This year we mark the anniversary of the death of The Clash — they fired Mick Jones in 1983, but The Clash was still a thing until 1986. Thirty years later I’m planning a number of Clash-related posts in the months to come. The Clash are always in the running when I consider favorite bands of all time, and their fusions of reggae and punk along with Joe Strummer’s anarchic poetics keep me going back to that well. Here’s a documentary by Julien Temple featuring early footage of the band. Dangerous Minds has these words on the film…
On the liner notes of their first LP Two Sevens Clash, roots reggae band Culture claimed that Marcus Garvey had prophesied that the date July 7, 1977, “when the two sevens clash,” would herald great conflagration. Whether Garvey said it or not (some hold that Culture just made the story up), it’s safe to say that 1977 was a year of great chaos. As the Clash sang around that time, “Danger stranger / You better paint your face / No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones / In 1977.” The tumult of that year is amply demonstrated in 1977, a documentary by Julien Temple, director of The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle and The Filth and the Fury, built around never-before-seen footage he shot of the Clash’s early gig at the Roxy on January 1, 1977, a gig that more or less ushered in both the Roxy and the Clash as punk fixtures, although the band ended up lasting a lot longer than the venue. – Martin Schneider
Here’s The Clash: New Year’s Day ’77…
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