever thought Little Richard's rock 'n' roll could lead to the generic accountants and lawyers playing lead guitar? It's unbelievable, but it's here."
Earlier that night, the Clash had overpowered 4000 hollering fans with a red-hot show at George Washington University. All three new members played as if their lives were on the line, while Strummer barked out six new tunes that marked a turning back from the artiness of recent years to the raw impatience of the band's early days.
Such new songs left no doubt as to Strummer's renewed stridency - "Are You Ready for War?," a blast at capitalistic economies that promote aggression; "This is London," a critique of London as a "human factory farm;" and "Sex- Mad War," a defense of women who have been raped.
While on the topic of winning back early Clash fans, it's interesting to note that new guitarist Vince White, who joined up after answering a blind ad looking for "loud, wild guitarists," had, like many Clash fans, felt the band's sound was getting "too wimpy" during the last three albums, "London Calling," "Sandinista!" and "Combat Rock."
"Yeah," Strummer readily agrees. "I was worried that in our experimental self-indulgences in the studio, we had lost a real hard direction - a ghetto direction, a direction of the sidewalk, of concrete and of hunger."
A ghetto direction was what originally drew Strummer to rock 'n' roll. The son of a British foreign service diplomat, he rebelled against his middle- class upbringing after he heard the Rolling Stones' version of "Not Fade Away" at age 11. From that point on "school did not exist," he says. He later
quit school and bummed on the streets, often running from police who kicked him out of subway stations where he used to sing Bob Dylan protest songs.
"I ended up in a squat (tenement) with a bunch of other no-hopers, and we got a hold of an electric guitar and stole microphones and ripped off some equipment. We literally came out of Desolation Row."
An avowed socialist, romantic idealist and "spunky character" who has run three marathons without training, Strummer quickly became known for his militancy. When he and the Clash played their first American gig at Cambridge's Harvard Square Theater in 1978, he had the audacity to open with "I'm So Bored with the USA," a caustic song written "because I was so bored with the importation of American culture and the way we in Britain buy every damned show you have. Whatever you've got, we get it one year later. I was feeling suffocated." He used the same song to close the George Washington show and was met with great applause.
Today Strummer, however, is mature enough to admit that his militancy has sometimes backfired, especially when the Clash tried to force their CBS record label to put out 1981's three-record album "Sandinista!" for the price of a single album. "The label put the record on the back of the racks. I'd even go so far as to say they sat on it so it wouldn't sell," says Strummer. "They're the same label that has Michael Jackson, so they don't need us."
It was a lesson for Strummer. So when CBS then wanted the tapes of "Combat Rock" remixed, Strummer complied, causing a rift with guitarist Mick Jones that was never repaired. The Clash had spent 18 hours per track trying to mix "Combat Rock" because it was an "unholy mess." But outside producer Glyns Johns was brought in and mixed each track in a mere 40 minutes, resulting in the band's biggest selling album to date.
"I'm not a Don Quixote type who's going to tilt at windmills forever," says Strummer. "I'm a finite man and I've got a finite time at the top. I've got finite opportunities, so I thought, What an honor it is to stand in the spotlight! Don't blow it.'
"The issue is not to make fun of the record company, because the record company doesn't care. The issue is to get your music out to people, not to sit on it. And that's the lesson I learned."
Strummer, however, accuses Jones of living in "a marijuana-induced fairyland where you think it's a great laugh to get the corporation on the hop." Strummer, who quit marijuana last summer and feels a lot better for it, also accuses Jones of being lazy and "preferring to go on holiday rather than tour."
Jones has since formed the group TRAC (Top Risk Action Company) with ex- Clash drummer Topper Headon, but has also sued the Clash, claiming they owe him money. A pending court case has frozen all the band's assets including the $500,000 the band accepted for a single date at the US Festival, much of which was slated to go to charities.
"I don't believe in lawyers. I think it's a dishonorable way to go," says Strummer. "We used to be a gang, a team, and I'd like to think we're (he and Jones) blood brothers beyond lawyers. But no, he wouldn't have it. So I told him, OK, get out, get lost.' And I don't regret it."
Concurring in the decision to eject Jones was charter bassist Paul Simonon, who says he and Jones had long since fallen out even though Strummer was trying to mediate between them.
"If Mick was still in the group, we wouldn't be on tour right now," Simonon said backstage at the George Washington show. "Mick used to accuse our manager Bernie Rhodes of treating us like packhorses, whereas me and Joe would always be excited about the prospect of a new tour because meeting our audience is the main thing, even more important than records."
Despite this sullying of the Clash's spirit, the group's batteries have been recharged by the three new members. None of them has played with well- known bands, so their enthusiasm is all the greater.
Drummer Pete Howard says, "I've been in a lot of bands that were just trying to get in the charts, but the Clash are trying to do something important and that's really unusual." Guitarist Nick Sheppard, who contributes his own licks and doesn't slavishly imitate Jones, adds that "this is a real rock band, so much better than that syntho-pop rubbish."
White, the other new guitarist, praises the Clash for just giving him a chance. He tells the funny story of going to an audition "full of hippies playing Dire Straits licks," but when it was his turn he just got up and wailed. "I was getting more and more bored because I had taken a day off from my warehouse job and was in a bad mood. So I just played some really angry stuff and they called me back and wanted me. From a warehouse to an American tour. I still can't believe it."
But new blood aside, the band's focus remains Strummer.
"I give my life to this, because you have no home life when you're in a band like the Clash," he says. "My father died this year and I should have been at his bedside having that last conversation with him, but that was denied me because we were in Milan on tour playing before 12,000 people for two nights."
As Strummer finishes his beer and the interview, he gets up for a moment while Clash aide-de-camp Kosmo Vinyl marvels from a distance. "I don't know how Joe does it," Vinyl says with a shake of his head. "He's always given everything he has."
Blackmarketclash | Facebook
Extensive archive of articles, magazines and other from the Out of Control Tour, April-May 1984
Archive - Snippets - Press-Releases - US Articles - UK Articles - International Articles - Books, Social Media, 84/85 - Posters - Passes - Memorabilia - Video and audio
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Setlist
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London Calling |
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Extensive archive of articles, magazines and other from the Out of Control Tour, April-May 1984
There are several sights that provide setlists but most mirror www.blackmarketclash.co.uk. They are worth checking.
from Setlist FM (cannot be relied on)
from Songkick (cannot be relied on)
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