A Horseradish
Saturday 3rd January 2015 5:07pm [Edited]
8,475 posts
Quote: George Kaplan @ 3rd January 2015, 4:16 PM GMT
Yeah, Temple got good access, and they were very open and co-operative.
Strangely, I lived in London and saw the Clash quite a few times, and most of the other bands, but I never went to the Roxy. Wonder if Lazzard, Radish, or Chappers ever went?
I'm guessing you're too young to have ever seen the Clash live?
I never saw the Clash live. It is one of my greatest regrets in music. But I did see Joe Strummer with the Pogues at the three gigs I attended at the Town and Country Club on 14, 15 and 17 March 1988 when they did "London Calling" and "I Fought The Law". I saw Strummer again at the T and C on 12 October 1989, which was post "Walker" and at the time of "Earthquake Weather", and Mick Jones with Big Audio Dynamite there 19 days later. Finally, I saw Strummer with the Mescaleros at Glastonbury, probably in June 1999.
They had busked in a car park in York and other places in the 1980s. That was the time when I was really getting into the Clash. It was 1982, I was in York as a student and it was the year of "Combat Rock". While punk had arrived in 1977 when I was 14, I got into the singles chart at the ridiculously early age of 7 and took it all seriously. So I initially had some of the early 1970s perceptions of an older generation towards punk. It accounts for a hippier leaning strand which meant that Madchester in 1989 made total sense to me.
In 1982, a lot was still being heard through that early singles framework but as a student I acquired mates with wide-ranging record collections. I was already a bit new wavy and I had taken to two-tone. Neither of those genres would have happened without punk. It was a time for broadening the horizons, listening to things I had missed, and going forward with mainstream indie. The latter became my thing. Some did try to get me into Dylan at that time but I wasn't ready for it. It was only in 1989 that I bought "Oh Mercy" and everything clicked into place just as it had done with the Clash in 1982. I became a Dylan fanatic overnight.