Pearl Harbour Tour supported by Bo Diddley
updated 30 Dec 2008 - new master tape
master cdr - Clear/ok - Sound 3+ - Time 36mins - 10 Tracks
Photos from the gig
Courtesy of www.jneomarvin.com
Photo 1-3: The Clash at the Berkely Community Centre
Photo 3: Topper Headon looking sleepy backstage at the Berkeley Community Theatre, along with Pearl E. Gates and some other characters.[photos 4-7 from the next night at the Geary Temple]
[RAT PATROL!] Clear but distant. Taper wasn't sitting that close to the stage and probably didn't have amazing tape equipment. But low-gen or master-ish because the instruments and vox are surprisingly clear once you get acclimated. I'm liking the sound more the more I hear it. I would say better quality than nearly all '78 AUD recordings, par or better for Pearl Harbour tour audience tapes. A good audio edit might make it stand out a bit better into bona fide B range.
Typically scorching hot show for that tour. Pinnacle-era Topper drumming and Mick gee-tar.
to follow ... [or write it for us!]
The CLASH in San Francisco
The Clash played their first show in the US on February 7, 1979 at the Berkeley Community Theater. Bo Diddley opened for The Clash that night. On the following night, February 8th, The Clash played a benefit gig at for New Yooth in the Fillmore.
I have an original flyer from that show and will make copies of it for anyone that has other Clash flyers to trade. You can send me an email to mailto:jchensf@yahoo.com.
I was working for the sound company at UC Berkeley and was given a stack of flyers to post around campus. I just found them after almost 30 years. The Clash also did an album signing at the Tower Records on Durant. I got my album and record sleeve signed by both Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon. Years later, I also got Sandy Pearlman (who produced the album) to sign the record for me. I also found my ticket from the show ($5.50), three reviews from the newspapers, a listing of shows from Bill Graham Presents (The Clash, Elvis Costello, and The Police all within a month) and a newspaper clipping of Joe's death. The flyer is a very RARE document from The Clash's original assault on the United States.
We turned up the following night and Mick was delighted to find we were playing at the old Filmore West, a fine, ramshackle wooden building. The people running it were ramshackle as well. I warned the band about the Acid Test. Who better for a spiker than a star catch? The stage would not have passed our London health and safety man. Who cared? The joint was jumping as Coon muttered darkly about the ‘ramifications’. The lack of organization was made up for by enthusiasm. It was a astorming gig from the second the band ran on to the disintegrating stage. The Clash rocked out and the crowd was with them. Joe’s delirium showed. He climbed from the stage into an opera box, waving and twitching.
Wheeling down the freeway later, we agreed we had don eit right, happily discussing our free show.”
From “A Riot of Our Own, Night and Day with The Clash”
By Johnny Green and Garry Barker
Joe: This is Frisco, right? That wild show we did for that new youth movement… a charity show for this youth organization. It was kind of like a squatters’ beatnik neighbourhood scenario, this.
Bob: In San Francisco the group played a benefit gig for the homeless. There was a lot of trouble with Bill Graham over that – Graham was promoting the official San Francisco concert, but they had this alternative gig going on as well. It’s interesting that the first show The Clash played in the USA was a benefit.
Caroline: Part of the policy in every town to which we went – and to persuade the record company of this was a nightmare – was to play a benefit gig for whichever youth group in the town needed a benefit, and then do the commercial gig. We tried to do it as often as possible, and get the local bands to play as well.
Mick: We played a benefit at the Temp, next door to Jim Jones’s temple – the guy who went out to take Kool Aid with his followers in Guyana. There was lots of trouble with that, because Bill Graham didn’t want us to do it. It was great that night.
When we first went to San Francisco, Joe and I, we went to that place where we played the benefit, and it was like the last vestiges of a real hippie night: with a little imagination you could see what it must have been like.
From “The Clash. Photographs by Bob Gruen”
By Bob Gruen
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