The Clash - The Guns Of Brixton

(Broadcast)

21 September 1979 - Palladium - New York, New York


This famous photo, later used for the cover of 1979's London Calling album, was taken on this evening by Pennie Smith



I don't wanna brag about my punk rock "bona fides", but, well, just to brag a little, I was acutally at the Clash concert where the cover picture for this album was taken (at the old New York Palladium, since demolished for a NYU dormitory!). Of course, this album hadn't come out yet, but at that concert, the Clash did many of the songs that were featured on this album, as well as the then better known songs from their first album. London Calling became a classic and is rightly considered so today. Still, I don't know if i'd call it "punk". The Clash were already becoming poppier by this time, which is OK. This record showed a great variety of styles (as well as a good deal of pretensiousness that overcame a lot of punk groups as they got past their first album). The Clash could pull it off, tho, unlike many of their contemporaries. The Clash was the first punk group I ever really "got into". I found their first record, when it was still available as an import-only, in the Discomat store in Grand Central Station way back in 1978, and, along with the Stooges "Funhouse" (then also only available as an import) changed my whole way of thinking about rock & roll music. I had finally found something in the whole wretched mess of 1970s music that I could listen to. While everyone else I knew was listening to Styx, Foreigner, Toto, Boston, ELP, Yes (!!!), and I was holding my nose and trying not to puke, along came The Clash and eventually that whole long-haired mascara stained music scene went crashing into well deserved oblivion. Eventually, I came to like other groups (Wire, Gang of Four, Joy Division, Flipper, Mission of Burma and, especially, The Fall) better than the Clash, it WAS the Clash that showed me the true path. I still consider the import version of their first album their true masterpiece. London Calling was very good, and for a while I listened to it constantly, and it is well worth buying. It is a studio album, but in a way it is such a summing up of that period, that it is almost like being there in person at a live event. Tho it is not dated, and it stands the test of time, it will still take you back to your teen age years (if you were a teenager in 1979). BTW, the tickets for those historic Clash concerts at the Palladium cost about 10 bucks--including the teletron charges. I bought the tickets at the teletron at J&R Music world when it was still only a basement record shop, years before it became the super mega electronics and computer store it is today.
-blackmarketclash.com

01. Safe European Home
02. I’m So Bored with the USA
03. Complete Control
04. London Calling
05. White Man In Hammersmith Palais
06. Koka Kola
07. I Fought the Law
08. Jail Guitar Doors
09. The Guns Of Brixton
10. English Civil War
11. Clash City Rockers
12. Stay Free
13. Clampdown
14. Police and Thieves
15. Capital Radio
16. Tommy Gun
17. Wrong ‘Em Boyo
18. Janie Jones
19. Garageland
20. Armagideon Time
21. Career Opportunities
22. What’s My Name
23. White Riot

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