the Clash Queensway Hall, Dunstable, Luton - 20? January 1978

Short 'Secret' Midlands Tour

There is no known sound recording of this gig.

January saw some one off gigs hastily arranged for new producer Sandy Pealrman who was being brought over from America to the second album. Johnney Green in A Riot of Our Own pg97 describes the near riot that took place. The NME report [below] screams the headline 'White Riot in Dusnstable'.

Reading the report it is noticeable the band don't play White Man and Prisoner, two new songs they do play at Barbarellas.

NME 28 January 78, T-Zers

JANUARY 1978 EDITION

WHITE RIOT IN DUNSTABLE QUEENSWAY

DUNSTABLE, SUBURBAN OVERSPILL territory just 30 miles out of London, was the scene last week of some of the most unbelievable audience scenes witnessed at a rock gig in a good many months.

It was also the scene of probably the most tensely exciting Clash event since the Harlesden Coliseum epic a full 10 months ago.

Yeah, that’s right. The Clash City Rocker-Billy Rebels in your home town. Not so much another top secret tour, just one of a series of one-off low-key provincial dates before they get down to recording their next platter.

“We just wanted to keep our hand in,” said Mick Jones. “There’s a lot of people in Luton and Dunstable who wanted to see us.

The Queensway Hall itself is a coliseum-like oval ballroom. The Sex Pistols - The Jam, would you believe once played by- before 70 people at the same place. Tonight it’s packed. A top heavy punk audience.

The bar at the back of the hall is stocked with no glasses - plastic or otherwise - just those long, economy size ring pull cans. A ludicrously naive move on the part of the hall management.

The first band, Birmingham’s Modelmania, come and go. By their third number, the sporadic can starts flying towards the stage. The situation gets worse until, after the set, the road crew face a struggle to shift the gear offstage against a torrent of cans.

Joe Strummer walks onstage to cheers and makes a worthy effort to calm down the fans as a can bounces off his head. Joe steps into the swelling mass at the front of the crowd and a kid who a moment earlier had aimed a can at a roadie rushes up and vigorously shakes his hand.

Just when it seems things are cooling down, the worst scenes of the evening begin.

Female French quartet The Lous take the stage. On their night,The Lous are a great little band. They play bouncy, rocking rhythm `n blues, and enjoy it like no-one else around. On the last full Clash tour, they surprised a lot of people by their tough resilience to life on the road

Tonight, they don’t stand a chance.

Dunstable? To The Lous it was more like Dunkirk.

The cans and spit rain onstage. Rhythm guitarist Raphaele shouts something incomprehensible at the audience. But The Lous’ main problem ain’t one of communication . Some of the things going down in that crowd would disgrace Inter Milan verses Lazio.

“Here, why did you throw that can?

“Cos they’re crap, that’s why.!”

If this is audience participation, count me out.

Drummer Sacha - the Lou with the best English - braveIy steps out from behind her kit to the front of the stage and tries to reason with the audience. We witness the sickening sight of a can striking her full in the face.

In their second song. “No Escape’ (all too appropriate), they have no choice but to leave the stage. They don’t come back.

An incensed roadie swings a steel mike stand above the heads of the front three rows. I later learn he is Steve English, former Pistols bodyguard. Next it is the turn of Mick Jones and Paul Simonon to try their hand at cooling down the loonies. They are met with cries of “We Want The Clash.”

You lot hardly deserve them.

Anarchy in the Queensway Hall. A White Riot. A mindless one.

The lights go up. The promoter tells everyone that the gig is cancelled. But The Clash, above all else, are about playing, and minutes later they take the stage.

“We’ve just come to play some rock n roll,” shouts Mick, and the band are into “Complete Control”. A crazed “London/Dunstable’s Burning”, which used to be the show opener, follows.

A funky drum intro from Topper, and Mick Jones takes over vocals for the old 101’ers song “Clang Clang (Go The Jail Guitar Doors)”. Then it’s “Clash City Rockers” , the forthcoming single (with The Blue Oyster Cult’s man Sandy Pearlman as a likely producer scoopfreaks)

Joe’s vocals are as hard to mix as ever, helped by the echo on the PA, but what hits you is the overall intensity of the performance.

It was as if they’d rediscovered themselves after the poncing and posing of the last tour - adverse conditions bringing out the best in the band.

Two new songs were previewed: “The Last Gang In Town” , and a staccato two-minute gem called “Tommy Gun” , in which Topper’s mean kitwork took him right through his snaredrum, and finally buried the ghost of Terry Chimes.

They played it a bit safe by leaving out the two finest - but unfamiliar - of the newer songs, namely “The Prisoner” and “White Man In Hammersmith Palais” . But the vitality and noise of the Harlesden gig, the I00 Club and the ICA was there again for the first time in months . . Aaa’h,

The audience now had what they wanted - indeed, they were won over from the first song. Even “Career Opportunities” - a song The Clash should now drop as fast as they dumped “ 1977” - was touching. Strummer leading the crowd unaccompanied through the first verse before the rest of the band joined in.

Yet even now the can - throwing hordes are giving a new meaning to Heavy Metal. The cans, now squashed flat into lethal weapons, continue to drizzle stagewards, and Mick Jones is bloodied on the cheek by one.

A popgoing mass invades the stage for the swift encore and then The Clash are gone. after facing an audience from which most rock ‘n’ roll bands would have run a mile.

Their heads are still well above the waves.

ADRIAN THRILLS

1 2 3 4 5 6 7	Complete Control Dunstables Burning Jail Guitar Doors Clash City Rockers Last Gang in Town The Prisoner - not played White Man - not played Tommy Gun Career Opportunities

A Riot of Our Own pg97

Short Tour of the Midlands for Sandy Pearlman during early 78 the Clash played several secret dates on a 'short midlands tour'. Sandy Pearlman, CBS's producer for the Rope album had come in from the States to check out the band and Johnney Green was asked to fix up some inpromptu gigs for Pearlmans benefit. The dates are slightly questionable. Dunstable date seems correct and the Birmingham tape is labelled the 24th. The band definately played Dunstable the following night. Following these dates, Joe and Mick went to Jamaica late February, just before Joe got Hepatitus mid Feb. The early recordings of the Rope album began at the Marquee Studios in March. Pearlman arrived back in the UK in April to carry on.
Jan 00?		BBC TV Something Else
		The show put out by BBC2 in the UK had a DIY ethic, devised and presented by teenagers, it featured a mixture of of topics and music about current social events. The actual date was not as the boot LP lists 1981, but January 1978, the BBC TOTP2 A/V source from 2001 has more info.
Jan 24		Barbarellas, Birmingham
		A quick secret tour arranged by Bernie (and poss. J Green). Dates confirmed from NME Jan 28 1978. A Riot of our own p58 mentions these dates extensively.
Jan 25		Queensway Hall, Dunstable, Luton
		Definate date.
Jan 26		Lanchester Polytechnic, Coventry
		Where infamously Clash Roadie Robin Crocker walloped Sandy Pearlman.
Apr 30		Victoria Park, Hackney
		...Rock Against Racism festival with the Tom Robinson Band, Pete Townsend, et al. Note the use of Pauls backdrop... Rumours persist that a/v footage was shot by the organisers for fund raising releases and that this still exists.
May 1		Birmingham Barbarellas
May 20?		Paris Hippodrome - Marxist Festival
		"The gig was the show piece of the last night of a festival celebrating the tenth anniversary of the French uprising in May 1968 . Organised by the largest French Trotskyist organisation, the Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire, it was held in the Hippodrome which is normally used as a circus." Johnny Green mentions this one off gig p46. Pete Silverton writes about the gig in a June interview with the band.