For whatever reason, New York City in the depths of winter always reminds me of The Clash. I’m not entirely sure why. I just have vivid memories of listening to London Calling, Sandinista! and Black Market Clash during snowstorms, I guess.
In any event, given that the climate has prompted this once again, I found myself tracking through the band’s catalog and continue to marvel how well most of it completely stands up.
The video below came out in December, technically, but I thought it was still worth evangelizing. This coming May will be the whopping 40th anniversary of The Clash’s sprawling, 17-date residency at Bonds International Casino in Times Square. While that same year was the year I attended my very first concert, it was not one of those Clash dates, but rather Devo at Radio City Music Hall on Halloween night (see this post for more). I would have surely liked to see them at one of those fabled gigs, but it was simply not to be.
In the ensuing four decades, though, those shows have taken on a weightier significance, marking the band’s further evolution away from their punk roots into more experimental territory. Having stretched their oeuvre on London Calling to embrace established styles like rockabilly, R&B and jazz, the band were now racing forward, incorporating elements of funk and the burgeoning culture of hip-hop into their mix, crafting ubiquitous singles like “The Magnificent Seven” below, which was a thousand light years on from the barre-chord stomp of “Complete Control.”
The video, meanwhile, much like comparable videos for “This Is Radio Clash” and the longer-form documentary-style “Clash on Broadway,” features a host of period-specific footage of New York City that is, once again, barely recognizable to its current iteration.
I wonder whatever became of that banner that draped over the signage of Bond's, and also hung behind the band in the performance footage below. Museum somewhere?
Don’t stop …. Give it All You Got…
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