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Tuesday, Feb 7 2023, 7AM
Happy International Clash Day, folks!! Thanks for joining us today as we celebrate the only band that matters.
"This is Radio Clash" was released as a single in 1981. The song is based on the idea of The Clash transmitting from their own pirate radio station. It is considered by the American music critic, Eric Schafer to be the first British hip-hop record, following the bands pioneering use of rap (with a straighter disco beat) on The Magnificent Seven.
Joe Strummer admitted in an interview with Melody Maker in 1988 that he had nicked the bassline from the Queen hit "Another One Bites The Dust" (which in itself shares many similarities with another disco classic, Chic's "Good Times").
The structure of "Know your Rights" revolves around the rights held by the poor and disenfranchised, in which the speaker of the song, (Joe Strummer), names the three actual rights. At the end, the notion that more rights should be granted is rebuffed by the speaker.
The three are:
1. "The right not to be killed. Murder is a crime, unless it is done by a policeman, or an aristocrat"
2. "The right to food money, providing of course, you don't mind a little investigation, humiliation, and, if you cross your fingers, rehabilitation"
3. "The right to free speech (as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it)"
This is a cover of The Equals 1968 song. "We used to play the Equals' version on the tour bus, Mick was the first one to play it to me" said bassist Paul Simonon. "We recorded it at the Power Station, just the three of us, me, Mick (Jones, guitarist) and Topper (Headon, drummer). Paul put his bit on later in Wessex," noted singer Joe Strummer. bit.ly
Here are The Equals performing Police On My Back in 1967:
www.youtube.com
The Equals are an English pop, R&B and rock group who formed in North London in 1965. Eddy Grant founded the group with John Hall, Pat Lloyd, and brothers Derv and Lincoln Gordon, and they were noted as being "the first major interracial rock group in the UK" and "one of the few racially mixed bands of the era".
The Equals, led by Eddy Grant, were a ground-breaking, racially mixed bands in London when they started in 1965.
This song was originally released on the The Equals' Baby, Come Back album in 1968, the song enjoyed a revival when UK punk band The Clash recorded a cover of the song in 1980 for their Sandinista! album.
“Electric Avenue” was founding member of The Equals' Eddy Grant's response to the Brixton riots that took place in 1981. Those riots came about as a result of the high levels of poverty and unemployment prevalent among the Caribbean migrants in Britain at the time.
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This track became one of the highest-grossing reggae-influenced songs ever. It peaked at number 2 in UK and hit number 2 in the US.
In 1983, the song was earned a nomination at the Grammy Awards for Best R & B Song. It however, lost to Billie Jean by Michael Jackson.
Unlike most Clash songs, which were written by Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, "The Guns Of Brixton" was written by bass player Paul Simonon, who decided to get in on the songwriting himself. Written as a protest about the economic situation for UK youth at the time, it became one of the band's best-known songs and a staple of their live set. Simonon takes lead vocal duties on the song, which is about gangsters in his hometown of Brixton in South London.
win.gs
Although the Clash had written and performed previous songs that combined reggae with punk rock, "The Guns of Brixton" was the first Clash song that was created purely as a reggae song.
Santigold's rendition of Guns of Brixton.
Santi White (born September 25, 1976), known professionally as Santigold (formerly Santogold), is an American singer, songwriter and record producer. Billboard presented her in 2022, saying: "Spanning punk rock, hip-hop, and dance music, Santigold’s singular pen and voice have helped shape the past two decades of popular music."
Chica Libre rendition. Chicha Libre started out in 2006 and quickly evolved into an original project that MTV has called “one of the world's preeminent Tropical Psychedelic band”.
chichalibre.bandcamp.com
Beats International were a British dance music band and hip-hop collective, formed in the late 1980s by Norman Cook (later in his career known as Fatboy Slim).
Cook said of this song, "I used the bassline from The Clash song 'Guns Of Brixton', which was me tipping my hat to The Clash as I was such a big fan."
Inspired by the Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five.
Joe Strummer relayed, "When we came to the U.S., Mick stumbled upon a music shop in Brooklyn that carried the music of Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, the Sugar Hill Gang...these groups were radically changing music and they changed everything for us."
The original B-side to “The Magnificent Seven,” was a dub remix called “The Magnificent Dance,” and had made it to New York hip hop radio. “The Clash were ecstatic to tune into WBLS (hip hop station in NYC). DJs were not only playing ‘The Magnificent Dance’ up to five times a day, but also doing their own remixes of it."
www.openculture.com
Rock The Casbah featuring The English Beat's Ranking Roger came with the 40th Anniversary edition of The Clash's Combat Rock in 2022.
The recording of Combat Rock commenced in late 1981, a few months after The Beat had supported The Clash in Europe, when Roger would often join The Clash onstage for their covers of Willie Williams’ Armagideon Time and Junior Murvin’s Police & Thieves. Roger's vocals for Rock The Casbah and Red Angel Dragnet were recorded during would would become known as the Rat Patrol sessions, and received a bootleg release in 2013.
www.loudersound.com
"Know Your Rights" has been performed live many times by Pearl Jam, most notably during their Riot Act Tour in 2003, and it also has been recorded on their live albums.
Audioslave's cover of The Clash, as performed at Rock Am Ring Festival in 2003 in Germany.
In this song, The Clash's frontman Joe Strummer is expressing his view that young white people should be outraged over their oppressive government just as Black people were, and should demonstrate through direct action and protest.
Read more about the story behind the song here:
faroutmagazine.co.uk
The London Punkharmonic Orchestra were a one-off musical collective. Little or no information is available on them and their only available recording is Classical Punk, a CD originally released on the budget label Music Club in 1995.
bit.ly
Watch First Lady Dr. Jill Biden present the first ever Best Song for Social Change to "Baraye" by Shervin Hajipour at the 2023 Grammys.
www.youtube.com
Iranian singer Shervin Hajipour won a Grammy for Best Song For Social Change For "Baraye."
Baraye was posted on Hajipour's Instagram and was seen more than 40 million times in less than two days. "He was arrested but this song continues to resonate around the world for its powerful theme: women, life, freedom" said First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, who presented the award.
www.grammy.com
Originally written by Bob Marley and is the final track on Bob Marley and the Wailers' twelfth album, "Uprising."
The Mescaleros were the British backing band for British singer, musician and songwriter Joe Strummer, formed in 1999, which issued three albums prior to Strummer's death in 2002.
"Straight to Hell" was written and recorded towards the very end of the Clash's New York recording sessions for the Combat Rock album. Mick Jones' guitar technician Digby Cleaver describes the sessions as "a mad, creative rush" that occurred December 30, 1981, the day before the Clash was due to fly out of New York on New Year's Eve 1981.
Joe Strummer reflected on this creative process in a 1991 piece about the track:
I'd written the lyric staying up all night at the Iroquois Hotel. I went down to Electric Lady and I just put the vocal down on tape, we finished about twenty to midnight. We took the E train from the Village up to Times Square. I'll never forget coming out of the subway exit, just before midnight, into a hundred billion people, and I knew we had just done something really great." (from Passion Is A Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash)
Lily Allen's rendition of Straight to Hell, feat. Mick Jones.
War Child Presents Heroes is a 2009 charity album devoted to the War Child charity's aid efforts in war-stricken areas, such as Iraq, Uganda, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. With a theme of "placing faith in the next generation," the concept of the album is to have music legends select a track from their own canon and nominate an artist from the next generation to create a modern reworking of that song.
The album was recorded over six months in London, Manchester, Paris, Berlin, New York, and Los Angeles, and mastered at Abbey Road Studios in North London.
Featuring a sample of MIA's Paper Planes (which featured a sample of The Clash's Straight to Hell).
The Clash within The Clash within The Clash
The Guns of Brixton" was not initially released as a single, but a version of the song, taken from the remastered version of London Calling and remixed by Jeremy Healy, was released by CBS as a CD single, 7-inch vinyl and 12-inch vinyl entitled "Return to Brixton" in July 1990.
Big Audio Dynamite were an English band, formed in London in 1984 by Mick Jones, former lead guitarist, and co-lead vocalist of The Clash.
This track samples several musical compositions, including the keyboard component of The Who's song "Baba O'Riley," the organ from the introduction to the Deep Purple song "Child in Time," a drum break from Tommy Roe's "Sweet Pea," drums and guitars from a break in Pigmeat Markham's "Here Comes the Judge," a line from The Sugarhill Gang's song "Rapper's Delight" where Big Bank Hank raps "a time to laugh, a time to cry," and a vocal sample from Peter Sellers in Fred Flange's song "You Keep Me Swingin,'" where Sellers talks about "rhythm and melody."
When The Who perform this live, the processed organ is played from a recording, since it would be nearly impossible to replicate on an instrument.
"There is this moment of standing there just listening to this music and looking out to the audience and just thinking, 'I f--king did that. I wrote that," said Pete Townsend of The Who. "I just hope that on my deathbed I don't embarrass myself by asking someone, 'Can you pass me my guitar? And will you run the backing tape of 'Baba O'Riley'? I just want to do it one more time."
Kosmo Vinyl (Mark C. Dunk) was a longtime associate and sometimes manager for The Clash. This is him, introducing The Clash at Shea Stadium in 1982.
Originally from the band's album Combat Rock, it was written in 1981 and featuring Mick Jones on lead vocals.
There were rumors that the song was about Mick Jones alluding to departing from the band, however, Jones himself said:
"It wasn't about anybody specific and it wasn't pre-empting my leaving The Clash. It was just a good rockin' song, our attempt at writing a classic ... When we were just playing, that was the kind of thing we used to like to play." – Mick Jones, 1991
Mick Jones wrote "Should I Stay or Should I Go" during his tenure with The Clash, and samples for that classic are heavily featured in this single -- as was a sample from Lionel Richie's "All Night Long (All Night)".
First time we've ever played this one on KEXP!
Indigo Girls cover of Clampdown.
This song was originally from London Calling. The song began as an instrumental track called "Working and Waiting".
9:11 AM
1st spin?!
Bruce Springsteen covers Clampdown by The Clash.
Here is another live performance of Springsteen Performing Clampdown with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello,
youtu.be
Songwriter Joe Strummer takes the lead vocal, but is joined in a perfect harmony on every other line by band mate Mick Jones. The song is sung in English, then Spanish, and then English again. The song refers to the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
glickmanonline.com
This Madrid quartet said about this Clash cover: "As Spaniards, we don’t usually get shout-outs in songs, like New York or London, so the Clash writing a song about our civil war made us feel honored. We recorded it during our last day in the studio, pretty much live, while recording our third album.”
hinds.bandcamp.com
Tijuana No! is a Mexican ska, rock and punk band from Tijuana, Baja California, México, and were heavily influenced by The Clash, Dead Kennedys, Sex Pistols and Black Flag. This is their cover of Spanish Bombs.
Conoce tus ducheros AKA 'Know Your Rights.' Recorded in 1993.
Primal Scream primal screaming Know Your Rights.
KEXP celebrates the 11th International Clash Day, with this year's theme being Know Your Rights. Join us all day long as we celebrate the only holiday that matters!
www.kexp.org
I Fought The Law was first popularized by Bobby Fuller, the self-styled “Rock’n’Roll King of the Southwest”, who died at the age of 23 in 1966 from mysterious circumstances.
I Fought the Law has become the archetypal outlaw rock’n’roll anthem, and has been covered more than 50 times, by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and, most famously, the Clash. Although the song was written by Buddy Holly’s friend Sonny Curtis and originally performed by the Crickets in 1960, it was Fuller’s version, with its intense, frenetic energy, that popularised the song and drew generations of punks and rockers to it.
www.theguardian.com
“I Fought The Law” was first recorded by The Crickets, on the album they completed after Buddy Holly's 1959 death in a plane crash at the age of just 22. It's since become a punk rock anthem, iconically covered by The Clash.
This was originally a reggae song written and first recorded by the falsetto singer Junior Murvin in 1976.
The Clash, who were huge reggae fans, covered the song. It's the first example of The Clash incorporating reggae into their repertoire, something that can be heard in original songs like "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" and "Guns of Brixton."
This song had been a favorite practice space jam of the band and originally wasn’t going to be on the album, but an impromptu version The Clash started playing during a break in a recording session spurred the decision to finalize their own arrangement, record it, and include the finished article on their album.
1976 legend, produced by Lee "Scratch" Perry. Junior Murvin approached Perry and auditioned it at Perry's Black Ark studio; Perry decided to record it that same day.
Joe Strummer and Paul Simonson of the Clash chose to cover "Police and Thieves" on their debut album after it became an anthem for the Caribbean diaspora in the UK -- when police brutality at the Notting Hill Carnival led to an anti-police riot.
Cheers! Thanks for joining us today for the 11th International Clash Day.
Throwback to when London called KEXP in 2019 to celebrate International Clash Day:
www.kexp.org