Let's Go Burning Down the Road

I've posted this song before, Generations by Electric Dog House, a song I find inexplicably great, one of those songs that just hits the spot. 

Generations

Electric Dog House were a Joe Strummer one- off from his time in Los Angeles in the late 90s, a three piece band of Joe, ex- Damned drummer Rat Scabies and Seggs from The Ruts. Joe and Rat had met at a Ministry gig and then on Grosse Point Blanke and formed Electric Dog House recording a grand total of one song- Generations. It came out on an album also called Generations: A Punk Rock Look At Human Rights (Green Day, Bad Brains, some members of X and various other bands appear). The CD is front loaded- Joe, Rat and Seggs are track one and Generations also appeared as a CD single in promo form in 1997, presumably for radio stations. Electric Dog House don't even get a mention in Chris Salewicz's biography of Joe, Redemption Song, but the song did turn up on 001, a solo career retrospective from 2018. 

The song is fantastic- rattling and alive sounding, the drums and bass bouncing round the overloaded mix, Joe's guitar all blurry and fuzzy, two or three chords and a wonderful vocal, Joe singing a typically Strummer- esque opening line, 'Back in the day/ even circles were squares', and including some more very Strummer sounding imagery- radio waves, telegraph keys, demonstrations, cities, wars and buying pyjamas for your four year old girl- with a refrain that summons up visions of LA smog, sunsets and highways, 'Let's go burning down the road'. The mix is muddy in places, the insturments pile up twoadrs the end with no separation between them, and some people would have applied more production to it, smoothed it out and given it a radio friendly punch. It would be worse for it. 

The video  is perfectly apt too- Joe, Rat and Seggs in the studio, grainy home video footage, marchers, Joe's 50s car cruising the streets, his England flag with the word Irie stenciled across the St. George's cross and messages about human rights. 

Fifty Minutes Of Soundtrack Saturday

2025's year long Saturday series Soundtrack Saturday has reached the final reel but before the credits roll it seemed that a Sunday mix of various songs and scores from the various film soundtracks I've written about would make a good Sunday mix. This is the result, seventeen tracks from sixteen films, sequenced with something approaching a narrative arc- it starts out in the desert with Harry Dean Stanton tramping round the dust, stays out west for while and then shifts to Tokyo, sleeplessness and jet lag. We jump around some other locations- Long Island, France, Memphis- and have visions of a post- apocalyptic USA before the climax, a death, some levity and then Rutger Hauer in the rain. 

The photo at the top is of Stretford Essoldo, a former cinema just up the road from me, a beautiful 1930s building that has been sadly empty and unused for decades. 

Fifty Minutes Of Soundtrack Saturday

• Ry Cooder: Cancion Mixteca
• Ennio Morricone: Watch Chimes
• Bob Dylan: Billy 7
• Joe Strummer: Tennessee Rain
• Tom Waits: Jockey Full Of Bourbon
• Kevin Shields: Intro- Tokyo
• Kevin Shields: City Girl
• Mick Jones: Long Island
• David Holmes: I Think You Flooded It
• John Lurie: Tuesday Night In Memphis
• Gabriel Yared: 37 Degrees 2 Le Matin
• Nick Cave and Warren Ellis: The Road
• John Barry: Theme From Midnight Cowboy
• Brian Eno: Deep Blue Day
• Son House: Death Letter Blues
• B.J. Thomas: Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head
• Vangelis: Tears In Rain

Cancion Mixteca is from Paris, Texas, Wim Wenders' 1984 film, a Ry Cooder soundtrack with some dialogue from the film that stands up as an album in its own right.  

Watch Chimes is from Sergio Leone's For A Few Dollars More, the second installment of the Dollars trilogy, released in 1967. 

Billy is from Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, Sam Peckinpah's 1973 Western, Bob Dylan contributing the soundtrack and appearing in the film. 

Joe Strummer did the soundtrack for Walker, Alex Cox's 1987 Western- one of Joe's best 'wilderness years' songs. 

A Jockey Full Of Bourbon appears in Down By Law, Jim Jarmusch's 1986 film- Tom Waits is one of the three stars of the film as well as being a key part of the soundtrack. 

Intro- Tokyo and City Girl are from Lost In Translation, Sofia Coppola's 2003 film, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson lost in Tokyo. 

Mick Jones provided three tracks for the 1993 film Amongst Friends- Long Island is the most complete, a Jones solo song. 

I Think You Flooded It is from Out Of Sight, the first of many David Holmes- Steven Soderbergh soundtrack collaborations, released in 1998. 

John Lurie's score for Mystery Train had to compete with some big hitters- Elvis' Mystery Train for one, Roy Orbison's Domino for another. A second Jim Jarmusch film in this mix- the use of music is central to Jarmusch's films. 

Gabriel Yared's guitar playing is from the soundtrack to Betty Blue, another late 80s film that made a deep impression on me- Beatrice Dalle made quite an impression too. 

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' soundtrack work spans all sorts of movies and documentaries. They began with the soundtrack to 2009 film The Road, a harrowing version of Cormac McCarthy's equally harrowing novel. 

Theme From Midnight Cowboy is gorgeous, a John Barry highpoint from a composer who recorded dozens of soundtracks. That harmonica. Stunning. 

Brian Eno's soundtrack work is wide and varied and an Eno only soundtrack mix would definitely work- Deep Blue Day is from the 1996 film Trainspotting but originally on Another Green World, Eno's 1975 album. 

Son House's Death Letter Blues is from 1965, just Son and a metal bodied resonator guitar. It's a stunning song and performance, Son's lyrics and performance can chill to the bone. It appeared on the soundtrack to On The Road, the  2012 version of Jack Kerouac's novel. 

B.J. Thomas' Raindrops Keep falling On My Head was a worldwide smash following its appearance in the 1969 film Butch Cassady And The Sundance Kid. The song is probably what the film is best known for, along with the two stars- Robert Redford and Paul Newman- and the famous shoot out ending. 

At the end of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's 1982 sci fi/ film noir version of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Rutger Hauer sits on top of a crumbling building in the rain, holding a dove and improvises a farewell speech as Harrison Ford slumps in front of him, his life saved. 'All these moments will be lost in time', Hauer says as Vangelis' synth score plays. But they're not are they- they replay endlessly, equally moving each time. 

Forty Five Years Ago

Forty five years ago yesterday, 12th December 1980, The Clash released Sandinista! London Calling is the best Clash album, the received wisdom goes (and I can't really disagree), the punk purists might go for the self- titled debut and in terms of sales and going global Combat Rock brought the band to a mass audience and hit singles (eventually even a number 1, thanks to 1991's Levi's advert) but Sandinista! is for me the band's greatest achievement, a huge piece of work that shows how far and how fast they were moving, demonstrates their ambition and refusal to be boxed in by punk orthodoxy, their willfulness and sense of adventure and experimentation. Thirty six songs spread over six sides of vinyl recorded in London, Manchester, Jamaica and New York, it is, as Joe Strummer said in Westway To The World, 'a magnificent achievement, warts and all... I wouldn't change a thing about it'. The greatest triple album of them all. 

Releasing a triple album in mid- December might not have been the wisest move- print journalists with weekly deadlines struggled to get their heads around it or even listen to all of it. It got some poor reviews and adverse reactions but the band reveled in it. Joe liked to believe they were getting one over on CBS, a triple album for the price of a single one (although the band had to forego royalties on it until it hit 200, 000 sales in the UK and took a 50% cut everywhere else). Mick said it was an album for people who couldn't get to the record shops very often, people working on 'oil rigs or Arctic stations'. It is an album which gave up its rewards gradually, revealing something different on each and every listen. Some songs could be completely overlooked, unheard almost, until one day, they suddenly connected. 

It is Clash democracy at its height. Every member of the band has a lead vocal. All four members have song writing credits. It is self- produced, with London Calling's Bill Price mixing and Jerry Green engineering. Mikey Dread, who worked with them at Pluto in Manchester recording Bankrobber (arguably the genesis of Sandinista!) is on hand for the dub tracks (and they make up a good chunk of the album with much of side six and various other dub and reggae influenced songs). Mick's girlfriend Ellen Foley sings, Joe's old mate Tymon Dogg plays and sings, two Blockheads play (Norman Watt- Roy deputising for an absent Paul Simonon on some songs and Mickey Gallagher from the live gigs and London Calling plays keys), Voidoid Ivan Julien plays guitar and cartoonist Steve Bell contributed to the enclosed newspaper/ lyrics sheet The Armagideon Times. Even Mickey Gallagher's kids sing on two songs. It's a monster, bigger even than it sounds when described in writing. It's a mixtape, a compilation album by one band, an audio diary, a radio show, two and a half hours of music that skips from one genre to another with ease... 'it's triply outrageous', said Joe. 

It covers every style of music the band could throw at it and some more besides. Side one bounces into earshot as soon as the needle hits the groove, the rap- rock of The Magnificent Seven showing where they were at. Mick was inspired by the hip hop sounds he heard while in New York, by pirate radio and block parties. He began wearing baseball caps and Cazal 607 glasses. Joe's words are surreal and superb, a riot of phrases torn from newspapers with a cast including Martin Luther King, Karl Marx, Freidrich Engels, Mahatma Gandhi, Richard Nixon, Rin Tin Tin and Plato. The grind of work, Italian mobsters, TVs in cars, cheeseburgers, vacuum cleaners sucking up budgies, police brutality... it all flies by in a blur, a Joe Strummer live commentary while channel surfing. It's followed by Mick's tribute to UK indie labels Hitsville UK, a Motown backbeat and Ellen Foley on lead vox and then Joe's cover of Junco Partner, revived from 101'ers days with Style Scott on drums (future Dub Syndicate/ On U Sound). Topper sings the lead on Ivan Meets GI Joe, the Clash imaging a Cold War face off at Studio 54 (and if I'm honest the one song I could probably lose from Sandinista! without really missing it). The Leader, a two minute rockabilly rumble about the tabloid press and the Profumo affair comes next, the band crooning the chorus, 'Cos you gotta give the people something good to read/ On a Sunday. 

Something About England closes side one, a truly great achievement of a song, the history of the 20th century as seen through the eyes of a homeless man (Joe), trading lines and verses with Mick (as a man leaving the pub and tripping over 'a dirty overcoat'. The opening lines run as true in 2025 as they did in 1980, more so in fact- 'They say the immigrants steal the hubcaps of respected gentlemen/ They say it would be wine and roses/ If England were for Englishmen again'. I'm willing to bet that there's a significant number of middle aged men in this country who support Farage, Robinson, the flag and roundabout bullshit and rising tide of racism in this country while also claiming to be Clash fans. I wonder if they've heard Something About England. 

Something About England

Rap, disco, rockabilly, Gumbo blues, music hall, Motown... side 1 throws itself around like a radio station on shuffle mode. Side two picks up the baton and sprints. Rebel Waltz, a beautiful Joe Strummer lament for young men enlisted to wars and destined to never come home, drifts by, between sleep and wakefulness, waltz crossed with folk dub. Rebel Waltz is the spirit of Sandinista! bottled. Look Here, a cover of Mose Alison jazz passes by and then Paul's bass rumbles in with The Crooked Beat, a dub tribute to South London blues parties, Paul doing his best gap- toothed vocal. As The Crooked Beat dissolves in Mikey Dread dub FX, Mick's guitars squeal in, tyres screeching and engines racing, the sleek modern rock of Somebody Got Murdered, inspired by a sight Joe saw in New York, the straightest rock song on the whole album and a band at the height of their powers. Side 2 ends with the double punch of One More Time/ One More Dub, Clash dub reggae at its finest, Mikey Dread at the controls and Joe invoking the civil rights movement, 'One more time in the ghetto/ One more time to be free'.

Rebel Waltz

Put disc one back in its sleeve, make a brew and come back for disc two. The needle settles onto side three and we're back into New York rap/ funk Clash, Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice). Then there's another minor Clash gem, Mick's Up In Heaven (Not Only Here), a spiky punk rock song with a lovely lead guitar line and lyrics about 'the towers of London', crumbling tower blocks, social housing, unloved walkways, piss filled lifts, cages for families to live in. Three verses, no chorus, Mick sounding as good as he ever did. Corner Soul is more heartfelt Clash, off kilter reggae rock, Ellen Foley's voice underlining Strummer's. Let's Go Crazy is the result of the band thinking they could record in any style they wanted- in this case, gospel, bringing Caribbean church music and Notting Hill carnival into The Clash's world. If Music Could Talk is more dub but with Gary Barnacle's saxophone, two vocals, one in each channel, and the drums from Bankrobber. Side three ends with The Sound Of The Sinners, more gospel, Joe as the preacher singing call and response with the choir. Side 3 is Sandinista! to the max, The Clash throwing everything at the wall and seeing what would stick. It turns out, forty five years later, almost all of it sticks. 

Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)

Side four is heavy duty Clash, all six songs complementing each other, a run of great and largely under acknowledged tunes. It kicks off with a cover of The Equals' Police On My Back, Mick singing breathlessly, and then we get the Midnight Log shuffle, rocking drums from the 1950s, harmonica, two minutes of pre- 60s murkiness. The Equaliser has Tymon Dogg's fiddle on top of serious dub grooves, Jamaican influences to the fore- one of those tunes that Sandinista! suddenly throws up as a lost gem. Three beauties follow- The Call Up, Washington Bullets and Broadway- sequenced together at the end of disc two, lost in the middle of Sandinista! Songs about conscription, the Cold War, Victor Jara's murder in Chile at the hands of US sponsored death squads, the FSLN (the socialists who overthrew the dictator Somoza in Nicaragua and then faced an uprising by armed guerrillas, the Contras, backed by Reagan's CIA, with Joe finding the album's title at the end of the song as he sings out, 'woah oh Sandinista!'. On Broadway Joe is lost and alone in a bar in New York at six in the morning. He sounds exhausted, as the band play a late night tune, somewhere between blues and jazz, a bit Tom Waitsian. You can hear Manhattan- the lights, the taxis, misted up windows and rain bouncing off pavements, pianos and jerky rhythms- and then it all clicks and snaps into focus, Joe eventually hitting the groove, 'I can't see the light... I can't see the light... give me a push give me a pull...' The song gives way to a burst of Mickey Gallagher's kids singing Guns Of Brixton before one of them says, snippily, 'that's enough singing now'. 

Broadway

Loads of bands would have left it there. Four sides of vinyl and Broadway works as a final song as well as any, a full stop, an ending. The Clash though had decided they were making a triple album. They obsessed over the number three- three discs, six sides, thirty six songs. Disc three steps up to the turntable and side five offers plenty more to discover, more lost gems, deep cuts and secret best songs. Lose This Skin is possibly the least Clash sounding song they ever recorded, Tymon Dogg's violinin the lead and Tymon on vocals. Someone once said it's the most skipped Clash song. Hmmm. Maybe. Charlie Don't Surf is next, inspired by Apocalypse Now! with a dubbed out, backwards intro, helicopter blades and gliding funk rock. Then there's Mensforth Hill, Sandinista's most out there song, Something About England played backwards with FX dropped in. No stone unturned in their quest for breaking new ground. No idea to daft to try. Junkie Slip is urgent and tense. Kingston Advice is more Clash dub reggae, a lost gem and one of their best dub tracks. The bass bumps, Topper's drumming swings, Joe sounds at his best. There's even better to come, tucked away at the end of side five is The Street Parade, a hymn to anonymity, a song about the joy of being lost in the crowd. On The Street Parade they invent some new kind of new musical genre, a Latin American/ Caribbean/ punk/ dub hybrid, joyous but with a edge of melancholy, horns, marimba, guitars and Topper's kick drum, with a rousing vocal from Joe and the sense that the band are saying, 'here we are, thirty songs in and we're still giving you something you've not heard before, are you still listening?'

The Street Parade

Side six is dub, Mick and Mikey going for it in the studio, Joe in the Spliff Bunker (a hideaway constructed from flight cases where he could write lyrics) and the clock ticking into the small hours. It starts with Version City, a strange song that opens with tapes slowing down and speeding up and a radio announcer and then what becomes a slightly haunting song, a bit of jazz and some blues. Living In Fame is a dub of If Music Could Talk with Mikey Dread toasting. Silicone On Sapphire is a dub of Washington Bullets, the rhythm track stretched and bent, the tune mangled and a voice dimly audible. It comes to a halt and Version Pardner rides in, a dub of Junco Partner (from side one), Style Scott back on drums. The kids, Luke and Ben Gallagher, appear for a brief run through  Career Opportunities. Two and a half hours have slipped by, thirty five songs, taking in rock, jazz, blues, gumbo, disco, rap, reggae, dub, gospel, punk and more besides, and the end has come- Sandinista! concludes with Shepherd's Delight, more dubbed out weirdness, noises and FX, tissue paper on a comb, the hint of a tune, the suggestion of the chords from 1977's Police And Thieves, a low key, mellow way to finish this mammoth undertaking and in some way, utterly fitting, totally 1980 Clash. Sandinista! runs out with a small burst of noise, fading away. Viva The Clash! Viva Sandinista! 

Silicone On Sapphire

The Universe Smiles Upon You

Nothing says Friday like a porcelain Victorian statue in a spa town pump house of a mermaid riding a dopey looking sea creature. Am I right?

Given the ongoing binfire of politics at home here it the UK and abroad it was cheering this week to see the result of the mayoral election in New York. The victory of Zohran Mamdani, a Ugandan born Muslim elected on a platform of rent freezes, universal childcare and free bus travel, is a lovely thing to see- and the fact he did it by sticking a pair of (metaphorical) middle fingers up to Trump even more so. It all put me in mind of this Dean Wareham song from 2021...

The Past Is Our Plaything

Meanwhile Khruangbin, ten years on from their debut album The Universe Smiles Upon You, have suddenly (yesterday) released a new version of that album, the ten tracks re- recorded and re- sequenced, new versions of old songs, the funky, mainly instrumental, gentle psychedelia of the three- piece out as The Universe Smiles Upon You ii. It's at Bandcamp. By coincidence I've recently gone back to last year's Khruangbin album A La Sala with this song especially standing out, May Ninth on November Seventh- and if that doesn't bring a little ray of summer sunshine into dark and gloomy November nothing will. 

May Ninth

That Khruangbin track may well be in my record bag tomorrow as I make my way up to Todmorden for another Flightpath Estate DJ outing at The Golden Lion. The line up is us, Steve Cobby and then A Love From Outer Space (Sean Johnston's autumnal ALFOS at The Golden Lion is legendary). Since we accepted the gig real life has intervened for some members of the Flightpath Estate DJ team so we are down to a bare bones, reduced squad tomorrow- mainly me flying solo with hopefully Dan turning up to bring some dub. If you fancy some afternoon/ early evening sounds with a pint, I'm on from 4- ish, playing the kind of stuff you hear here day in, day out. 

Last time we DJed there I threw Martin completely by leaving him to follow this Joe Strummer B-side, from the 1989 Island Hopping 12". Mango Street is a largely instrumental extended version of the song with spoons percussion, catgut guitar, whistling and Strummer at his most chilled out and playful. 

Mango Street

Monday's Long Song

Today's long song comes in conjunction with Saturday's Apocalypse Now! post. A photo kept popping up in some of my social media feeds last week, a photo of Sean Flynn (below on the right).

Sean Flynn was the son of Errol Flynn and Lili Damita. Being the son of Errol Flynn, one of Hollywood's most famous stars (not to mention a notorious party animal and womaniser) must have had quite an impact on young Sean. His mother was a dancer, model, singer and actor. Before she met and married Errol she'd been in a relationship with Prince Louis Ferdinand, grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Trying to find your way through all of that as a teenager must have been interesting. Sean grew up and tried acting but got bored of it and in the mid- 60s he decided to become a freelance photojournalist. In 1966 he went to Vietnam. His photos of the war in Vietnam were soon being published in Time Life and Paris Match. Sean became part of a risk taking group of American photojournalists who wanted to take what they saw as the best pictures. This meant going into combat alongside US troops sometimes. 

Sean and friend/ colleague Dana Stone whizzed around South Vietnam on rented Honda motorbikes, wore military fatigues and took high risk jobs, going out on patrol with US soldiers. In March '66 he was wounded in the knee and a month later while out with the Green Berets they were ambushed by the Viet Cong. Sean and the platoon fought their way out of trouble, Flynn using an M16 assault rifle a Green Beret had given him. He later made a parachute jump with the 101st Airborne and helped an Australian platoon who he'd been photographing by identifying a mine and warning them. After spending part of 1967 covering the Arab- Israeli War he was back in Vietnam in 1968, photographing the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. He was struck by grenade fragments in a battle near Da Nang. It's probably fair to say that he blurred the lines around photojournalism and impartiality. I'm not sure Sean saw himself as impartial. He went to Vietnam to photograph American soldiers and he lived with them and among them while there. 

In 1970 Nixon invaded Cambodia as part of his attempts to end the war in Vietnam- some nicely contradictory policies there from President Nixon. Sean and Dana crossed the border into Cambodia on their motorbikes. They encountered a VC roadblock and decided they wanted to interview some VC. According to witnesses (other American journalists at the scene, ones who chose to travel by car rather than motorbike) Sean and Dana went up to the Viet Cong soldiers, were relieved of their motorbikes and then marched into a treeline. They were never seen again and their bodies were never found. The VC and Cambodian communist fighters the Khmer Rouge were responsible for kidnapping and killing several journalists around the time- it seems that Sean Flynn and Dana Stone were two of these. Sean's mother Lili spent a fortune trying to find her son. He was legally declared dead in 1984. She died a decade later. Errol was already gone- he died in 1959. 

Sean Flynn's story was part of Michael Herr's book Dispatches, a six part account of Herr's time in Vietnam in 1967/68. Dispatches is part journalism/ part fiction and was first published in 1977, a key text in the New Journalism. He also contributed to the script for Apocalypse Now! Dispatches and Apocalypse Now! were on The Clash's reading lists and film nights. Joe was fascinated by the Vietnam War, America's failure and the nation's guilt over it. 

The Clash spent months in New York in 1980 and 1981, recording some of the tracks that became Sandinista! in '80 and playing seventeen concerts at Bonds Casino in 1981. They met a Vietnam veteran, Larry McIntyre, who'd had both his legs blown off in Vietnam (as referenced in Combat Rock's Car Jamming). They wrote Charlie Don't Surf about Vietnam and inspired by Apocalypse Now! They wrote Washington Bullets about US foreign policy, the Cold War, Afghanistan and US actions in Cuba, Chile and Nicaragua. Straight To Hell included a verse about a child in Vietnam, fathered by an American soldier and refused permission to join him in the USA, left behind in post- war Vietnam. Joe found plenty of subject matter in Vietnam and in 1981 back in London, wrote a song inspired by Sean Flynn. 

Sean Flynn (Extended 'Marcus Music' Version)

The original version is over seven minutes long (cut down by producer Glyn Johns to four minutes for Combat Rock). In fact Sean Flynn may have been the song that tipped Bernie Rhodes over the edge when he complained 'does everything have to be a raga?!'. Strummer then used this too for the opening line to Rock The Casbah ('Now the king he told the boogie men/ You have to let that raga drop').

Musically and tonally, Sean Flynn (like Death Is A Star, also on Combat Rock) is a million miles from Career Opportunities and 1976, a song that shows how far the band traveled in just five years. Mick's guitar is covered in echo and FX, multiple guitars overdubbed over Topper's South Asian inspired drums and percussion. Gary Barnacle's saxophone wails away in the background, soundtracking Joe's existential ruminations. He sings some way off in the distance, low in the mix.... 

'You know he heard the drums of war

When the past was a closing door

The drums beat into the jungle floor

The past was always a closing door

Rain on the leaves and the soldiers sing

You never never hear anything

They filled the sky with a tropical storm

You know he heard the drums of war

Each man knows what he's searching for'

The full length version, the Marcus Music version (so- called as it was recorded at Marcus Music studios in April 1981), is an extraordinary Clash song, a real lost gem. It's atmospheric and experimental, Strummer writing an imagined poetic version of Flynn and his life and disappearance in South East Asia and Mick, Topper and Gary creating an inspired abstract, cinematic track. 

In Mick's version of Combat Rock, a double album with several songs running at over seven or eight minutes plus five songs that either became B- sides or were not released, and titled Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg, Sean Flynn is a centrepiece of the album, closing side two after Should I Stay Or Should I Go and the extended mix of Ghetto Defendant, The Clash pushing outwards and onwards. In the real world, the struggles over Combat Rock coupled with Topper's increasing drug issues and tensions between Joe, Bernie and Paul on one side and Mick on the other led to the band's demise. Maybe, as Joe once remarked, they should all have taken a holiday. 

Soundtrack Saturday

It would have been Joe Strummer's 73rd birthday two days ago, 20th August, had he lived. As a Strummer birthday soundtrack here's some songs from Mystery Train, the 1989 film that Joe starred in. Mystery Train was directed by the great Jim Jarmusch and is a triptych of stories that come together at the end, all centred around a hotel in Memphis where Screamin' Jay Hawkins is the night clerk. The first story features a Japanese couple on a pilgrimage to the birthplace of rock 'n' roll, played by Youki Kudoh and Masatoshi Nagase. The second is about an Italian widow stuck in Memphis overnight (played by Nicoletta Brashci) and the third is about a recently unemployed and single Englishman (Joe obvs) and his two friends played by Steve Buscemi and Rick Aviles. It's a charming and beautifully shot film, downtown America, funny and with well drawn characters. I have a friend who holds the opinion that Strummer's acting ruins Mystery Train but I'm giving Joe the benefit of the doubt.

The songs on the soundtrack are mostly 50s rock 'n' roll- Elvis' song, the film's title track, is central, one of the foundation stones of rock 'n' roll. Blue Moon is played many times too, in the hotel's foyer through the night. The chug of the guitars and the drums evoke that long black train rattling through the night. 

Mystery Train

Mystery Train was written and recorded by Junior Parker in 1953, a slower, more bluesy take. 

Mystery Train

Roy Orbison turns up to with Domino (later covered by The Cramps).

Domino

On the soundtrack album the second half is from the score, written and played by John Lurie, who worked with Jarmusch on Down By Law and Stranger Than Paradise and also Paris, Texas. The eight instrumentals on the soundtrack are all 50s/ 60s inspired rockabilly guitar- led instrumentals and all are good to work away from the film as well as on its soundtrack.

Mystery Train (Suite)

Tuesday Night In Memphis

Happy birthday Joe. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Alex Cox's 1986 film Sid And Nancy tells the story of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, the doomed punk rock couple who destroyed themselves and each other. The two leads, Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb, do their best as the couple and manage to portray a relatively touching love story in the middle of all the noise and chaos of the Sex Pistols. John Lydon was hugely critical of the film and of Cox, its portrayal of the junkie lifestyle and of Johnny Rotten. Others agreed, saying it was wildly inaccurate and filled with artistic licence regarding the death of Nancy. 

It's a film which split opinion on release and ever since- some see it as a welcome corrective to punk nostalgia, 'abrasive, bratty and antisocial'. It's definitely compelling, not to mention wretched, squalid and off- putting. In 2016 Alex Cox said he was proud of aspects of it but the ending was too 'touchy- feely' and that he was more sympathetic to Lydon's point of view than he ever had been before. 

Alex Cox became aware of the contradictions of the film. He said the happy ending was 'sentimental and dishonest', and that they were trying to make a film that condemned Sid and Nancy for their decadence, that punk was a positive movement, it was forward looking and 'you can't be those things if you're 'a junkie rock star in a hotel room'. Asked if he was going to remake it how he would change it, Cox said he'd end with Sid 'dying in a pool of his own vomit'. So there you go. 

Let's leave the film and its problems aside and go to the soundtrack. Cox got Joe Strummer on board (something else Lydon was critical of, his dislike of Strummer and The Clash something Lydon can never leave alone). Joe wrote two songs for the film (and more unofficially and uncredited due to his then contract with Epic). Dan Wool of Pray For Rain was heavily involved as were The Pogues. There are no Pistols or Vicious songs on the soundtrack. Joe's film soundtrack work- Walker, Straight To Hell, When Pigs Fly, Permanent Record- began with Sid And Nancy and Love Kills was his first post- Clash release, a single in July 1986 to promote the film with uncredited guitar courtesy of Mick Jones (Joe and Mick had buried the hatchet by this point and made up). Love Kills is a song about junkie lovers, prison and murder.

Love Kills

Also on the soundtrack and the B-side of the 12" single was this Strummer song...

Dum Dum Club

The Pogues contributed Haunted, sung by Cait O'Riordan, a very lovely mid- 80s indie/ punk love song. 

Haunted

Saturday Soundtrack

Back in 1987 Joe Strummer was somewhat adrift. The Clash had broken up, his former songwriting partner Mick Jones had moved on and was enjoying his time with his new band Big Audio Dynamite who had captured the new thing- sampling, dance music, a rock/ rap/ reggae/ pop fusion that The Clash had pioneered at the start of the 80s before Joe and Paul attempted to reverse back to three chord punk rock. Joe was given the opportunity to find some direction when he met Alex Cox, a filmmaker whose guerrilla approach to making movies matched Strummer's approach to life. Cox signed Strummer up for his Spaghetti Western film Straight To Hell, a film with a soundtrack that featured The Pogues, Zander Schloss (who would become guitarist in Joe's Latino Rockabilly War and who worked with Joe on his next soundtrack), San Francisco band Pray For Rain and a couple of Strummer originals. These songs broke Joe's writer's block. He acted in the film too, immersing himself into the character (a bank robber called Simms). 

Cox asked Joe to stay on board for his next film, a clumsy satire about US imperialism in South America and American exceptionalism with Ed Harris in the title role as Walker. The film is bizarre, a bit of a mess. Even Strummer wasn't sure about the finished version. But the soundtrack is a minor Strummer gem, a fourteen track album with eleven Latin instrumentals, from salsa to Afro- Cuban bebop, all recorded acoustically on Strummer's insistence- 'I thought let's be 1850, nothing plugged in', he said. On three of the songs, Joe sings, a trio of lost Strummer solo songs (recently re- found via the 2018 solo compilation 001), songs that bridge his work in The Clash and his late 90s re- emergence and renaissance with his Mescaleros. 

Tennessee Rain is a ballad, Joe with acoustic guitar and banjo, a sad- eyed song with an upbeat tempo, Joe singing, 'well I wish I was drunk in Havana, I wish I was at the Mardi Gras'. Tropic Of No Return is a lilting choral song, backed by tropical birdsong and some lightly picked and strummed acoustic guitars, gradually gathering a little steam. The third song is The Unknown Immortal, a song sung from the point of view of a soldier in Walker's gringo army, a man away from home and his love for seven years, a man who 'was once an immortal'. It's difficult though not to hear it as at least partly autobiographical, Joe's post- Clash malaise compounded by the death of his mother a few weeks before Walker started filming, him ruefully accepting that his previous life as frontman for the greatest band in the world, the punk rock war lord, now trying to carve out a new role as singer/ songwriter/ soundtrack musician with some of the musical styles that informed Sandinista! and Combat Rock. 

The Unknown Immortal

Two Hours Of Eclecticism

Today's Sunday mix comes from the south of England and from Grant Williams who runs the independent label Eclectics which has recently re- entered the fray after a hiatus of a couple of years. The recent edit of The Residents (featured in my edits mix last Sunday, part two to come soon) can be found at Eclectics Bandcamp along with a, yep, eclectic range of releases including a James Bright EP, The Outside, that comes with Hardway Bros remixes, Warmth by Cole Odin and a Coyote release from 2017. 

Grant hosts his Love Under Will radio show at 1BTN and last Sunday broadcast a two hour mix that is up at Mixcloud for those of us playing catch up. The two hours begins with Chris Rotter and his Bad Meat Club and the epic twenty three minute version of 86'ed that Chris recorded for Isaac when he died in November 2021 and then drifts off with some gorgeous electronic music- cosmic, ambient, space disco, dub and downtempo with tunes from Rhythm Doctor, Assab, Chris & Cosey and more. 

The Totem Edits service run by Leo Zero and Justin Deighton threw another top class edit out into the ether on Friday, this one called Medicine, an eight minute edit of Big Audio Dynamite back in 1985 that shifts Mick, Don and the B.A.D. boys towards a dusty western stomp, appropriately enough given the sampling and lyrical content of the original and its all star video. Your Medicine is here. 

Fifteen

Happy New Year! 

This blog is fifteen years old today. Bagging Area was born with a whimper on 1st January 2010, with the intention of seeing if I could do it for a year and no real plan for what I was going to write about. Here we are a decade and a half later with 5, 939 posts under my belt, over 18, 700 comments from people from near and far many of whom are now actual friends in virtual and/ or real life, and over 4, 666, 787 page views (at the time of writing). I didn't expect it to be as central to my life as it has become and can't really conceive how I could do without it. Micro- blogging and social media have their place, sharing music and with the capacity to make similar connections, but there's something about long form blogging, the process of writing, that sets it apart. I'm sure it's an outdated form of internet expression in an age of Tik Tok and Instagram Reels but it works for me and many others. The comments, the connections and the conversation, are really what make it so thank you to everyone who reads and leaves comments here (or when I share posts on Facebook). There's more of the same to come in 2025- apart from a list of artists/ songs on a notepad next to the computer and a few ideas for Saturday and Sunday posts I've no real plans beyond the next few posts, but something always comes up. 

To celebrate Bagging Area's fifteenth birthday here are a trio of fifteens in song and a poster. Andy Warhol famously said that, 'in the future, everyone will be world- famous for fifteen minutes'. And he didn't even know about YouTube at that point. Two of the songs here (I think) are inspired by or refer to that quote. The first is by Johnny Boy, a Liverpool boy- girl duo from the mid- 00s who released a legendary 7" single, You Are The Generation Who Bought More Shoes (And You Get What You Deserve), a 60s girl group inspired song that was a proper music blog song, shared countless times all over the place. Their sole album included this...

15 Minutes

Thundering drums, squealing guitars, hand shaking percussion, more multi- tracked girl group vocals, an 00s feel (think The Go- Team et al).

Ride's second re- union album was 2019's This Is Not A Safe Place, an album that drew from Jean- Michel Basquiat, Sonic Youth, and post- punk, all undercut by some squally electronics. Fifteen Minutes is three minutes fourteen seconds of indie rock with some kiss off lyrics about someone who's had their fifteen minutes and who has been bitten by karmic retribution, the song interrupted by bursts of  Goo- esque dirty guitar 

Fifteen Minutes

Thirdly, a fairly obscure Joe Strummer song, the B-side to the Island Hopping single from 1989. 15th Brigade (Viva La Quince Brigada) is a song from the Spanish Civil War, Joe singing in Spanish. There's a song of the same name written by Christy Moore, a tribute to the Irishmen who fought in the war against fascism in Spain in the International Brigades, Irish socialists who were also know as the Connolly Column. As far as I can tell the two songs aren't the same song. 

15th Brigade

And finally, a Factory records fifteen. In true Factory style the catalogue number Fac 15 wasn't given to a record but to a poster and an event (just as Fac 1 had been a poster). Fac 15 advertised the outdoor gig held jointly between Factory and Liverpool's Zoo Records, the two independent labels meeting half way in Leigh. I cycle through Leigh quite often- the idea that the cream of 1979's post punk bands played in a field there is always faintly ludicrous and totally brilliant, as is the poster's advice about how the post- punk youth of Manchester and Liverpool should get there. In terms of value for me it's second to none. It was however very poorly attended- the other bands on the line up watching whoever was on stage often comprised half of the total watching crowd. Accounts from the few who attended report that Joy Division were breathtaking. 

 

Thirty Five Minutes Of England Mix

I’m really not a very patriotic person at all, it being as Oscar Wilde said, 'the last refuge of the scoundrel'. The markers of patriotism have always felt like nonsense to me- the flag (either of them, the cross of St. George and the Union flag), the national anthem, the monarchy, the Little England attitudes, the English exceptionalism, all of it does nothing for me. It makes no sense at all that someone who was born in Carlisle, Dover or Chester is in some way better than someone born a few miles away in Wrexham, Calais or Dumfries. Pride in one's country and it's achievements is I suppose OK to an extent but that pride often tips over into nationalism and exceptionalism and has a habit of hiding or ignoring some parts of a nation's history too. 

Supporting the England football team has always been tainted with all of the nonsense too. It's not necessarily the team's fault, they're partly just the vehicle for it. Tabloid controversies about whether the players are singing the national anthem with enough ‘passion’. Songs about winning two world wars, ten German bombers and no surrender to the I.R.A. Grown men dressed as crusader knights. The England band (thankfully now missing). Car flags and cheap red cross on white background bunting sagging in the summer rain. The booing by their own fans of players taking the knee to protest against racism. The deluge of racist messages that Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho received after missing their penalties in the 2021 Euro final. This was almost the last straw as far as I was concerned, ‘fans’ who would have been dancing in the streets if the penalty kicks had been a few inches one way or the other, taking to social media to racially abuse the young men who were taking part in a game was sickening and reflective of the wider culture- of Reform and UKIP, of Tory Little England politics, of the immigration narrative that Farage and Johnson and others fuelled by the tabloid press have spewed into British politics and English culture, of the nationalist nonsense that is only ever a sentence away from racism and the 'I'm not racist but...' brigade. 

The football team have dragged me back in over the last four weeks. I've tried to remain a bit arm's length from it, not get too invested. I boycotted the Qatar World Cup, hardly saw any of it, so it passed me by completely. But there was a sweet pleasure in watching the England penalties against Switzerland last Saturday, as five black and mixed race young men calmly slotted home their penalty kicks, the first and second generation descendants of immigrants putting England into a Euro semi- final. Where, as someone asked on social media after the match, are the racists now? Another of those children of immigrants, Ollie Watkins, scored the winner on Wednesday night, in the last second of the last minute of normal time.  

Tonight, England play Spain in the final of Euro ’24 in Berlin. This is a major achievement, the second consecutive Euros final. Those of us who grew up watching England in the 80s and 90s have seen little but failure from England teams. Sometimes they have been truly awful- the Euros in ’88, ’92 and 2016, the World Cup in 2014. Sometimes they’ve been massively overinflated and departed meekly beaten by clearly better sides- tournaments in 2002, 2006, 2010, 2012. Sometimes they’ve been engulfed by (in)glorious failure with a sense of injustice- Mexico ’86, France ’98. Sometimes they’ve not even qualified for tournaments- 1994, 2008. Very occasionally they’ve pulled it together and almost but not quite got to the final- 1990 and 1996. But on the whole, even if you can ignore the nationalist bluster that surrounds them, they've been not very good. 

Recently they’ve been better and if nothing else Gareth Southgate has changed the story around the England team, blocked out ‘the noise’ as he puts it. I’ve learned to limit my expectations of England. Reaching Euro finals twice in three years is something no other England manager or team has done. Hopefully, maybe, they can go one step further tonight and put to bed the endless burden of 1966 and all that. 

This is a thirty five minute mix of songs about England with a couple of England football songs. I'm sure some of you won't go anywhere near it but I like to think of it as the antithesis of Three Lions.

Thirty Five Minutes Of England For Euro 24

• Billy Bragg: A New England
• The Clash: Something About England
• The Clash: This Is England
• Care: Sad Day For England
• Black Grape: England's Irie
• Shuttleworth ft. Mark E. Smith: England's Heartbeat (Brazilian Ambush)
• The Vermin Poets: England's Poets
• Big Audio Dynamite: Union, Jack
• New Order: World In Motion (Call The Carabinieri Mix)

Billy Bragg's A New England is his 1983 calling card, a song about being twenty two and looking for a new girl, wishing on space hardware, and life in the early 80s. I probably should have included Kirsty McColl's cover which in some ways is the definitive version. In 2002 Billy addressed a load of the flag, nationalism, immigration, tabloid press, racism and England football shirts in his song Half- English- this only occurred to me while writing this part of the post. 

Something About England is from The Clash's 1980 album Sandinista!, a song that opens with the more resonant than ever lines, 'They say the immigrants steal the hub caps of respected gentlemen/ They say it would be wine and roses/ if England were for Englishmen again...' It's a truly great song, one where ick and Joe sing in character, Mick a young man leaving a bar and Joe an old man huddled in rags in a shop doorway. They then give us a history of the 20th century, war, depression, class struggle, disaster, all set to Clash punk/ music hall. 'Old England was all alone', they conclude.

A few years later, Mick and Topper both sacked, Joe recorded the final Clash album, Cut The Crap. The only song you really need from it is This Is England, the last great Clash song, Joe giving a state of the nation address, five years into Thatcher's government, economic depression and unemployment, with drum machines, guitars and chanting football crowds.  

Care was Paul Simpson (who will be back at this blog soon) and Ian Broudie. In 1983 Paul formed Care after The Wild Swans split for the first time. Sad Day For England was the B-side to the 12" My Boyish Days, one of only a handful of releases by the pair before they split in 1985. 

Black Grape's England's Irie was an unofficial Euro '96 song, a song that brought together Shaun Ryder, bez and Kermit with Keith Allen and Joe Strummer (and Strummer's only Top Of The Pops appearance). Shaun delivers several memorable lines, not least 'I'm spectating my wife's lactating/ It's a football thing'. I'm not sure it's aged particularly well but I thought I should include it. 

Shuttleworth were a one off band of Mark E. Smith, Ed Blaney and Jenny Shuttleworth who recorded this song for England's adventures at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Apparently the FA approached him to do it (!) but then decided against having an official song so Mark put it out anyway. Mark wrote a few football related songs- Theme For Sparta FC is a classic- and on one occasion read the full time results on the BBC. 

In the 2010 World Cup England were dreadful in the group stage, finishing second behind the USA. They lost the next game in the knock out round to Germany, 4- 1. 

The Vermin Poets were one of Billy Childish's many, many groups. Their album, Poets Of England, came out in 2010, garage rock/ psyche pop. I don't think it's among Billy's best work but anything by Billy is worth paying at least some attention to. 

Union, Jack was on Big Audio Dynamite's 1989 album Megatop Phoenix, their fourth album and the last made by the original line up. 'Make a stand/ Before you fall/ You country needs you/ To play football', Mick sings, slipping in lines the empire, pints of beer, a green and pleasant land, and all for one. A Mick Jones late 80s football song that tries to re- imagine the football song after some terrible 80s ones sung by England squads with perms, mullets and in leisure wear. Mick would find himself trumped a year later though...

World In Motion needs no introduction really- New Order, Keith Allen, John Barnes, the summer of 1990, Italia 90, a dire group stage, wins against Belgium and Cameroon and then ultimately disappointment, penalties and Germany. This version is an Andrew Weatherall and Terry Farley remix from the remix 12" that came out a week after the main one. New Order had wanted to reflect the zeitgeist of 1990 by calling the song E For England, a step too far for the FA. They had to settle for the chorus, 'love's got the world in motion'. The FA wanted it changed to 'we've got the world in motion' but New Order stood their ground and love it was. 

Another Imaginary Album

Last week I floated the idea of imaginary albums, albums that could have/ should have happened but didn't- the pair I mused about were an imaginary Andrew Weatherall/ Sabres Of Paradise produced Sinead O'Connor and Jah Wobble album, building on the Visions Of You single, and also what might have happened had Andrew Weatherall actually gone on to produce The Fall in 1993, a meeting that went as far as the studio before there was a backing out. Today's imaginary album is going back to 1986 and the aftermath of The Clash.

This is what really happened.

Mick Jones was fired from The Clash in 1983 by Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon (and Bernie Rhodes, back as manager at Joe's insistence). Mick had become increasingly difficult to work with and there had bee major disagreements about the song selection and mixing of the album that became Combat Rock. Famously, Mick and Paul had a stand off for several hours about the level of the bass in Know Your Rights and their relationship broke down to the point where they weren't even speaking. Joe and Paul issued a statement saying Mick had drifted away from the original intention of the group and they would now pursue this without him. Joe and Paul recruited two new guitarists, Vince White and Nick Sheppard and drummer Pete Howard who'd replaced Terry Chimes, who'd replaced Topper Headon. The five man Clash went on to tour and record a much derided album called Cut The Crap (made mainly by Strummer and Rhodes- it's not all bad, the song This Is England is a genuine Strummer state- of- the nation classic, but much of the rest was done by Rhodes and doesn't add much to the band's back catalogue although some fan remixed versions have some merit). The Clash Mark 2's highlight was a busking tour. On getting home Strummer called it a day and the band broke up. 

Mick Jones was kicked out of The Clash, the band he started in 1976, and set about proving Joe and Paul wrong. He formed TRAC (Top Risk Action Company) who then became Big Audio Dynamite. Some of Mick's songs for the first B.A.D. album were already written while he was in The Clash and the rest came quickly. Recorded by the new band- Mick with Don Letts, Greg Dread, Dan Donovan and Leo Williams- BAD's first album, This Is Big Audio Dynamite, is a modern, fun, genre- clash and sample- fest, packed with great tunes- The Bottom Line, e=mc2, Medicine Show, A Party and the rest, fusing rock, reggae, rap, and dance music. After that Mick moved quickly, writing songs for B.A.D.'s second album. 

Joe was full of regret and self- loathing about the way The Clash had imploded, blaming himself for sacking Mick and for being (again) seduced by Bernie's talk. He hoped to make up with Mick and flew out to the Caribbean where Mick was staying. The legend has it that Joe cycled round the island looking for Mick, found him, presented him with some weed by way of apology and asked him to reform The Clash. Mick had no interest in reforming The Clash, B.A.D. was his future and he must have taken some pleasure at Joe's volte face. At some point Joe told Mick that the new B.A.D. songs were 'the worst thing I've ever heard'. Joe's retrenchment into three chord rock had characterised The Clash Mark 2. Mick was fusing the questing, experimental Clash of 1980- 81 with pop music and samples and he wanted to keep pushing forward. The two made up though and both Joe and Paul appeared in the Medicine Show video, the three former bandmates friends again.

Joe signed up for co- producing the next B.A.D. album and ended up co- writing several songs- Beyond The Pale, Limbo The Law, V. Thirteen, Ticket, and Sightsee M.C. Two more saw the light of day as bonus tracks on the U.S. CD release- Ice Cool Killer and The Big V (Ice Cool Killer is drum machine beats and Scarface samples. The Big V is a cooled down version of V. Thirteen). 

Ice Cool Killer

The Big V

The Strummer- Jones writing team was firing on all cylinders on No. 10 Upping Street. V. Thirteen is one of B.A.D.'s best songs, sleek and widescreen with a great Mick Jones lyric and vocal. Beyond The Pale is a crunchy, guitars and keys celebration of immigration with Joe on backing vocals. There are two songs further Strummer- Jones co- writes from this period. Love Kills (from Alex Cox's Sid And Nancy film) features an uncredited Mick Jones on guitar and backing vox and U.S. North, a song that sounds like a close cousin of love Kills, written in late '86 but not released until a posthumous Joe Strummer album a few years ago. 

Mick kept going and in 1988 B.A.D. recorded and released their third album, Tighten Up Vol '88, and then the rave influenced Megatop Phoenix in 1989. Joe worked on the soundtracks for Walker and Straight To Hell, and went to L.A. and recorded his debut solo album, Earthquake Weather. Paul formed Havana 3 a.m. and released an album in 1991. The original B.A.D. line up broke up after Megatop Phoenix and Mick formed B.A.D. II. 

But... this is what could have happened...

After No. 10 Upping Street and the success of the Strummer- Jones writing and production team, Mick and Joe could have closed ranks again and reformed their partnership. This could have been The Clash re- united. Joe probably would have done this, Mick would have been less keen, wanting to keep moving forward. Band re- unions weren't really a thing in the late 80s, not the way they are now. But if Mick had changed his mind some time in 1987, a new Strummer- Jones band could have formed and made a killer late 80s album. They could have brought Paul back on board. Poor Topper was deep into heroin addiction and driving a taxi- he appeared with Flowered Up in 1990 but then dropped off the map again. 

The Strummer- Jones '88 album could have cherry picked the key songs from Tighten Up Vol. 88 and Earthquake Weather. A fully fired up partnership in the studio would have brought further new songs. 

From Tighten Up Vol. 88 Mick's Other 99, a soaring, guitar- led song about doing the best you can, not being sucked into the rat race and sometimes accepting good enough is just that. The Battle Of All Saint's Road, a Jones- Letts co- write with banjo, reggae and a coming together of the Ladbroke Grove tribes, the rockers and the dreads. Just Play Music, 2000 Shoes and Applecart all pass muster and could all feature Mick and Joe swapping lines and singing together. The last thing the original B.A.D. line up recorded was Free, a song for the film Flashback (a Dennis Hopper and Kiefer Sutherland film adventure comedy about a aging on the run hippy and an FBI agent). A Mick and Joe version of Free would make the cut. 

Other 99 (Extended Mix)

Free (LP Version)

Joe's Earthquake Weather is an album cursed by muffled production, a weird mix and the sometimes unsympathetic and over the top playing of the band, L.A. rock musicians (a group Joe christened Latino Rockabilly War, which is a great name and could be the name of my imagined Joe and Mick band or album). But versions of those songs with Mick Jones playing and producing would lift them much higher. Gangsterville, Island Hopping and Sleepwalk are the obvious candidates, Leopardskin Limousines and Passport To Detroit maybe. The B- sides of the Island Hopping single include a lovely stripped down, swinging acoustic- ish version of the song re- titled Mango Street so we'll have that one too. 

Mango Street

Joe had already contributed the mighty song Trash City to the soundtrack to a Keanu Reeves film called Permanent Record, a that song would open and adorn any late 80s Strummer- Jones album. 

Trash City

U.S. North could have been dragged from the vaults, its ten minute length trimmed a little. Paul could have come back and contributed something from Havana 3 a.m.'s album- this spaghetti western song perhaps...

Hey Amigo

If we're not careful we're heading back into double album territory, one of the straws that broke the Clash camel's back, but an imaginary single album, Mick and Paul co- writing and co- producing, playing and singing together, Mick back with Joe and Joe fully focussed, is a great What If? and could have been a very good (imaginary) album. They'd still have argued and fallen out again when Levi's came calling in 1991 of course. But that's The Clash. 

Bagging Area Book Club

The first rule of Bagging Area Book Club is, uh, you can talk about it. It's an irregular series of music and literature crossovers starting today and heading into the next few weeks, maybe beyond. Last Monday night I attended Richard Norris in conversation with Dave Haslam at Blackwell's bookshop at Manchester University. Richard recently published his memoir, Strange Things Are Happening, an account of his life and musical journey written as he explained to us in the first person present, a technique that gives the entire book a real immediacy and presents every scene as happening in front of you (Richard says he learned this from Viv Albertine's autobiography Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys. He also notes that that book opened the door for many others to write their memoirs and autobiographies, the generation who grew up with punk and its aftermath, including himself). 

Dave opens proceedings by noting that him and Richard have a number of parallels in their pasts- both ran club nights called The Hangout, Richard in Liverpool and Dave in Manchester, both lost parents at a young age, there were one or two others as well but they escape me now. Both also came to music with at least half an eye on writing about it as well as participating as musicians/ DJs, Dave writing his fanzine Debris and Richard writing one titled Strange Things Are Happening- there's a literate side to both of them that informs everything they've done. Dave dives into the Q&A starting in the middle with The Grid on Top of The Pops firstly in 1993 with Crystal Clear and Mancunian door face Elton on vocals. 

Richard talks eloquently about their experiences on the show, later appearing four times to promote Swamp Thing, a song they wrote as a joke which ended up becoming a smash hit, one which took them all over the world playing to huge crowds, something they eventually became tired of especially when the record company stated to put the pressure on for a follow up. Dave and Richard then go backwards, to St Albans in the late 70s and the nascent punk scene Richard becomes a mover in and the older folk crowd in the town who not only tolerate a group of fifteen year olds but encourage them. Dave says Richard's evocation of the St Albans scene is endearing and inspiring, something that struck me when reading the book- people crating scenes in small towns, across generations, finding places to play and making music. Not long after Richard's band, The Innocent Vicars, make a 7" single and Richard's dad drives him to London where they sell the entire run of singles to Rough Trade and then turn up at Radio 1, ask to speak to John Peel, meet him on the doorstep of the BBC and give him a copy of the record which he plays the following night. From that point Richard is off on a lifelong journey in the music world. 

I won't give to much away- you should read the book if you haven't already. Richard Norris music runs through my record collection like the writing in a stick of rock- from the psych compilations on Bam Caruso to his adventures with Genesis P. Orridge and the acid house album they made in 1987despite not having heard any acid house records at that point- Jack The Tab- to his writing in the NME which switched me onto stuff and his records with Dave Ball as The Grid. In the mid- 90s he wrote and recorded several songs with Joe Strummer, songs which were instrumental in Joe getting a band back together again. Richard is asked from the audience how it ended with Joe- 'badly' is Richard's short explanation, the circles around former members of The Clash not always easy places to navigate. Yalla Yalla is one of the results of that partnership, for my money one of Joe's greatest solo songs. After that episode Richard spirals on making music with Erol Alkan as Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve, makes psychedelic acid house as The Time And Space Machine, forms The Long Now and The Order Of The 12 releasing albums both both and then from c2019 and into lockdown and beyond, his long running series of Music For Healing/ deep listening and ambient pieces, a project still arriving on a monthly basis at Bandcamp- Richard says that he sees Bandcamp as a new Rough Trade, the conduit between artist and listener.

Richard reads from his book for us, the chapter on meeting Strummer, the arrival of Joe and his entourage at Peter Gabriel's Real World studio and the ensuing fun and madness which followed. As he reads he causally flings each completed page aside, a piece of stage craft he points out in a tongue in cheek way he learned from someone else doing a reading. 

Richard's book is full of other stories- the time he spent with Sky Saxon, his adventures in New York at the NME's expense in 1986 and his encounters with ecstasy, making a record in Amsterdam with Timothy Leary, a road trip to Mexico in Joe Strummer's Cadillac with Shaun Ryder and Bez, and more, a life well lived with music at the centre of it. At the Q&A Richard does pause at one point to question what it's all about, what the meaning of it all is. He recounts a trip fairly recently to Spain, hiking with Penny Rimbaud of Crass. Penny, Richard says, is a wise man, someone who surely knows what the meaning of life is. He asked him and was told sagely, 'to serve'. 

Dave Haslam is a great host, asking the right questions, clearly interested and alert and who has also lived a life with music at the middle of it. Dave has just finished writing and publishing a series of mini- books through Manchester publishers Confingo. These are short, essay length books on very niche topics, each book small enough to fit in your pocket and short enough to read in one sitting. He had a list of topics to cover and felt a series of small books was the best way to do it, not for making a pot of money but for the joy of the writing them and then publishing them. The series tackles a variety of topics starting with Dave's decision to sell his entire record collection (something Richard has done in recent years too), then exploring specific periods of people's lives: Keith Haring and 80s New York; the semi- mythical months Courtney Love spent in Liverpool in 1982; Sylvia Plath's sojourn in Paris; the Angry Brigade cell that existed in Moss Side in  the late 60s; the life and times of Cresser, Manc face, and Stone Roses dancer; Picasso's time in early 20th century Paris; and the night Grace Jones almost recorded Houses In Motion with A Certain Ratio and Martin Hannett at Strawberry Studios in Stockport in 1980. All of these are tales worth telling and tales well told (ACR will almost certainly appear at this blog again later this week). You can get all eight here or buy them individually here.  

Back to Norro, as Joe Strummer christened him- in 2016 Beyond the Wizard's Sleeve released this song,a gloriously melancholic piece of electronic pop, drums that patter away like Spacemen 3's Big City, synths like mid- 80s New Order and Hannah Peel's wistful vocals. For the full effect, go to the 12" version. 

Saturday Live/ Shane McGowan RIP

Shane McGowan's death on Thursday at the age of 65 didn't come as a huge surprise. He'd been ill and in intensive care for some time and in some ways its amazing he lived as long as he did, given his lifestyle since being a child, but it's still terribly sad- he was a true one off, a unique voice in modern life, a lyricist who mashed Irish folk songs together with punk and poetry to create some of the most memorable songs of the late 20th century. Through his words Shane covered all bases- he was a poet, a writer who was both a realist and a romantic, a story teller and a protest singer, a truth teller, a mythical singer/ writer who willed himself into action, wouldn't take no for an answer and lived his own way. The riotous Pogues of the mid- 80s, their albums and gigs are the stuff of legend, an antidote to Thatcherite Britain and the generic, safe and overblown music that clogged up radio and TV. 

By 1990 and the Hell's Ditch album, a record produced by Joe Strummer, Shane had largely lost interest in the group which he felt had become too professional and unwilling to take on his burgeoning interest in acid house. His growing love for acid house (and drug consumption to match) led to an album which many felt showed the group were past their best. It does contain several great songs though, including this one, which is one of my favourite Pogues songs (written by Shane on a Casio keyboard apparently). 

Summer In Siam

This hour long film captures The Pogues live at The Town And Country Club in  March 1988, the life affirming power of the band in full flow on St. Patrick's Day. Joe Strummer, Steve Earle, Lynval Golding and Kirsty McColl all show up and join in. The set starts with The Broad Majestic Shannon (a song I once spent ages trying to fathom why Shane's narrator was sitting watching the robots landing on the banks of the famous Irish river. After all the beauty in Shane's words, tales of Ireland and drinking, rusty tin cans and old hurling balls, tears on cheeks and forgetting your fears, the appearance of robots seemed very odd to me. 'Rowboats, Adam, rowboats', a friend pointed out to me- via postcard if I recall correctly). From there on in it's Pogues all the way, London Calling in the middle, a cover of Rudy A Message To You and finishing with The Wild Rover. What more could you want?

There are so many songs that I could be post to demonstrate Shane's gift. Any Best Of... would include A Pair Of Brown Eyes, Sally MacLennane, Dirty Old Town, Streams Of Whisky, Rainy Night In Soho, Fiesta, The Body Of An American, The Broad Majestic Shannon and umpteen others. These two are as good as any of those. Boys From County Hell is from their 1984 debut Red Roses For Me, a raucous tale of drinking boys and how they deal with life and landlords. Haunted, with Cat O'Riordan on co- vocals with Shane, is from the soundtrack to Sid And Nancy in 1986, a gloriously ramshackle mid- 80s love song, a counterpoint to what accounted for love songs in the mainstream in August 1986. 

Boys From County Hell

Haunted

Shane and his post- Pogues band The Popes also did a version of Haunted with Sinead O'Connor singing alongside Shane, released in 1995, their voices sounding rather wonderful together, a more subdued version than the one The Pogues had released.

A lot of people have noted that Shane, Sinead and Kirsty McColl are now united in death, that they'll be 'up there' somewhere, singing together and partying. It's a nice idea. I don't know how Shane McGowan might respond to that suggestion. I can quite believe he'd have had a strong belief in an afterlife and expect to see Sinead and Kirsty once again. I can quite believe too that he might clear his throat, cackle and reply 'pogue mahone'. 

RIP Shane McGowan.

Half An Hour Of The Clash Edited, Sampled And Remixed

The Clash, remixed, edited and sampled for a thirty three minute blast of Strummer/ Jones energy and invention for your Sunday morning delectation. Best played loud. 

Half An Hour Of The Clash Edited, Sampled And Remixed 

• Return To Brixton (SW2 Dub)
• Dancing (Not Fighting)
• Rock The Spectre (Peza Edit)
• Magnificent Dub (Leo Zero Edit)
• I'm Not Down (Hold Your Head Up)
• Davis Road Blues (Don Letts Culture Clash Radio Version)

In 1990 The Clash had a number one single eight years after they split up (for the purposes of this we'll take Mick being sacked from the band as the actual moment they split up even though the five man Clash rumbled on for two years with a largely unloved album and a busking tour that those involved seemed to enjoy). Should I Stay Or Should I Go went to number one and saw a surge in Clash related activity, one of which was the record company CBS reissuing Paul's 1979 song Guns Of Brixton in remixed form as Return To Brixton. The remixes of Return To Brixton, three of them on the 12", were done by DJ Jeremy Healy.

Edit: it occurs to me now that the re- issue/ remixes of Guns Of Brixton were in response to the bassline being sampled for Norman Cook's chart topping single Dub Be Good To Me as Beats International, number one in January 1990. 

Dancing Not Fighting came out last year, a thumping, beat driven, high octane Jezebell release that  samples Mick Jones screaming at bouncers in the film Rude Boy, trying to get them to stop beating up Clash fans. The band disowned the film by the time it came out but the live footage of the band is among the finest committed to tape by anyone, anywhere. Here they are in July 1978 doing (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais at the Glasgow Apollo. 

This seven minute clip has them powering through Complete Control, Safe European Home and What's My Name at the Music Machine in Camden a few weeks later. 

Rock The Spectre is a Peza edit, what happens when the Strummer and Jones vocals from Rock The Casbah are played over Mystic Thug's Brocken Spectre (Mystic Thug is Tici Taci's Duncan Gray). What happens is you get the song completely recast in a new light, reborn, Mick and Joe's voices over a throbbing piece of slinky 2023 chug. Joe's vocal particularly shows he gave absolutely everything in the studio. 

Magnificent Dub is a Leo Zero edit, the Magnificent Dance (a B-side to the Magnificent 7 single, released in 1981, inspired by the band's time in New York and Mick especially being taken with the brand new hip hop culture). Some of the vocals Leo throws into this edit are from the band playing live at Bonds, Times Square and various people having a go at the bassline ((played originally by Norman Watt- Roy when Simonon was out of town filming The Fabulous Stains). Leo also inserts some sections from the unreleased, unofficial Larry Levan version of Mag 7. 

In 2005 when mash up culture was the big new thing a whole host of artists/ bedroom bootleggers threw everything they had at a completely remixed, re- edited and mashed up version of the album London Calling. The Clash found themselves (unofficially) rubbing shoulders with The Streets, Peaches, Vanilla Ice, Chuck D, Outkast and host of others sampled artists. It was massive fun. E-jitz took Mick's 1979 album track I'm Not Down and spliced it with the vocal from Boris Dlugosch's speed house track from 1997, Hold Your Head Up (vocal courtesy of Inaya Davis).

Davis Road Blues is a dub track by Prince Blanco with Mick's guitar from B.A.D.'s The Bottom Line and Joe's voice from a radio interview describing his first meeting with Mick and Paul that led to the formation of The Clash, a meeting that took place at 22 Davis Road, Shepherd's Bush (in a squat Paul shared with Sid Vicious and Viv Albertine).

Edit: the squat at 22 Davis Road has appreciated in value since the 1970s, as you'd expect. According to Rightmove 23 Davis Road was sold in 2018 for £480, 000 (that was just half the property, a ground floor two bedroom flat). Full houses on Davis Road, number 43 for example, go for around £840, 000 (2022 price). The 2020s version of Paul, Viv and Sidney must be living elsewhere.  

Forty Five Minutes Of Sandinista!

I think I've said before that while Sandinista! may not be the greatest Clash album, it is their most adventurous, their most inventive and where the spirit of the band truly lies. Once they realised that they couldn't play 1977 and Garageland forever, they had to move on and that led them backwards into their record collections (rockabilly, blues, reggae, ska, dub) and forwards into the future (rap, hip hop, funk). They went from White Riot to Death Is A Star in six years, exploring everything they could along the way. Joe said in Westway To The World, that they went out to engage with the world in all its infinite variety (or something similar). They were never going to be stuck playing Borstal Breakout for the rest of their lives.

London Calling was the purest distillation of this, nineteen perfectly pitched slices of Clash. Sandinista! was The Clash doing whatever they wanted across the course of a year- 1980- starting with the recording of Bankrobber in Pluto Studio, Manchester and leading them back to London, to Jamaica and to New York. The idea that Sandinista! could have been a superb single disc album or double vinyl opus or a killer EP misses the point. Sandinista! is complete Clash. The roots of all of Joe's solo career, from his soundtracks to Earthquake Weather to the three albums with The Mescaleros are in Sandinista! as are the origins of Big Audio Dynamite. Fast forward to the 21st century and Mick and Paul turn up in Damon Albarn's touring version of Gorillaz, a band playing a hybrid, pick 'n' mix version of dub, pop, hip hop, funk, and whatever else- that's Sandinista! 

Forty Five Minutes Of Sandinista!

This is not an attempt to produce a perfect version of the album, a reduced version or a best of. It's some of Sandinista! mixed together, some of the lesser known songs and the ones where the spirit of Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Topper Headon and the rest of the cast that contributed to the sessions can be found, a cast that takes in Mickey Gallagher and Norman Watt- Roy (The Blockheads), Tymon Dogg, Mikey Dread, Ellen Foley, Don Hegarty (Darts), Gary Barnacle, Ivan Julian (Voidoids), Style Scott, Pennie Smith and cartoonist Steve Bell. There's something about the songs too which lend themselves to being sequenced together, seguing from one to another.

• Mensforth Hill
• The Crooked Beat
• Broadway
• Rebel Waltz
• One More Time
• One More Dub
• The Street Parade
• Something About England
• Up In Heaven (Not Only Here)
• If Music Could Talk
• Washington Bullets

Mensforth Hill is Something About England played backwards, the tapes reversed and with bits of Joe's studio chatter from New York's Electric Ladyland dropped in, the whooshing and rushing effects fading in and out. On the album it sits between Charlie Don't Surf and Junkie Slip. Here it is a slow, experimental entry to forty five minutes of deep Clash.

The Crooked Beat is Paul Simonon's tribute to South London blues parties with a lovely wandering dub bassline. Recorded in September 1980 it was one of the last songs recorded for the album, produced by Mikey Dread who drops in some additional vocals at the end. 

Broadway is a Strummer masterpiece, a mellow, late night, jazz inflected song for the bars of NYC. Joe's lyrics concern a meeting with a homeless man and former boxer in New York, Joe riffing on the sights and sounds of the city at night, a Scorcese film set to music. 

Rebel Waltz is a true hidden gem in the group's back catalogue and the album's tracklist. The lyrics are pure Strummer, a dream of armies and the losses of war. The music is Mick experimenting with playing a waltz crossed with dub, recorded at Wessex in London. The Clash as a folk band, in the truest sense of the word.

One More Time and One More Dub have to be taken together, the superb Clash- reggae of the first half dubbed out by Mikey Dread for the second. Joe sings of the poverty of the ghettoes, the civil rights movement and the Watts riots of 1965.

The Street Parade is another lesser known gem, hidden away at the end of side five on vinyl. On release some listeners may have taken ages to get to side five. The Street Parade is about losing oneself in the crowd, Strummer disappearing into the mass. The music is gorgeous, Topper and Mick showing by this point they could turn their hand to anything and do it well, with horns and marimbas carrying a Latin feel.

Something About England is a key Strummer- Jones song, marrying English music hall with lyrics spanning the 20th century, the wars, the Depression, the rebuilding of the cities and the British class system, Joe and Mick trading verses in character. 'They say the immigrants steal the hubcaps/ Of respected gentlemen/ They say it would be wine and roses/ If England were for Englishmen again', Mick sings at the start, the racism of Farage and Braverman rooted in the late 70s. 

Up In Heaven (Not Only Here) is one of Sandinista!'s few out and out rock songs, a Mick Jones guitar song with ringing lead lines and crunching riffs. Mick sings of the tower blocks he grew up in and the lives of the people that live in them. 'The wives hate their husbands/ The husbands don't care'.

If Music Could Talk is a New York song that began in Manchester, jazz blues of late night bars and not one but two Joe vocals. The backing track was recorded at Pluto with Mikey Dread and then added to later, sax wailing and floating on top. Joe's words take in Bo Diddley, Errol Flynn, Isaac Newton and Samson. 

Washington Bullets seemed the perfect place to close (though I was tempted to put one of side six's dubs last) if only because it finishes with Joe singing the album's title over the organ as it fades out. Lyrically Joe casts his eye over the USA's foreign policy in the 20th century, Chile, Cuba and Nicaragua (and the USSR's too in Afghanistan and Tibet) with a mention for Victor Jara, the Chilean singer, poet, writer and activist murdered by the CIA backed coup in 1973. Musically it started as many songs did, Topper arriving in the studio first and messing around while engineer Bill Price pressed the record button. The others would turn up one by one and start overdubbing and soon, as Bill Price says, 'we had thirty- five songs'.