Fragments of The Clash, Part II
If you look closely, the Hasid is wearing creepers. 5 Euros, Boxhagener Platz market, Berlin.
Note the Guns of Brixton quote, lower left hand corner. Squat wall, Friedrichshain, Berlin.
Click here for part one.
Archived entries for The Clash
Fragments of The Clash
Still a member of the opposition. The door of our neighborhood squat. Milan, early December.
Berlin comparisons are warranted. Visually, the district is on fire. San Lorenzo, Rome, 12/28.
On the Radio
Wednesday at noon, former Political Asylum singer and AK Press founder Ramsey Kanaan will be hosting an hour-long discussion about the political legacy of The Clash on Against the Grain, courtesy of Pacifica flagship station KPFA, 94.1 FM in the SF Bay Area, and everywhere else, online.
Ramsey’s guests include yours truly and Craig O’Hara, the author of The Philosophy of Punk: More Than Noise, a new edition of which is scheduled to drop in the new year. If you’re interested in the band, in punk, or in how music and politics collide, we pretty much cover it all.
Source Material
Not the best time writing-wise this past week. I’ve been finishing the bibliographical work that I’ve needed to complete for my book, and have spent a lot of time gathering together any remaining news articles I can find in order to bring myself totally up-to-date. I feel pretty good about what I’ve pulled together so far, though, as with other book projects I’ve worked on (this is my fifth), I’ve had to set severe limits to my source material so I don’t find myself overwhelmed.
As a rule of thumb, once I’ve acquired everything I need to start writing, I focus on covering only the most representative instances of my subject matter and comment on them until there’s hopefully nothing left to discuss. If I have material left over that I might find useful later, voila, its always there. I hold on to everything. I can’t tell you how many times over the years that I’ve found myself grateful for my packrat habits. Sometimes I wish I’d become a librarian.
Despite this self-congratulatory pat on the back, there are two standout occasions in which I’ve failed to live up to my archivist’s ethos. The first was during high school, when my then-classmate John Whitson gave me a copy of a live soundboard tape of a Husker Du show in Walla Walla, Washington. Unmarked, I recorded over the cassette, thinking that it was a blank. Talk about stupid. Even then, in the spring of ’86, I knew I’d committed a horrible mistake.
The second time was equally profound. In the fall of 2005, director Julien Temple contacted me, explaining that he was making a documentary about the life and times of his old friend, Joe Strummer. He wanted to know if I could give him a copy of a recording of an interview I’d done with Joe, which had been the cover story of the January/February 2000 edition of Punk Planet, (and had just been reprinted in Let Fury Have the Hour, an anthology of writings about the late Clash frontman edited by Antonino D’Ambrosio.) Temple explained that he wanted to use the recording in his film, and was hoping I would allow him to do so.
Several hours later, as I searched through boxes of cassettes in my basement looking for the interview, I found the tape. Unfortunately, along with a number of recordings of my old radio shows at my alma mater, Reed College, the cassette had been damaged by water, and was in an advanced state of deterioration. Even though Temple’s crew kindly offered to try to restore it, the recording engineer that I am knew that the tape was beyond repair.
Clearly, I should have known better. It would have been great to have been able to give the Strummer interview its proper due. It was a terrific recording, and Joe was in absolutely marvelous form. As much as I like the written transcription of the interview, nothing comes close to how charming and witty he sounded on the phone. Even Strummer’s coughs (was there a bong nearby?) were hilarious.