by mretrain » 16 Oct 2008, 12:30pm
I'm speechless. And I do believe a little bit tearful as well...
Mainly speechless because I was actually at this show, the first time I ever saw The Clash, and at The Damned/Adverts show the next week as well. The Damned were so great that I never went to see them again, reasoning that they could never be that good again & so it would be a letdown. The best bit was when Rat stood up to harangue the crowd for throwing cans & one flew in from the back of the hall & bounced off his head, causing him to do the next song drumming on his knees! Then there was Vanian ripping his shirt off & climbing on top of the PA stacks, the Captain playing the last two songs flat on his back...
Anyway, I digress.
The Clash show was booked as a Polytechnic show, but actually took place at Sussex University due to demand; that's why you don't see it listed as such in the White Riot tour ads & so on. I actually bought the last two tickets! The footage was screened live while the show was going on,on closed-circuit TV screens around the venue, in the bars and so on; at the age of 18 I'd never seen anything like that before & it was certainly a rarity in 1977.
The previous week I'd been to my first punk gig, The Ramones & Talking Heads at Eric's in Liverpool but I still didn't really know what to expect. The hall had big glass windows at the stage end which meant that being summer the Slits essentially went on in daylight, despite the backdrop screens; I seem to remember we had to wait a pretty long time for Clash stage time to make sure it was properly dark by the time they got on. The Jam had dropped off the tour a few dates before, so it was the Slits, the Subway Sect & the Buzzcocks before the Clash. You can see photos of The Slits set in Caroline Coon's 1988 book and some of them & The Clash (in colour!) in The Punk Rock Movie; it's been a long time since I've seen that, so I think it's the clips where Joe has the red shirt on. Or maybe green; getting old!
Unsurprisingly it was a fantastic night. I was already a big Clash fan & it was unbelieveably thrilling to see them in person, the first time of many. The song I especially remember is Garageland, Joe crouching down to sing it. They were loud, fast & just brilliant.
But we know that, don't we?
How fantastic to see those screengrabs; it really does bring it all back. This I have to see; I've been playing it in my head for 30 years...
