That's Family Dog meet at the second annual 'Tribal Stomp' at Monterey Fairgrounds Saturday 8th September 1979 on the very stage Jimi Hendrix abused with his little tin of lighter fuel all those years ago. Ahh history, anh bullshit. What had happened was that at the end of the Hendrix Otis festival the gates were padlocked, barbed wire strung around the arena and armed police refused to let anyone enter or leave until yesterday, the first concert of the Clash 1979 tour of the Americas. Well, naturally a lot of those inside had died, many had gone insane, thinking it was still 1967, and the really clever ones had gravitated to the backstage area where they humped masses of speaker cabinets around or listlessly pushed drum risers from one side of the stage to the other. The musicians had all escaped in private helicopters while impressionable members of the audience carried on applauding and shouting "Far out!" or "Oh brother!" at any onstage activity.

After yesterday's unlocking, the first survivor to make contact with those from outside was Wavy Gravy. Still at his zingy best after so many years in his pert Santa Claus outfit, he demanded the answer to the always pertinent question "What does diddy wah diddy mean?" We lively ones gathered as the Clash arrived to play to the dazed survivors. The more alert peered round to marvel at their bizarre dress and photograph these outrageous English guys' hairstyles.

Well catch these yeehaw! Guys huh? And after this highpoint of cultural exchange, no nation speaking with tongue unto nation, the dozen or so stretcher cases were laid out in front of the stage and, apart from Joe Ely's set, were soothed rather than inspired to anything strenuous. Despite constant reassurances that the arena would fill up, the Clash played to an audience size that would have had Hitler thinking twice about invading high garnet, never mind England, if he'd drawn as well at Nuremberg. Conspicuous by their absence they were. Still, they did their best to goddamwell bop when the Clash came out. "This is punk rock, huh? Well lemme jus show these boys what us American punk rockers can do. Yessurr. Out my way boy." Unfortunately, the time out which belongs he's got to work out his complicated reaction, your punk rockers sorted into another number and all over again.

When these people go ape they don't pogo but pull out a gun and wipeout their neighbors. The rebel yell and Eddie Cochran is in the mists of antiquity and rock roll was rather than inspired. The band were competent, rather buhow's going down the road apiece. The liaison between band and promoters, incidentally, was founder of American R.A.R., and runs a politico rock magazine along the lines of Temporary Hoarding. Unfortunately, he undermines the credibility of his good works by acting the complete acid casualty. Watch out for that brown acid, man. Next week - Minneapolis with forked 'm so bored with the U.S.A. Me too, brother shoot. And other misspelt American towns in the night, the postcards home, the noises (coming, honest) and what's behind the fear and loathing behind the who the hell are you? Behind the 'raht narce tuh meet yuh'? Meanwhile concert, bye from the Wowtorstomp Promoter

Clash - Part of the Clash crew t-shirt design.

6th October, 1979 - New Musical Express, By Ray Lowry

One-off, Johnny Hestivs was blasted before the Clash came out and shredded the New York Palladium second-night audience with magnificent rock and roll. Opinions vary as to which shows stand out, but every time I’ve sat down in the audience to witness the Clash, it’s clear they are shouldering the weight of rock and roll for the rest of the world. They are doing it so well on so many levels that predecessors and contemporaries seem like slobs and jerks in comparison.

But on with the tour. From Boston to New York on a bus called "Arpeggia," fueled by great feeds like they used to make. The New York audiences were expensive and demanding, but after the Undertones and Sam & Dave got them boiling, they went outrageous for the Clash, shouting and applauding like mad.

After New York, I became embroiled in the ongoing saga of the new backdrops. This involved spending most of September 29 hunting for a 40-foot piece of sackcloth to replace the previous one. It was a fruitless mission, ending in frustration as I could only find a small boxy substitute. For all I know, the sackcloth has since been chopped into small pieces and hurled around as relics.

THE BIG CRAB APPLE

Meanwhile, after a brief stopover in Philadelphia, where fans clapped their hands together for so long that encores were fired off like cannonballs, Joe Strummer had to come out after the set to explain that they couldn’t play any more. The next day was rough—mostly spent nursing hangovers, occasionally crying into my hands while shoveling periodic quantities of water and pain pills into my system.

NEOVASTERY AND THE SOILED PILLOWS TOUR

Philadelphia left its mark, but New York was something else entirely. The Clash delivered electrifying performances at the Palladium, weaving new material like "The Right Profile," "Guns of Brixton," and "Revolution Rock" seamlessly into their older catalog. The result was a fresh yet familiar set that proved this band is still rock and roll royalty. They’re setting standards so high that any criticism from English detractors feels hollow compared to their admirable achievements.

Next week: The Meaning of Life. This corrected version organizes the text into coherent sections while maintaining its original tone and content. It highlights key moments from The Clash's 1979 U.S. tour, including their performances in New York and Philadelphia, as well as some behind-the-scenes struggles with logistics and exhaustion.

13th October, 1979, Clash USA '79 By Ray Lowry

Atlanta, Georgia, October 1st

I forgot to mention Philadelphia's mutants—more disturbing-looking people than even Liverpool or Warrington can boast. People with noses in their ears and hands growing out of the sides of their heads, dripping. Heads like hairy sunsets over the paraffin pillows stuffed down. There’s a metal statue of these people ostentatiously displayed. All that was left behind on to Montreal and Toronto on September 26th. The Clash aspired to the level of England, and this meant a lot for this tour.

Although from Joe, the long-awaited stage at the end of the Centre in Toronto, their legs were like a handful of stones. Faces like jelly and flaming complexions like beds. Walking potatoes with holes where their heads should be, smeared all over them like a giant clothes peg.

The Clash bus clogged for two shows on the 25th. Canuck audiences visibly displayed enthusiasm, with the first serious gobbing after a touching request. Distance throat clearing invaded the set at O'Keefe, where about twenty or thirty seats died. That's New Pop.

THIS IS AN AMAZING TOUR

The Americans had "Give 'Em Enough Rope" as the first official album release (although The Clash is said to have sold in vast quantities as an import). An amended version of the first album has only recently been released, but the lights are going on over people's heads all over the place, and the political message has obviously been picked up by many of the punters who try to get their messages of goodwill through at the end of each show.

"What I saw in the band was a concentration of all the pain and outrage lodged in my gut." To many, of course, it's just a great rock and roll show. Guided by some infallible rock and roll tribal consciousness, The Clash are looking more than ever like the bastard offspring of Eddie Cochran out of Gene Vincent and a Harley Davidson.

It’s dumbfounding to see the most intelligent, positive rock and roll on earth at present being presented nightly by a band who look like the wild ones who haunted the troubled skies of the fifties. America is being reminded of how rock and roll looks, as well as how it’s never sounded before. A girl hesitantly unveiled two oil paintings of Mick and Paul in Monterey; she was face to face with different incarnations.

But there's much more going on here than that. American kids are being given the rude awakening that was so swiftly pooh-poohed by vested interests when it happened in England. After Canada, it's marathon drives again to Worcester, Massachusetts, and Maryland—more images of America being given the message: London's calling to faraway towns.

To the abandoned drive-ins and big Macs like sleeping dinosaurs in the fog at the side of the truck stop, to the gas attendant in yellow at the all-night doorway, to the uneasy sleep of cities, to the people.

Rolling Stone has just printed the album review that was needed here in 1977. This is the beginning of the end for many things.

NEXT WEEK: WAR WITH THE U.S.S.R. This version corrects spelling errors, punctuation issues, and improves overall readability while maintaining the original message's intent and style.

The Clash are in Chicago where the streets can be intimidating if you're a goddam wimp, English white boy like me. Battered, old pimp mobiles glide around like wounded animals and the taxi style resembles seventeen size two hundred with a girder Dr. Martens for a fender. Slapped MADE IN HONG KONG style and paint scheme complete with tinted windows and driver, the false start of Monterey.

AND ON TO CHICAGO

Where I hide behind a double-locked door from the violence and intimidation which is room service emptying the ashtrays. A body of steel bridges roughly banged together from scrap metal and excess over lengths of junk. Haphazardly, rows of sewage and worse delivered The Clash to their first Chicago gig. The Aragon Ballroom is the American ranch with the Albert Hall setting it down in Blackpool this week and calling in the hordes. And love the Cloggies! The Undertones and Bo Diddley stoked up the rampant insanity and by the time The Clash darkened the stage, beat-up amplifiers...

CHICAGO CALLING

Kicked into things. Minneapolis where it rains a fair amount. Undertones and David Johannson supported and it became clear Americans do still care about Rock Music. The Brits finally, and though it's bad news for English isolation, The Clash got lost over here. Fuckers like me can example every bit as much as the horrendous alternatives doing the rounds and the impracticability of the rock and roll population. Common sense says that they have to get out here periodically to stamp their authority on the Cowboys.

Had finished their set and the audience melted down into a heap of steaming insides and thrashing around the theatre. Songs like The Right Profile, Guns of Brixton, Revolution Rock infiltrated into the older material and made for a great Clash set. This band is still rock and roll, they're setting the standards and are still so nasty. Any of the popular English criticisms of them pale against their admirable achievements. GOT TO MOVE NOW - NEXT WEEK THE MEANING OF LIFE, to be continued...

This corrected text appears to be a review or personal account of The Clash's performance at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago on September 14, 1979

What am I doing here? I got on this tour because I wanted to do some paintings about rock and roll. About what shows are like. The light and the lights, the audiences, the performers from the audience point of view, the stage. I had an idea that I could convey something that the camera and the kind of heroic, icon-like images that most rock and roll paintings have been concerned with, perhaps couldn't. That was a month and a continent ago and I've had plenty of second thoughts along the way. Simply being out of England at a time when things are getting tougher is obviously guilt-inducing. I've stood among American audiences or at the side of the stage on many nights through this tour wondering what the hell I was doing here and why the Clash were away from England as another winter and all that entails, closes in. I'm massively compromised of course, but it's never going to be 1977 again, there's such a transparent desire by the band that they galvanize the audiences out here into doing something for themselves, (what they've always been striving for in England) and the fact is that if there's anything honest and worth caring about in contemporary music, it's still best embodied in this band. And paintings. Do paintings matter at all? At the moment, I don't know.

SINCE ATLANTA, Georgia, the band have played five shows in seven nights through Texas to Los Angeles taking in the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin (one of the few American towns I've seen that I could imagine living in) Dallas and its schoolbook Depository, horrible Houston and Lubbock with Buddy Hollymania. Joe Ely has been supporting again, through Texas. It's supposed to be heresy to say so but he could be a great rocker if he got a tight band instead of the usual pedal-steel, accordion, kitchen sink and all mod cons arrangement that he has at present. After the Austin show on the 4th, he did a spot of jamming with a local band plus one M. Jones and one N. Headon for one number (Be-Bop-A-Lula) running through a bunch of straight old rockers like That's Alright, Whole Lotta Shakin' etc., in a local boozebar. Good stuff which I'd like to see him do with his own band. The Clash show in The Armadillo was a good one - the club has a nice atmosphere and I nicked a Coors beer jug. By Houston, on the fifth, I was walking in my sleep and I vaguely remember the show. Pennie Smith flew back to England with vast numbers of Clash photographs. It's a great pity that only a small percentage can be used by the weekly music press.

DALLAS, on the sixth, was another big city, another small gig, but a well-won audience and a look at the spot where John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The book depository is far closer to the point where the bullets hit the Presidential limousine than films of the event ever indicate and standing on the road in bright sunlight it's hard to believe that people wouldn't have spotted Oswald and any accomplices and nabbed them within minutes. A very surprising place and oddly disturbing to see traffic trundling along the short stretch of road and into the underpass as though nothing special had ever happened there.

What happened in Lubbock on the seventh, was that after the show at the Rox nearly everyone got wasted in their chosen fashion and made a middle of the night visit to Buddy Holly's gravestone. This was my great error of the tour because I was in such a zombie-like state that I went to sleep right after the show and missed, what to me, should have been an essential trip. Dreadful time to get knackered but I'm completely well again now and rode the famed Route 66 to Los Angeles on the famous Arpeggio rock and roll bus. The band flew it. What a bunch of softies! NEXT WEEK: I WALK HOME

P.S. I believe they're cramming their itches into smaller spaces. Write to complain now.

I GROW MY FINGERNAILS LONG SO THEY CLICK WHEN I PLAY WHITE RIOT! JOE ELY COWBOY PUNK

Clash USA '79 Final Curtain

The final scene was farce with flight-home time nearer & no plane tickets, no luggage nobody ready, no idea what was happening. An hour or so before flight time attempts at organization were abandoned in favour of personal salvation and a dash to the plane. The band didn't make it. What does this mean?

My last dispatch was suppressed by the authorities but chronicled Clash shows in Austin Texas on the 4th October. Clash quadruped Dallas on the 5th, President Killers with Houston the world! And Lubbock on the 7th as Hollymania sweeps Clash as all this was, I've only space here to write tour from Lubbock, the band flew, and the alcoholics bussed (via Route 66) to Los Angeles and the wildest show of the whole tour. The Hollywood Palladium audience looked different - as mean and nasty and posy looking as an English audience and were determined to go all over anything onstage that wasn't the Clash and to hurl a good bit on them as well. Joe Ely (a constant presence on this tour) and the (Rockabilly) Rebels played through non-stop abuse and spit and the Mi Ely band made them a dustbin of water which understandably made the front rows even more hostile to anything on the stage a lot of this was the ritual belligerence that audiences everywhere.

I keep my fingernails long so they click when I play White Riot.

Joe Ely Cowboy Punk

At the Armadillo World Headquarters trash armoured, burrowing Clash assassinate on the 6th arsehole of - Bullocks to Lubbock Bus! Interesting and informative of the last five dates of the think that they have to display, and the Clash came on to great cheers mass jumping up and down, surges on to the stage, fighting, cursing, spitting and stomping ass (obscure Americanism - see also Gittin' Down and Kickin' Ass). At the end of the set with Joe Ely, the Rebels, a few dozen of the audience one shoulderson liggers the stage plus a constant stream of bodies being hurled off into the pulsating mass, the hall looked like one of those big Cecil B. DeMille blowouts just before Samson comes out and pulls the roof down or Moses enters on a mountain top with a message from God for all the fornicating sinners down below. Good show. San Francisco (13 Oct), Seattle (15) and Vancouver, all tried but couldn't really match Los Angeles, San Francisco was a great show but the audience were a bit less boisterous than L.A. Don't ask, Seattle, I didn't remember too much of it. Vancouver (16) a drink all night and was a quiet end to the tour with Joe Strummer again railing against passive audiences stealing his soul. The paradox here, of course, is that the reward for going over the top and showing ultimate enthusiasm by clambering on stage bundled off and out of (as the Lone Groover kind of was asking recently) is jumping up and down any intelligent response to music that aspires to deal with reality.

Questions, questions back home... and already sick of making plans for Nigel and the Seung at night and authoritarian violence near and so personal again, the soptimism and the naive hope that this optimisock and roll upsurge was actually going to change anything has gone, of course, but it's still issues cake return inward anoughnereto the pop hat the Clash ferest, or revile them that field of inte ferturn the government music failing to overturn the allash packed identomorrow we'd for fail if there le living the sole t aspires to lose roll a be anything more plescapism and they'd be andan blind es bluby something infinitely less worthy within thin weeks. I'd like to be back on the bus with the last rock 'n' roll band.

I've Heard of Elvis Presley, A Rebel I was sick beneath the Hollywood Tiggers Cans Prameri Sign - I vomited that other S of America Ca

By Ray Lowry