Sep 172010
I’d never seen this performance by The Clash on a 1977 French TV show until a few minutes ago. It’s cool to see them in a controlled environment, with no audience, no pumping PA system, and no concert hall reverberations. They’re presented in a fashion even more straightforward than on their simple, direct debut album. It’s life-size Clash! Enjoy.
Formidable.
This might have sounded exciting at a louder volume, but I think this sounds like crap.
I cranked it up. Fantastique!
Although the playing is rudimentary and the sound leaves something to be desired, what I found really cool about this clip was a) how much they sound like they do on the first record, which is a really humble recording, if you listen closely, and b) how they react with each other and their music when there’s not an excited audience raising its collective beer-soaked fist. To me they come off like an interesting, enthusiastic, hard-working band that hasn’t yet hit its stride but has promise. They seem like a band I might see at a tiny club, before anyone knows who they are, before they really know who they are. I find this especially surprising because they’ve got Topper on drums, which would mean they’d already been playing together for some time.
I may just be in the wrong mood to hear this today, but to me they seem like a band that spent more time practicing in front of the mirror than learning to play their instruments. And I always liked the studio version.
I don’t mind the sound, warts and all, but I wouldn’t make the case that it’s “better” than any other recording/performance of them. In fact, it’s probably worse. I just think it’s cool to see them so unfinished some time into their career, at a point when they would have already recorded the first album and changed drummers. I’d dig them, if I caught them on tv that night, and I don’t think their lack of finesse and power is solely the result of the artificial environment of the performance. I don’t know, I guess I simply think it’s cool, just like I felt the other night while watching a documentary on Gone With the Wind and seeing the four finalists for the Scarlet role do the same test scenes. It was cool seeing Scarlet while still in development. (It also made me realize that they chose the right actress. There was some petite, blonde actress with a funny voice whose name presently escapes me who was usually a very good comic actress but who would have been all wrong for the part!)
That is very cool.
I can’t believe I never noticed the physical/facial similarity between Strummer and Billie Joe Armstrong before. Maybe I hadn’t see enough “young Strummer” like this in action.
All I want to know: is Mick Jones rocking a perm or what????
Mod, that sounds like Jean Arthur.
Yes, Jean Arthur! I like her, but she would have been TOTALLY wrong for the part. What surprised me was how much better the chosen Scarlett was than the woman I always knew to be the runner-up, Paulette Goddard (I think that’s her name). I’d only seen still photos of this runner-up before, and I always thought she was a little better looking, but seeing the test scenes made it clear that the true Scarlett (damn, I can forget names with the best of them!) had the spoiled coquette thing down pat.
Yeah, after being “the Gamin” in that Chaplin movie, I can’t think of Paulette Goddard as being a spoiled brat.
Also, I like Jean Arthur, but I agree with your casting assessment. Now Leigh in Streetcar Named Desire is another issue.
I love the Clash clip, even though this performance is barely a shadow of the recorded version, which is one of THE great rock and roll recordings.
Even more, though, I am loving the fact that Jean Arthur is getting some respect here, since she was brilliant and charming in so many movies, although she would have been wrong as Scarlett O’Hara. Paulette Goddard, she might have been able to do it, she had sass, among other things.
Jean Arthur is fantastic, but a southern belle? No way.
It’s interesting to hear the song broken down to its essential elements. Complete Control was recorded after the first LP was released, so this was the first single to feature Topper, who had been playing with them for a few months by that time. Lee “Scratch” Perry, of all people, produced this.
And here is the same song in Paris in 1980: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jggHd7hxLIE
bostonhistorian, thanks for reminding me – an American – of the fact that “Complete Control” wasn’t on the first album when it was first released in the UK! DUH! Somehow, despite my shame at overlooking this rock nerd “gimme,” this makes the performance all the more interesting.
And I concur with misterioso that the Jean Arthur love is a nice surprise today. Who says Townspeople are not well rounded?
Joe should have bought a fuzz box, and Mick should have broken down and had a bowl of rice sometime that month. He looks like a skeleton with hair. I love the energy, but they must have realized the sound was enemic for them.
Yes! A skeleton w/permed hair! Not very Punk Rawk.
Hit-and-run: count me in as being pro-Combat Rock — and *especially* pro-“Rock the Casbah.” That song RULES.
It’s sloppy, but OK. Kind of anemic sounding (esp. in light of the titanic single version, which I think might be their best one, thank you, Mr. Perry). They really could have used a real bass player, though (not just here; throughout their entire career).
As a live unit, The ’77 Ramones would have wiped the floor with these guys.
I’m listening to an October 1977 Clash show right now and they had no trouble bringing it live.
Agreed Bobby on the ’77 Ramones. Mick Jones is very Townshend-esque here