Tag Archives: Mick Jones

Episode 28: Working for the Clampdown

I’m back after a short break with a new episode, this time focusing on September observations in the US, from Labor Day to the anniversary of 9/11 to Constitution Day. Apropos of those events, I talk about the two Clash songs I’ve practiced on guitar over the past couple of weeks: “Clampdown” from London Calling and “Tommy Gun” from Give ’Em Enough Rope. The first of those songs deals with the connections between the oppression of working people and the rise of fascism, while the second shows the Clash’s opposition to terrorism and political violence (while still supporting national liberation movements around the globe). 

But first, I tackle Jann Wenner’s absurd comments about Black artists and women in music and how they, in Wenner’s mind, are not as “articulate” as white male artists. Needless to say, that conflicts not only with reality but with the views of … an awful lot of white male artists such as the Rolling Stones and the Clash, who openly acknowledged the influence of Black musicians from Muddy Waters to the legends of rap.

So, please give this week’s show a listen, share your thoughts in the comments below, and follow the podcast on Twitter at @2Minutes59. And remember, as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.”

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Episode 27: Straight to Hell

Fifty-five years ago this week, Chicago hosted the Democratic National Convention, which resulted in a police riot and split the party between old guard populists and a new, pro-civil rights/anti-war faction that would come to dominate it. On this episode, I talk about memories from that time and how the Vietnam war influenced Joe Strummer’s lyrics and the Clash’s music, from “I’m So Bored With the USA” to “Charlie Don’t Surf” and “Straight to Hell.”

These are great songs that examine colonialism, war, exploitation, and abandonment — basically, everything the Clash fought against. And if you haven’t heard it, check out Lucinda Williams’ excellent cover of “Straight to Hell.”

So, please give this week’s show a listen, share your thoughts in the comments below, and follow the podcast on Twitter at @2Minutes59. And remember, as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.”

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Episode 25: The Cost of Living

As promised, this week’s episode is a deep dive into the Clash’s 1979 release, The Cost of Living EP, which consists of four tracks: 

  • “I Fought the Law”
  • “Groovy Times”
  • “Gates of the West”
  • “Capital Radio Two”

The EP combines outstanding musicianship with sarcasm and wit in a way only the Clash could pull off. From hard-driving rockabilly to gloom and doom realism to New York-inspired hope for the future, it’s your favorite band at their late 1970s peak. 

And while I may or may not have misheard certain lyrics, I must point out that the Clash Wiki site backs me up. So, there’s that.

In other news … a new Joe Strummer release! Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros: Live at Acton Town Hall is coming out August 18, and you should definitely check it out. The album features a mix of Clash and Joe Strummer solo favorites across sixteen tracks … the last three of which include Mick Jones!

Finally, and I think this goes without saying, “Try That in a Small Town” artist Jason Aldean needs to grow the hell up.

So, please give this week’s show a listen and share your thoughts in the comments below. And remember, as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.”

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Episode 23: Give It Up for Mick Jones

Returning to normal after last week’s special episode on Garland Jeffreys (and thanks to Garland for the shout-out on social media), we turn to a long overdue subject: Clash founder Mick Jones!

While I’ve talked a lot about Joe Strummer (of course!) and Paul Simonon (especially in light of the great new Galen & Paul album, Can We Do Tomorrow Another Day?), I realize that I haven’t given Mick his due. With his recent birthday (that I forgot to mention on the show!), I figure this is as good a time as any.

As I say on the show, when conflicts arise between songwriting teams or a member of your favorite band departs, it’s common for us to feel like we have to “take sides,” but we really don’t. Joe will always be one of my favorite artists ever, but there’s still plenty of room to appreciate Mick’s excellent contributions to the Clash. And Mick’s contributions were huge. From his formidable guitar skills to his remarkable gift for writing a great tune, the Clash would not have been the Clash without him. And it’s worth pointing out that Mick was perhaps the main reason the band expanded its horizons, particularly on Sandinista! It’s doubtful that the Clash would have embraced hip-hop and other modern sounds without Mick’s ever-evolving musical curiosity.

And then there’s the fact that Mick and Joe patched things up in the 1990s and even wrote some new material together. As Mick’s Wikipedia page says: 

In an October 2013 interview with BBC Radio 6 Music, Jones confirmed that Strummer did have intentions of a Clash reunion and in fact new music was being written for a possible studio album. In the months prior to Strummer’s death, Jones and Strummer began working on new music for what he thought would be the next Mescaleros studio album. Jones said “We wrote a batch – we didn’t use to write one, we used to write a batch at a time – like gumbo. The idea was he was going to go into the studio with the Mescaleros during the day and then send them all home. I’d come in all night and we’d all work all night.” Jones said months had passed following their work together when he ran into Strummer at an event. Jones was curious as to what would become of the songs he and Strummer were working on and Strummer informed him that they were going to be used for the next Clash album.

Just imagine what could have been!

So, please give this week’s show a listen and share your thoughts in the comments below. And remember, as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.”

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Episode 18: Clash Songs for the Non-Clash Fan

On this week’s episode, I return to the roots of the podcast and my obsession with the Clash … but not without first mentioning that my wife and I have our own podcast, In the Shadow of the Evening Trees, and on our latest episode we go into some detail about the Springsteen concert we saw in Dublin in May (the subject of a good part of last week’s Two Minutes Fifty-Nine show).

I also mention that my wife and I recently recorded an episode of Jesse Jackson’s Set Lusting Bruce podcast, talking, naturally, about the Springsteen show and related matters. I’ll let you know when that episode is up, but, while recording, Jesse challenged me to recommend some Clash songs for a non-Clash fan like him to listen to as a sort of introduction to the band.

So the balance of this week’s show is dedicated to that task. Here are the songs I’ve come up with, though, to be manageable, the list will have to be pared down some:

  • “Spanish Bombs”
  • “Career Opportunities”
  • “Garageland”
  • “White Man in Hammersmith Palais”
  • “Tommy Gun”
  • “Stay Free”
  • “Gates of the West”
  • “Rudie Can’t Fail”
  • “Revolution Rock”
  • “Brand New Cadillac”
  • “London Calling”
  • “Washington Bullets”
  • “Somebody Got Murdered”
  • “Sound of the Sinners”
  • “Police on My Back”
  • “Know Your Rights”
  • “Car Jamming”
  • “Straight to Hell”
  • “Atom Tan”
  • “This Is Radio Clash”

And, because I can’t help myself, I consider whether to include these solo Joe Strummer or Joe and the Mescaleros tunes as well:

  • “Generations”
  • “X-Ray Style”
  • “Yalla Yalla”
  • “Johnny Appleseed”
  • “Coma Girl”
  • “London Is Burning” (“Burning Streets”)

Anyway, please give this week’s show a listen and share your thoughts in the comments below. And remember, as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.”

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Episode 12: The Original Generation X

After a few episodes of wandering off course and talking about things that were, at best, tangentially related to the Only Band That Matters, this week I return to my core subject. In particular, at the recommendation of my friends Dan and Tammy Domike, retired booksellers from Seattle, I picked up a copy of Martin Popoff’s book, The Clash: All the Albums, All the Songs, which, as the title suggests, is literally about all the albums and all the songs.

One thing in particular that resonated with me is this: in the Introduction, Popoff talks about how the early Clash embraced the sort of anti-hippie sentiment that was common among punk rockers of the day, but, he says, Joe Strummer “would come to understand that the punks and the longhairs were one and the same” and “cut from the same cloth.” As someone who straddles the hippie and punk eras, I really feel that. While I’m technically a late-stage boomer, Popoff’s comment about Strummer’s evolution reminds me of what I think of as the original meaning of Generation X, the name that Billy Idol (born in 1955, not 1957 as I say in the episode) gave his first band, and the name of a somewhat popular, if not universally loved, novel by Canadian writer Douglas Coupland (born in 1961). While the term Generation X has taken on a very different meaning in pop culture, it originally referred to us — folks born in the mid-to-late ’50s to the early ’60s who fell in that awkward gap between the true boomers and their kids.

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed the book very much so far, and I highly recommend it, but I add this caveat: Popoff, as a true music critic, is not afraid to … you know … criticize his subject. I happen to respect that, whether or not I agree with every criticism, but don’t expect this book to be a dewey-eyed, naïve homage to Mick and Joe and the band.

Finally, I mention that March 31 is International Day of Transgender Visibility and I encourage you to give a listen to the LGBTQIA-friendly podcast my wife and I host called In the Shadow of the Evening Trees.  Our latest episode, in particular, talks about trans rights in these challenging times.

So please give this week’s show a listen and share your thoughts in the comments below. And as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.” 

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Episode 8: Back to the Music

Circling back briefly to last week’s discussion on Joe Strummer’s support for trans rights, I mention Joyce Carol Oates’ recent tweets on the subject, including her observations that (a) privacy concerns about spaces like restrooms and locker rooms have nothing whatsoever to do with the presence or absence of trans or nonbinary people, and (b) those who vilify trans and nonbinary people engage in the same sleight-of-hand that prejudiced people have always engaged in — they take a small number of random acts or (alleged) crimes and use them to slander an entire marginalized group. Well done, Joyce Carol Oates.

But then, because this is supposed to be a Clash-inspired podcast, it’s back to the music. I talk about a couple of other podcasts on the subject, including a 2021 episode of Tom Morello’s Maximum Firepower in which he and Antonino D’Ambrosio discuss the commonality between Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer and the Cash-Strummer cover of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” From there, I talk about a 2019 episode of Consequence’s The Opus podcast titled “London Calling: Radio Clash’s Timeless Transmissions,” which provides an in-depth look at the album and the Clash’s greatness as a rock band, not just as activists who use the music as a vehicle for the message.

Finally, on the Great Artist, Good People segment, I take a listen to Ivan Julian’s new album, Swing Your Lanterns. Julian, a fixture in New York’s punk and post-punk scene, was a founding member of Richard Hell and the Voidoids and played with a number of great artists over the years, including one of my favorites, Garland Jeffreys (but Garland is a subject for an entirely separate episode). If you’re not familiar with Ivan Julian’s music, get the new album (it’s great!) and take a listen to the Voidoids’ Blank Generation LP.

So please give this week’s show a listen and share your thoughts in the comments. And as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.”

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Episode 7: Joe Strummer Was Ahead of His Time, Part Infinity

One of those top nights of the year

And I see everyone’s here

Oh, took me a long time to get it

But when its taken time

Think and don’t forget it

“Diggin’ the New,” from Rock Art and the X-Ray Style (1999)

Following up on last week’s discussion about Billy Bragg’s evolving views on LGBTQ+ rights, I relate a disturbing interaction I had on Twitter after posting last week’s show in which a random stranger reacted to my defending the rights of trans and nonbinary people in a particularly offensive way. That interaction got me thinking about how Joe Strummer was never afraid to evolve and grow and challenge his own understanding of the world. The song “Diggin’ the New” really embraces this — not only Joe’s drive to understand the world around him, but his embrace of trans rights long before most artists did.

Joe was always ahead of his time. He was ahead of where a good many people are today, even twenty years after his untimely death.

And because America experienced yet another school shooting this past week, this time at Michigan State University, I reflect on the Clash’s, and particularly Joe Strummer’s, running commentary on guns and violence. Although “The  Guns of Brixton” may seem to express pro-gun sentiment, Joe’s and the band’s views on guns and violence were in reality quite different. From their cover of “Police and Thieves” to “Tommy Gun,” an explicitly anti-violence anthem, to Joe’s “Burning Streets”/“London is Burning” track first recorded with the Mescaleros and later reworked and re-released on Joe Strummer 001, their position on gun violence was far more humane and nuanced than the folks who seemingly don’t care if mass shootings continue apace. Meantime, I can’t get over the prophetic words from “Burning Streets”/“London is Burning”:

Too many guns in this damn town

At the supermarket, you gotta duck down

Baby flak jackets on the merry-go-round

(London is burnin’)

There’s too many guns in this damn town

(London is burnin’)

Baby flak jackets on the merry-go-round …

So please give this week’s show a listen and share your thoughts in the comments. And as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.” 

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Episode 6: Happy International Clash Day

On this week’s podcast, I talk about International Clash Day, an annual celebration of the Only Band that Matters that takes place on February 7 each year. Seattle radio station KEXP began International Clash Day in an impromptu fashion ten years ago when a listener asked, in response to a deejay playing a Clash song, why the station didn’t play more Clash (always a good question!), and the deejay obliged. Since then, the celebration has grown around the world, from the US to Europe to Latin America and beyond.

International Clash Day seems to sneak up on me every year (maybe next year I’ll remember that it’s coming), but it’s always a good time to break out the guitar and give a few Clash tunes a test drive. Don’t worry; I do not torment you with my guitar playing on this episode … except for a few seconds. But those few seconds come from my favorite Clash song of all time, “Spanish Bombs” from London Calling. “Spanish Bombs” recalls the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, the world’s first fight against fascism and in many ways a precursor to World War II. The song focuses on the writers, artists, and musicians who joined the cause to defend the government against Franco’s fascists, which is quite appropriate given the Clash’s own anti-fascist activism. It’s worth remembering, too, that American novelist Ernest Hemingway and British novelist/journalist George Orwell went to Spain to defend the republic against the fascists. Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is an amazing memoir of his time there.

From International Clash Day I turn to the Grammys, noting that the Clash won exactly one award — the 2003 Grammy for Best Long Form Video for the documentary film, Westway to the World. I also weigh in on Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ performance of and Grammy win for the song “Unholy,” which caused a right-wing meltdown on social media. Petras made history as the first openly transgender woman to win a Grammy, but she was not the first trans Grammy winner of all time. That was Wendy Carlos, the classical artist who won three Grammys under her former name in 1970 for her pioneering Moog synthesizer works. 

I also discuss the Grammys tribute to the 50th anniversary of hip hop, featuring some of the legends of the game (Busta Rhymes, De La Soul, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Missy Elliott, Grandmaster Flash, Ice-T, Method Man, Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, and RUN-D.M.C., among others) and the Clash’s connection to the genre.

Finally, in this week’s Great Artists, Good People segment, I talk about British punk icon Billy Bragg, a close friend of Joe Strummer and an excellent songwriter in his own right. Among many fantastic songs, Bragg’s 1991 hit “Sexuality” was a celebration of gay rights at a time when that was still controversial. But, not to be outdone, Bragg updated the lyrics in 2021 to embrace and celebrate trans and nonbinary people as well, showing tremendous growth as a person and giving a well-deserved middle finger to the haters in the UK. We should all grow old like this.

So please give this week’s show a listen and share your thoughts in the comments. And as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.” 

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Episode 5: Tom Verlaine, Television, CBGB, Joe Strummer and the Pogues, and Jimmy Cliff

On this week’s rambling podcast, I start, somewhat unintentionally, with where I left off last week, talking about yet another artist we lost too soon: Tom Verlaine of Television, who died on January 28, 2023. Though I was aware of Television back in the day, I first gave them a serious listen after seeing the 2013 film CBGB, about the legendary music venue in the Bowery that launched the careers of the Ramones, Blondie, and Talking Heads, among others. (Here is the NPR review of CBGB I mention on the show.) 

Verlaine was the pivotal figure in one of the most influential, if lesser known, punk bands to come out of New York in the 1970s. He was an excellent guitar player in a band that was quintessentially punk, but not in an overtly self-conscious way. If you’re not familiar with Television or Verlaine’s artistry, the 1977 LP Marquee Moon is an excellent place to start, and check out Patti Smith’s beautifully written obituary/memorial called “He Was Tom Verlaine” in The New Yorker. 

From there, I pause for a moment to recognize James Joyce’s 141st birthday and segue into a discussion of Joe Strummer’s days with the Pogues, including the iconic 1991 Pogues/Strummer show in London when Joe was filling in for Shane MacGowan (note: I mistakenly said the show took place in 1988). Rhino Records released a recording of that show, aptly named The Pogues with Joe Strummer — Live in London, in 2014. And speaking of MacGowan, his Wikipedia page has one of the greatest ear-related punk rock stories of all time.

Finally, in this week’s Great Artists, Good People segment, I talk about the legendary Jimmy Cliff, a guy who introduced a generation of suburban Chicago kids to reggae with the soundtrack to his 1972 film, The Harder They Come. It’s not just that Jimmy is a great artist, but he also has a strong connection to the Clash and Joe Strummer. So much so that the Clash mention both The Harder They Come and Jimmy Cliff’s character, Ivan, in “The Guns of Brixton” from London Calling:

You see, he feels like Ivan

Born under the Brixton sun

His game is called survivin’

At the end of The Harder They Come

To bring it full circle, it turns out that Jimmy recorded his own version of “The Guns of Brixton” with Tim Armstrong of Rancid, which is totally excellent. And here’s Jimmy’s song “Over the Border,” featuring Joe Strummer. The Clash connections are everywhere!

So please give this week’s show a listen and share your thoughts in the comments. And as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.” 

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