Out of Control Tour
The Clash go Back to Basics - USA Spring Tour

cdr - very bass heavy- Sound 2 - 82min - ? - 24 tracks

A extremely bass heavy sound which dominates the sound, though the top end, whislt being distant, has quite a bit of clarity. the sound has some width as well and remixed come be much better. However it is not bad, spoilt somewhat by too much bottom end.

Note:

Most of the reviews were written by Steve Morse, the long time rock critic for the Boston Globe and clearly a fan of the clash (he traveled to NY, NJ and Wash DC to review the band). As a native of Boston and a 25+ year fan of the Clash I have always enjoyed and agreed with his reviews. That can't be said for Jim Sullivan who wrote the Sept. 7, 1982 review. I was at that show and I have never had such a disagreement with a review and to this day, I can't hear (or write!) the words Jim Sullivan with out thinking about how far off the mark that review was (call me obsessed!), other's radio DJs at the time agreed. I thought it was a great show. I have included Sullivan's review just for the historical record. If you post it I may send my own memories of the show at a later date.


Boston Globe review

THE CLASH\ REBELS OF ROCK RETURN

Author(s): Steve Morse Date: April 12, 1984 Page: ????? Section: CALENDAR

It is after 1 o'clock in the morning in Washington, D.C. and Joe Strummer, lead singer of the intensely political British band the Clash, is walking down a deserted stretch of sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue, only five blocks from the White House. Stummer's black leather jacket and combat fatigues, his coldly fixed eyes and a stark mohawk haircut, form a fierce impression as he struts toward a nearby bar. His methodical stride is only broken when he looks up in shock to see nine derelicts sleeping under tattered blankets and sleeping bags, lying side by side behind pillars that front a glamorous hair salon.

"What is Reagan doing about people like that?" Strummer snaps tersely, referring to President Ronald Reagan whom he later labels in a barroom interview a member of the old guard who prefers to spend money on nuclear power, instead of people.

Strummer has just turned 30 and just fathered his first child, a daughter Gabbie, but it is clear he has not mellowed. Although he does not read Karl Marx by candlelight as some claim he still believes rock 'n' roll is a force that should change the world, not succumb to it.

"Rock 'n' roll is ours, not theirs," he says, differentiating between the young and old, between Punks and the Establishment, between the Clash and Ronald Reagan.

"That's the vital part of rock 'n' roll. It's got to be ours and not theirs," he says, plopping into a seat in O'Henry's Bar where most customers glare at his mohawk though a bold few ask for his autograph.

"Young people have got to feel that, and that's why I don't agree with the new British Invasion - the Boy Georges, the Duran Durans, Spandau Ballets and even the Eurythmics. I don't agree with it because it's not ours, it's theirs. But the record companies love it. It's video hyped. It's controlled. It's predictable. It's two good songs on an album with eight fillers. It's a ripoff. It's for 10-year-olds."

Obviously Strummer is not pulling any punches. A man with a mission, he's leading the Clash back from a nearly two-year absence during which they've fired charter guitarist Mick Jones, who has since sued the band; hired guitarists Vince White and Nick Sheppard and drummer Pete Howard, all of them 24 years old; and begun a low-key American tour ranging from college gigs to arenas dates at such sites as the Worcester Centrum, where they perform tomorrow, and the Providence Civic Center, where they'll headline next Tuesday over the Boston band the Neighborhoods.

Although the Clash sold a million and a half copies of their last album, "Combat Rock," and had a big dance hit in "Rock the Casbah," a humorous swipe at Ayatollah Khomeini's ban on rock music, they're touring this time without a new record and without much publicity or record label support. There will be a new album out in the autumn.

But the tour is just fine with Strummer, who only wants to prove that the reconstituted Clash are as committed or more so than the vintage Clash that kicked the punk movement into high gear in the late '70s and was hailed as the "rock band that mattered the most."

"We don't accept an audience. We fight for an audience," says Strummer, whose words pour out in a grimly determined rush. "We realize you can't be a stuck-up pussy in London congratulating yourself. You have to scream for an audience if you seriously want to make an alternative to heavy metal and devil worship and all this generic rock. We know we've got to fight. I mean, whoever thought Little Richard's rock 'n' roll could lead to the generic accountants and lawyers playing lead guitar? It's unbelievable, but it's here."

Earlier that night, the Clash had overpowered 4000 hollering fans with a red-hot show at George Washington University. All three new members played as if their lives were on the line, while Strummer barked out six new tunes that marked a turning back from the artiness of recent years to the raw impatience of the band's early days.

Such new songs left no doubt as to Strummer's renewed stridency - "Are You Ready for War?," a blast at capitalistic economies that promote aggression; "This is London," a critique of London as a "human factory farm;" and "Sex- Mad War," a defense of women who have been raped.

While on the topic of winning back early Clash fans, it's interesting to note that new guitarist Vince White, who joined up after answering a blind ad looking for "loud, wild guitarists," had, like many Clash fans, felt the band's sound was getting "too wimpy" during the last three albums, "London Calling," "Sandinista!" and "Combat Rock."

"Yeah," Strummer readily agrees. "I was worried that in our experimental self-indulgences in the studio, we had lost a real hard direction - a ghetto direction, a direction of the sidewalk, of concrete and of hunger."

A ghetto direction was what originally drew Strummer to rock 'n' roll. The son of a British foreign service diplomat, he rebelled against his middle- class upbringing after he heard the Rolling Stones' version of "Not Fade Away" at age 11. From that point on "school did not exist," he says. He later

quit school and bummed on the streets, often running from police who kicked him out of subway stations where he used to sing Bob Dylan protest songs.

"I ended up in a squat (tenement) with a bunch of other no-hopers, and we got a hold of an electric guitar and stole microphones and ripped off some equipment. We literally came out of Desolation Row."

An avowed socialist, romantic idealist and "spunky character" who has run three marathons without training, Strummer quickly became known for his militancy. When he and the Clash played their first American gig at Cambridge's Harvard Square Theater in 1978, he had the audacity to open with "I'm So Bored with the USA," a caustic song written "because I was so bored with the importation of American culture and the way we in Britain buy every damned show you have. Whatever you've got, we get it one year later. I was feeling suffocated." He used the same song to close the George Washington show and was met with great applause.

Today Strummer, however, is mature enough to admit that his militancy has sometimes backfired, especially when the Clash tried to force their CBS record label to put out 1981's three-record album "Sandinista!" for the price of a single album. "The label put the record on the back of the racks. I'd even go so far as to say they sat on it so it wouldn't sell," says Strummer. "They're the same label that has Michael Jackson, so they don't need us."

It was a lesson for Strummer. So when CBS then wanted the tapes of "Combat Rock" remixed, Strummer complied, causing a rift with guitarist Mick Jones that was never repaired. The Clash had spent 18 hours per track trying to mix "Combat Rock" because it was an "unholy mess." But outside producer Glyns Johns was brought in and mixed each track in a mere 40 minutes, resulting in the band's biggest selling album to date.

"I'm not a Don Quixote type who's going to tilt at windmills forever," says Strummer. "I'm a finite man and I've got a finite time at the top. I've got finite opportunities, so I thought, What an honor it is to stand in the spotlight! Don't blow it.'

"The issue is not to make fun of the record company, because the record company doesn't care. The issue is to get your music out to people, not to sit on it. And that's the lesson I learned."

Strummer, however, accuses Jones of living in "a marijuana-induced fairyland where you think it's a great laugh to get the corporation on the hop." Strummer, who quit marijuana last summer and feels a lot better for it, also accuses Jones of being lazy and "preferring to go on holiday rather than tour."

Jones has since formed the group TRAC (Top Risk Action Company) with ex- Clash drummer Topper Headon, but has also sued the Clash, claiming they owe him money. A pending court case has frozen all the band's assets including the $500,000 the band accepted for a single date at the US Festival, much of which was slated to go to charities.

"I don't believe in lawyers. I think it's a dishonorable way to go," says Strummer. "We used to be a gang, a team, and I'd like to think we're (he and Jones) blood brothers beyond lawyers. But no, he wouldn't have it. So I told him, OK, get out, get lost.' And I don't regret it."

Concurring in the decision to eject Jones was charter bassist Paul Simonon, who says he and Jones had long since fallen out even though Strummer was trying to mediate between them.

"If Mick was still in the group, we wouldn't be on tour right now," Simonon said backstage at the George Washington show. "Mick used to accuse our manager Bernie Rhodes of treating us like packhorses, whereas me and Joe would always be excited about the prospect of a new tour because meeting our audience is the main thing, even more important than records."

Despite this sullying of the Clash's spirit, the group's batteries have been recharged by the three new members. None of them has played with well- known bands, so their enthusiasm is all the greater.

Drummer Pete Howard says, "I've been in a lot of bands that were just trying to get in the charts, but the Clash are trying to do something important and that's really unusual." Guitarist Nick Sheppard, who contributes his own licks and doesn't slavishly imitate Jones, adds that "this is a real rock band, so much better than that syntho-pop rubbish."

White, the other new guitarist, praises the Clash for just giving him a chance. He tells the funny story of going to an audition "full of hippies playing Dire Straits licks," but when it was his turn he just got up and wailed. "I was getting more and more bored because I had taken a day off from my warehouse job and was in a bad mood. So I just played some really angry stuff and they called me back and wanted me. From a warehouse to an American tour. I still can't believe it."

But new blood aside, the band's focus remains Strummer.

"I give my life to this, because you have no home life when you're in a band like the Clash," he says. "My father died this year and I should have been at his bedside having that last conversation with him, but that was denied me because we were in Milan on tour playing before 12,000 people for two nights."

As Strummer finishes his beer and the interview, he gets up for a moment while Clash aide-de-camp Kosmo Vinyl marvels from a distance. "I don't know how Joe does it," Vinyl says with a shake of his head. "He's always given everything he has."

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

London Calling Safe European Home Are You Ready for War? Rock the Casbah This is England This Is Radio Clash Three Card Trick The Guns Of Brixton In the Pouring Rain Spanish Bombs Clampdown Armagideon Time The Dictator Police and Thieves Sex Mad War Janie Jones I Fought the Law Ammunition Career Opportunities The Magnificent Seven Brand New Cadillac I'm So Bored with the USA Police On My Back Garageland

Career Opportunities

Boston Globe Review
Steve Morse

Any further info / reviews
appreciated

Mar 27		Nashville, TN,
		You list the Cut the Crap-era Clash as playing Knoxville on March 27 and Nashville on March 28, 1984, but in fact those two dates are reversed (corrected now)--I went to both shows, and the Nashville show came first. The Nashville show was much better, but was marred by a bizarre crowd incident--my friend Dave W. was involved. He was standing on the bleachers like everyone else, but some drunk sorority girl from Vandy kept kicking him in the back of his legs for half the Clash's set. He finally got fed up and kicked her back, and it sent her falling over. It broke her leg in three places, and show security immediately set after Dave, who had to flee immediately or get the shit knocked out of him. She was taken to Vandy hospital of course, and after hearing about her side of the incident, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon paid her a visit in hospital before moving on to the show in Knoxville at UT Alumni Hall, a much smaller venue about 3 hours away by car. Tav Falco & Panther Burns did in fact open both shows, but only at the Nashville show were they the full line-up--they played a full opening set at Vanderbilt in the basketball auditorium, but by the time they played Knoxville, the second guitarist and the piano player had quit and--of all people--Alex Chilton was drafted in to play guitar in their place, even though it immediately became clear to the audience that Alex obviously did not know the songs at all. The "band" played about 6 songs in total, and the booing got so bad that the drummer stopped playing several times to smile and sarcastically blow kisses at the audience. GmbH Vince White describes this gig in his Clash biog, The Last Days of the Clash, page 109. He mentions an interview the band did for Channel 4 which appears on US TV that night.
Mar 28		Knoxville, TN, Alumni Memorial Gym on the University of Tennessee campus
		Clash in Knoxville, TN on March 28, 1984, at the Alumni Memorial Gym on the University of Tennessee campus. Opening act was Tav Falco and the Panther Burns, a rockabilly band from Memphis. They were booed off the stage after just a song or two. The band also played a show in Nashville, but I'm not sure if it was before or after the Knoxville concert. Whichever one was earlier was the opening date for the tour. Confirmed dates: Knoxville 27th, Nashville 28th from audience member.
Mar 30		Wdiz and Beach Club, Jai-Alai, Orlando FL
Mar 31		Sunrise, Fort Lauderdale FL
Apr 2
Apr 3		Fox Theatre, Atlanta GA
Apr 5		The Township, Columbia SC
Apr 6		Carmichael Auditorium, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill NC
Apr 7
Apr 8		GWU Smith Center, Hempstead, Washington DC
Apr 9
Apr 10?		Vassar College, Poughkeepsie NY
		Joe contracted syphillis and was treated at a local hospital.  It was in the newspaper the next day. I saved the article. The first song they played the floor monitors werent working so joe kicked them violently and one fell off of the stage. He had his newly cut mohawk.  I think the first song was know your rights.  The show had large video monitors behind them showing them in a car driving around NYC.  I bought a shirt there with 2 girls dancing on the front saying "jive after five" on the back said "steel jungle" 84 R & B showdown.  I still have it.  It was a good show overall despite the sound.  It was in the gymnasium at vassar college in poughkeepsie NY.  There wasnt an opening band.  If you want a scan of the article or tshirt let me know.
Apr 11		Palace Theatre, State University of New York at Albany, aka SUNY Albany
Apr 12		Expo, Portland ME
Apr 13		The Centrum, Worcester MA
Apr 14		Hofstra University, Long Island NY
Apr 15		St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY
		I saw the Clash perform at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY when I was a mere 6th grader. That concert changed my life. I vaguely remember that it was a Sunday night in '83 or '84. I was also at that show. I had to google search it because, even though I remember it and it was awesome, there was a part of me that didn't think they could have possibly played there... Glad to know it was real - pretty damn awesome! danielle robarge
Apr 16		Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Apr 17		Civic Center, Providence RI
Apr 18		The Hopkins Center, Thompson Arena, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH
Apr ?		Rider College, Lawrenceville, New Jersey
		I remember seeing Clash 2 in the spring of '84 at Rider College in New Jersey. The band was awesome and I hung around afterwards and got everyone's autograph (including Vince) and spoke with Joe briefly. I asked him what was up with Mick and he replied "the hot news is that Topper is out of the band". I told him the new stuff was great and how I was looking forward to a new album and he replied with something to the effect of they were going into the studio after the tour. I remember waiting and waiting for the new album and rushing home with the 'This Is Englad' 12" (along with the 'Bottom Line' 12") and being worried that the production was a bit weird.
Apr		University of Massuchusetts, Dartmouth MA
		"First i would like to say the clash made my whole entire life. My parentss owned a restaaurant for 20 years in the 80's we spent moost of our time going to clash concerts in the northeast. I have to share this story for once in my life, The clash was playing one night at u mass dartmouth, my gran worked there and was called to the reheresal site t here was a blood drive and the boys were rehearsing . me gran was called to step it down a bit , she walked on stage and told mick jones to keep it doen and the had a cuppa with the rest of the band, she being english an all with the boyz as thy were from the same stock. Had. a grand time and it is something i will never forget that me grand told the Clash to be quiet!! buttheyhada cuppa and laughed"
Apr 21		see illegible poster
Apr 22		The Spectrum, Philadelphia PA, USA
Apr 24		Rochester The War Memorial
Apr 25		The Agora, Hartford CT, USA
Apr 26		Stony Brook University Gym, New York
		Hi, great site. I attended the first Pier 84 show, and both the Hofstra University and Stony Brook shows. The 2nd Clash were excellent, I was crushed when that Jose Unidos record came out, it was beyond disappointing. Anyway I hope to write some recollections for you of the shows soon, as they were all amazing in their own way. Thanks, Ed Fingerling" "I was at the 1984 Stony Brook University show--I was the 14 year old kid sitting on the speakers right off stage" Brian Vince White describes arriving in New York in his Clash biog, The Last Days of the Clash, page 118 "1984 in Stony Brook. That show sucked big time, they came out (minus mick - this was lawsuit time or something) and then played like 2 or three songs and walked off - they never came back, all my friends were furious, i was like, "yeah mee too, fuck joe strummer," and as we were filing out of the gym we walked past the stage and i was like "oooh joe strummer was drinking out of thissee here solo cup!!" I grabbed it and slugged down the rest of his beer." Julie "I attended the 1984 Clash show at Stony Brook University and it was nothing like what was described. I remember being thrilled that I would be able to see them in such a small venue. I also remember going to buy tickets and the gathering crowd was very excited to be able to go see The Clash show. The night of the show, the crowd was loud and rowdy. At the time, this college had the reputation of being a liberal hotbed and being very open minded. Unfortunately most of this "liberal" crowd expected Mick Jones and The Clash from Combat Rock and so they were a little let down. Despite all this it was a rocking show as the guitars were cranked up. I can't recall the setlist but they played a wide selection of songs. My friends who were not Clash fans thought that they put on a good show. Joe looked very cool in his mohawk and was quite the showman.The Clash were definitely there for more than 3 songs!" Gene
Apr 27		Colgate Uni, Hamilton New York
Apr 28		Buffalo, New York
Apr 30		Toronto Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada
May 2		Montreal Forum, Canada
		I still have mixed feelings about the May 2, 1984 Montreal Clash Mack II gig. Joe had this white suit and Paul wore camouflage trousers. The other guys ? Can't remember, except they looked punk. Pete messed up at least three times, which got Joe very irritated. Maybe it was just a bad day... It was an all-seated floor, but when Joe told the crowd to get up and dance, it was a rush to the stage that made the Forum bouncers very scared ! The cops were called in and one punter stole a police cap and gave it to Joe, it was hilarious ! As for the setlist ? I remember they played In the Pouring Rain and Sex Mad Roar, among others. BtT
May 3		Ottawa Civic Centre
		supported by the Wise Guys. tics $12.50
May 4		Physical Auditorium Complex (PAC) University of Waterloo Campus in Waterloo, Ontario
May 5		Detroit Fox Theater
		Vince White describes these gigs in his Clash biog, The Last Days of the Clash, page 140
May 6		Detroit Fox Theater
May 8		Hara Arena, Dayton OH
May 9		Veteran’s Memorial Hall, Columbus OH
May 10		East Lansing, Michigan State University
May 11		Cleveland Public Hall
May 14		Mecca Auditorium, Milwaukee WI
May 15		Civic Center, Saint Paul MN
May 16		Civic Center, Des Moines IA
May 17		Aragon Ballroom, Chicago IL
		Vince White describes this gig in his Clash biog, The Last Days of the Clash, page 148
May 20		Davenport Masonic Hall, IA
May 21		Kiel Opera House, Saint Louis MO
May 22		Kansas City Starlight Bowl, MO
May 23		Omaha Music Hall,NB
May 25		Denver Red Rocks, CO
May 27		Salt Lake City Exhibition Hall, UT
		Vince White describes these next few gigs in his Clash biog, The Last Days of the Clash, page 159
May 29		University of Oregon, Eugene OR
		The Last Days of the Clash, page 161
May 30		Paramount Theater, Seattle WA
May 31		Vancouver PNE Coliseum, B.C.
		the promoter gave this number: For more information please contact: Eliot Hubbard (212) 975-5051 ...ticket