SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

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Marky Dread
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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

Post by Marky Dread »

Chuck Mangione wrote:
Marky Dread wrote:
Chuck Mangione wrote:Live can be a great as the studio version but it can never surpass it.
I don't agree there are a ton of tracks that sound far better than their recorded counterparts.
"Live LC can be as great" that should have read.
The Lewisham live tracks are better than their vinyl counterparts for me.
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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

Post by IkarisOne »

I must say that hearing "London Calling" - the song- for the first time just before Christmas in 1979 on Oedipus' show was one of the most exciting moments of my youth. I did agree with the Creem review that felt the rest of the album didn't quite deliver on its promise.

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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

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IkarisOne wrote:I must say that hearing "London Calling" - the song- for the first time just before Christmas in 1979 on Oedipus' show was one of the most exciting moments of my youth. I did agree with the Creem review that felt the rest of the album didn't quite deliver on its promise.
I think you are correct Chris. The single of LC with it's post apocalyptic feel isn't matched by anything else on the album.
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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

Post by Heston »

Marky Dread wrote:
IkarisOne wrote:I must say that hearing "London Calling" - the song- for the first time just before Christmas in 1979 on Oedipus' show was one of the most exciting moments of my youth. I did agree with the Creem review that felt the rest of the album didn't quite deliver on its promise.
I think you are correct Chris. The single of LC with it's post apocalyptic feel isn't matched by anything else on the album.
I just think they should have followed LC with a better two tracks than BNC and JJ. Those two should have been side 4 stuff. Maybe Death or Glory second would have made it seem less of an anti-climax.
There's a tiny, tiny hopeful part of me that says you guys are running a Kaufmanesque long con on the board

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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

Post by Heston »

Marky Dread wrote:
Chuck Mangione wrote:
Marky Dread wrote:
Chuck Mangione wrote:Live can be a great as the studio version but it can never surpass it.
I don't agree there are a ton of tracks that sound far better than their recorded counterparts.
"Live LC can be as great" that should have read.
The Lewisham live tracks are better than their vinyl counterparts for me.
Studio version of Clampdown is unbeatable for me, even though the Lewisham version has Topper's absolute wizardry at the end.
There's a tiny, tiny hopeful part of me that says you guys are running a Kaufmanesque long con on the board

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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

Post by Marky Dread »

Heston wrote:
Marky Dread wrote:
Chuck Mangione wrote:
Marky Dread wrote:
Chuck Mangione wrote:Live can be a great as the studio version but it can never surpass it.
I don't agree there are a ton of tracks that sound far better than their recorded counterparts.
"Live LC can be as great" that should have read.
The Lewisham live tracks are better than their vinyl counterparts for me.
Studio version of Clampdown is unbeatable for me, even though the Lewisham version has Topper's absolute wizardry at the end.
That's the magical bit for me. On the studio version it's the undechipherable intro.
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Forces have been looting
My humanity
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The end of liberty


We're the flowers in the dustbin...
No fuchsias for you.

"Without the common people you're nothing"

Nos Sumus Una Familia

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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

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I disagree. London Calling the album is filled with fabulous spirit, wit and charm. I think it's the one time that they made a great "record" that didn't have the mania of the live performance, but had something else special. The two albums that followed are flawed in execution and don't have the same band camaraderie.

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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

Post by Wolter »

TeddyB Not Logged In wrote:I disagree. London Calling the album is filled with fabulous spirit, wit and charm. I think it's the one time that they made a great "record" that didn't have the mania of the live performance, but had something else special. The two albums that followed are flawed in execution and don't have the same band camaraderie.
Co-signed. I decided it was a great album without being told it was by any "hype machine." The first time I heard it was a cassette in a friend's car in high school. I said "this is great. What is it?"
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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Wolter wrote:
TeddyB Not Logged In wrote:I disagree. London Calling the album is filled with fabulous spirit, wit and charm. I think it's the one time that they made a great "record" that didn't have the mania of the live performance, but had something else special. The two albums that followed are flawed in execution and don't have the same band camaraderie.
Co-signed. I decided it was a great album without being told it was by any "hype machine." The first time I heard it was a cassette in a friend's car in high school. I said "this is great. What is it?"
I had sort of the same experience. After I had "discovered" punk (which was, in my limited frame, the Pistols), I branched out, first getting the initial Clash album. I liked it, but it didn't have a wow factor for me at the time. Then I found a used cassette of London Calling and it blew me away immediately. Played it over and over and over. And like Jon, there was no hype machine prepping me. To that point, I knew the Clash for "Rock the Casbah" and that first album. It was just a solid and balanced piece of work that I met at a time when I was hungry for stuff out of the mainstream. It was perfect.
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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

Post by Heston »

I also heard LC without any hype, in fact they were objects of ridicule in the press at that time (early 84). I was a bit underwhelmed on first listen, but was fully on board a few plays later.

Still my favourite album of all time and probably always will be.
There's a tiny, tiny hopeful part of me that says you guys are running a Kaufmanesque long con on the board

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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

Post by IkarisOne »

It's funny- I got into punk because I was so sick of all the 70s bands I was into going all eclectic and soft. I remember writing a letter to the Queen fan club when I was 11 asking if they could go back to making hard rock records like the first one again, 'cuz Jazz was basically their Combat Rock (or Combat Rock was The Clash's Jazz). Then there were the Sabs losing the plot on Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die and ELO making disco records. And then there was all the soft rock and disco you couldn't escape anywhere- even the Dead were making disco records! And then there was Love Beach and In Through the Out Door and Alice Cooper making soft rock records with Bernie Taupin. It was grim. There was the promising example of Van Halen but I bought a Judas Priest album (Unleashed in the East) and found it to be utterly tuneless and one-dimensional.

So I saw Cheap Trick on Don Kirschner and judged them to be a suitable replacement. Budokan ruled the spring of 1979 and it was great makeout music since I was a little mac-daddy at the time. The new wave stuff was fine- B-52s, Devo, Talking Heads- but at heart I was a guitar guy. Road to Ruin was a revelation- it was Paranoid played on 45. Perfect. But the lyrics didn't really cut it...

So I bought Give Em Enough Rope and it blew my brains out. I never heard anything like it in my life. It was science fiction- the most futuristic hard rock I could imagine. JG Ballard with guitars. I saw pictures of them running around in shirts with fake bullet holes and leather jackets and thought, "finally, I'm safe. These fucking guys mean it. There's no danger of them doing what all my 70s heroes did and pull all the corny old "eclectic" soft rock moves like a bunch of fucking traitors just to get on the radio." I thought the first album sounded like shit but that was all the better- it made it that much more unlikely they would go mainstream. These guys were the real deal- real do or die rock and roll outlaws who had the songs to back up the noise.

Because I couldn't fucking take it anymore- my rock and roll heroes cutting their balls off to please the record companies and radio programmers. Because even then I knew it was suicide, since everyone I knew bitched endlessly about it as well down the park or in the locker room. This was summer-fall of 1979. Little did I realize.

The show at the Orpheum was the right thing at the right time because I wasn't sure I could stick with these guys, pulling the exact- same- moves bands like Queen did. Still, I remember reading that Lisa Robinson report from Electric Lady sometime in the spring of 1980 and putting up a note on my corkboard "The Clash are Dead. Generation X are the last gang in town." (insert irony here) They were recording "King of the Road?" I could have fucking killed them all.The only thing that kept me going was knowing the real Clash lived on stage.

Sure, I programmed myself to like SRP Clash but as soon as Joe said he was going to do punk again- which answered five years of prayers to the gods of rock- I was back to "fuck that phony soft rock shit." Of course even after that incredible night in Providence I knew the shoe would drop. Little did I suspect it would be a fucking shoe store. But at least the guitars were sort of Clash and not that Roland Jazz Chorus Novo Combo sackless shit.

The horrible truth is that I hated everything after Rope when it came out- and in the case of S! and CR ran around saying so in the weeks following their releases- but that fateful cold winter night in 1980 brought out the good soldier in me. Vince was right on when he talked about programming yourself to get used to music you didn't like from a band you did. Plus, I recognized it was the production and playing that sucked, not the underlying songs (or not always). I saw songs I didn't like off LC turn into Godzilla Von Frankensteins at the Orpheum- surely the same magic would happen onstage with these.

So that's my London Calling story.

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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

Post by JennyB »

Wolter wrote:
TeddyB Not Logged In wrote:I disagree. London Calling the album is filled with fabulous spirit, wit and charm. I think it's the one time that they made a great "record" that didn't have the mania of the live performance, but had something else special. The two albums that followed are flawed in execution and don't have the same band camaraderie.
Co-signed. I decided it was a great album without being told it was by any "hype machine." The first time I heard it was a cassette in a friend's car in high school. I said "this is great. What is it?"
That was pretty much my reaction when my older brother played it for me for the first time.
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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

Post by Bankrobber »

I got into punk when I was 13 and shed everything. I hated anything that wasn't punk. I was 15 when I got LC and it did really challenge that. Sandinista! was the first Clash album I bought. It really put me is a state of mind of hating the Clash. I though, "This band gave the Sex Pistols a run for their money?" Next I bought FHTE and suddenly these guys were amazing. Then the S/T. I was scared to buy anything else because I didn't know it would aural ecstasy or new wavey garbage. So I went and bought LC except for the ska numbers the first few listens bugged me but then it opened something up to me. This was the music I liked as before I had any dogma attached to music. Rockabilly, ska, just fun rock 'n roll. Without that kick I might not've gotten back into music made before 1977. Maybe that is some Sony line but dammit it was true for me. I might not have taken a look again at Chuck Berry or the Who or T-Rex or Bowie. I might not have given the funkiness of Talking Heads a chance. I might've been stuck in a land of just the Circle Jerks or worse yet ended up only liking the Sex Pistols and the Exploited or something like that.


Also, on live Clampdown. The record and early version bug me. When they figured out a way to end the song and not just peter-out that's when the song really works.
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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

Post by Marky Dread »

TeddyB Not Logged In wrote:I disagree. London Calling the album is filled with fabulous spirit, wit and charm. I think it's the one time that they made a great "record" that didn't have the mania of the live performance, but had something else special. The two albums that followed are flawed in execution and don't have the same band camaraderie.
Absolutely no argument with that.
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Forces have been looting
My humanity
Curfews have been curbing
The end of liberty


We're the flowers in the dustbin...
No fuchsias for you.

"Without the common people you're nothing"

Nos Sumus Una Familia

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Re: SOUNDBOARD UPGRADE BRIXTON 30 JULY 1982

Post by mcintyrepoet »

Just got round to updating this gig for bmc and reread the whole 14 pages on this! Having been mad enough also to work my way through reviews from 76 up to this gig - which was one of around a dozen Clash gigs I saw back in the day (including 4 in 82 UK tour) - this stands out as one of favourite gigs ever. I agree with comments here I never then gave a second thought to the Terry/Topper argument here but listening to all these boots and being practically a non musician even I find it obvious that Topper made The Clash a much more musically exciting listening experience and had much better musicianship than Terry.

That though is not the point of reviving this topic, its to ask for more info on the Radio Clash flyer (on bmc). I'm assuming Dave Newson's tape was connected to the broadcast advertised for 27th October 1982 on 103.8 FM. We do know 103.8FM was used by Dread Broadcasting Corporation. An internet search finds this;

The Dread Broadcasting Corporation was launched in 1981, after the death of Bob Marley, by his brother-in-law Leroy Lepke Anderson (Leroy’s sister Rankin’ Miss P has the inauguration in ’79). The Portobello pirate radio station had a market stall outside 303 (then the Black People’s Information Centre, formerly Back-a-Yard cafe), and 286 (Better Badges) as their mailing address. As they went ‘dread outta control’ from a Neasden garden shed, from 6 to 12 every Friday night on Rebel Radio 103.8fm, you could ‘tune in if you rankin’ to their militant insurgency. The DBC DJ line-up included Neneh Cherry, Paul Simonon, Keith Allen and Lloyd Bradley. As most pirate stations acquired licences, rather than sell out, DBC continued as a sound-system/stall and became big in Japan.

Questions that Dave's explanation still leave unanswered are

Did this broadcast ever take place, was it planned then stopped by Bernie or CBS or whatever?

If it did why are there not more recordings around?

If it didn't why has this recording not been discussed for possible official release, was it not good enough quality etc?

Where is the master now, is it in Mick's "attic" etc?

I'd love to know but more so I'd love to hear the master - it's about time!

Peter

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