Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
We’re The Cramps, and we’re from New York City, and we drove 3,000 miles to play for you people.” So begins one of the oddest but also the punkest of punk rock concerts in history, as The Cramps play for a crowd at a state mental hospital in Napa, California. The date was June 13, 1978, a time when Napa was more known for the hospital than for its burgeoning wine industry.
Lead vocalist Lux Interior made this introduction after the first number, “Mystery Plane.” The band played on a patio, several steps above the courtyard at the institution, while the band’s friends hung out with the 100 or so patients in attendance.
“And somebody told me you people are crazy, but I’m not so sure about that,” Lux continues in the video. “You seem to be all right to me.” Indeed, most everybody seems to be having a hell of a time, some dancing as if they’re at a sock hop, others just completely thrashing about.
This wasn’t the first band to have played at the institution, as the hospital’s Bart Swain, who invited The Cramps to Napa, often brought in musicians to expand the patients’ horizons. But on that night a video camera was also brought along to record the set. (Swain worried about preserving the anonymity of the residents.)
According to this article on the event, Napa State still stands but the chances of such a concert happening again are slim. The majority of its tenants are now both violent offenders and mentally unstable, too dangerous a venue for anybody to play, no matter how punk.
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Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the artist interview-based FunkZone Podcast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, read his other arts writing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2504.09 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 3569 days ago & DAD = 224 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #3142 - The Clash - The Making of London Calling - Music Monday for 2309.25
Though I will not reinforce the claim that the Clash are the "only band that matters" as they did so many years ago, they are a constant fixture in my life, and a band I share every quarter with classes full of students.
Dec 14, 2022 #theclash #thestreammovies #rockandroll
This critical review of London Calling features rare live performances, alongside interviews with legendary filmmaker and DJ Don Letts (who toured with The Clash), and analysis from a leading team of rock journalists and critics.
London Calling is the third studio album by English rock band the Clash. It was originally released as a double album in the United Kingdom on 14 December 1979 by CBS Records, and in the United States in January 1980 by Epic Records.
The Clash recorded the album with producer Guy Stevens at Wessex Sound Studios in London during August, September and November 1979, following a change in management and a period of writer's block for songwriters Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. Bridging a traditional punk rock sound and a new wave aesthetic, London Calling reflects the band's growing interest in styles beyond their punk roots, including reggae, rockabilly, ska, New Orleans R&B, pop, lounge jazz, and hard rock. Themes include social displacement, unemployment, racial conflict, drug use, and the responsibilities of adulthood.
The album was a top ten chart success in the UK, and its lead single "London Calling" was a top 20 single. The album has sold over five million copies worldwide, and was certified platinum in the US for sales of one million. It was also met with widespread critical acclaim and has retrospectively been named one of the greatest albums of all time. On Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, London Calling ranked eighth in the 2003 and 2012 editions, and sixteenth in the 2020 edition. In 2010, it was one of ten classic album covers from British artists commemorated on a UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail.
London Calling has since been considered by many critics to be one of the greatest rock albums of all time, including AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine, who said that it sounded more purposeful than "most albums, let alone double albums". "This epic double album, from its iconic sleeve to its wildly eclectic mash-up of styles, is surely the quintessential rock album", wrote BBC Music journalist Mark Sutherland. In Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), Christgau called it the best double album since the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St. (1972) and said it expanded upon, rather than compromised, the Clash's driving guitar sound in a "warm, angry, and thoughtful, confident, melodic, and hard-rocking" showcase of their musical abilities. According to the English music writer Dave Thompson, London Calling established the Clash as more than "a simple punk band" with a "potent" album of neurotic post-punk, despite its amalgam of disparate and occasionally disjointed musical influences. Don McLeese from the Chicago Sun-Times regarded it as their best album and "punk's finest hour", as it found the band broadening their artistry without compromising their original vigor and immediacy. PopMatters critic Sal Ciolfi called it a "big, loud, beautiful collection of hurt, anger, restless thought, and above all hope" that still sounds "relevant and vibrant". In a review of its 25th anniversary reissue, Uncut wrote that the songs and characters in the lyrics cross-referenced each other because of the album's exceptional sequencing, adding that "The Vanilla Tapes" bonus disc enhanced what was already a "masterpiece".
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2309.25 - 10:10
- Days ago = 3006 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
This is the long awaited critical review of The Jam which draws upon rare footage of the band, previously unavailable , live at the Reading Festival, in performance in Germany and from British TV appearances from Top of the Pops and The Tube, to produce the first comprehensive, independent critical review of the work of this iconic band.
The Jam were an English mod revival/punk rock band formed in 1972 at Sheerwater Secondary School in Woking, Surrey. They released 18 consecutive Top 40 singles in the United Kingdom, from their debut in 1977 to their break-up in December 1982, including four number one hits. As of 2007, "That's Entertainment" and "Just Who Is the 5 O'Clock Hero?" remain the best-selling import singles of all time in the UK. They released one live album and six studio albums, the last of which, The Gift, reached number one on the UK Albums Chart. When the group disbanded in 1982, their first 15 singles were re-released and all placed within the top 100.
While the Jam shared the "angry young man" outlook and fast tempo of the mid-1970s British punk rock movement, in contrast with it the band wore smartly tailored suits reminiscent of English pop-bands in the early 1960s and incorporated mainstream 1960s rock and R&B influences into its sound, particularly from the Who's work of that period and also drew influence from the work of the Kinks and the music of American Motown. This placed the act at the forefront of the 1970s–1980s nascent Mod Revival movement. With many of the band's lyrics about working class life,[6] Jam biographer Sean Egan commented that they "took social protest and cultural authenticity to the top of the charts."
The band drew upon a variety of stylistic influences over the course of their career, including 1960s beat music, soul, rhythm and blues and psychedelic rock, as well as 1970s punk and new wave. The trio were known for their melodic pop songs, their distinctly English flavour and their mod image. The band launched the career of Paul Weller, who went on to form the Style Council and later his solo career. Weller wrote and sang most of the Jam's original compositions and played lead guitar, using a Rickenbacker 330. Bruce Foxton provided backing vocals and prominent basslines, which were the foundation of many of the band's songs, including the hits "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight", "The Eton Rifles", "Going Underground" and "Town Called Malice" mainly using a Rickenbacker 4001 or a Fender Precision Bass, as well as, on rare occasions, an Epiphone Rivoli.
Stars: John Robb, Pat Gilbert, Gary Mulholland
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2309.18 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2999 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2722 - MAGNIFICENT SEVEN by the ONLY BAND THAT MATTERS - the CLASH - Musical Monday for 2208.01
As I have been on a CLASH craze lately, this song returned to my playlist, and I am so grateful.
I felt it worth the time to share with all of you.
Also, a repeat of Clash concert posters.
The only band that matters.
THE CLASH.
Thanks for tuning in.
The Magnificent Seven
Song by The Clash
Lyrics
Ring! Ring! It's 7:00 A.M.! Move y'self to go again Cold water in the face Brings you back to this awful place Knuckle merchants and you bankers, too Must get up an' learn those rules Weather man and the crazy chief One says sun and one says sleet A.M., the F.M. the P.M. too Churning out that boogaloo Gets you up and gets you out But how long can you keep it up? Gimme Honda, Gimme Sony So cheap and real phony Hong Kong dollars and Indian cents English pounds and Eskimo pence
You lot! What? Don't stop! Give it all you got! You lot! What? Don't stop! Yeah!
Working for a rise, better my station Take my baby to sophistication She's seen the ads, she thinks it's nice Better work hard - I seen the price Never mind that it's time for the bus We got to work - an' you're one of us Clocks go slow in a place of work Minutes drag and the hours jerk
"When can I tell 'em wot I do? In a second, maaan...oright Chuck!"
Wave bub-bub-bub-bye to the boss It's our profit, it's his loss But anyway lunch bells ring Take one hour and do your thanng! Cheeesboiger!
What do we have for entertainment? Cops kickin' Gypsies on the pavement Now the news - snap to attention! The lunar landing of the dentist convention Italian mobster shoots a lobster Seafood restaurant gets out of hand A car in the fridge Or a fridge in the car? Like cowboys do - in T.V. land
You lot! What? Don't stop. Huh?
So get back to work an' sweat some more The sun will sink an' we'll get out the door It's no good for man to work in cages Hits the town, he drinks his wages You're frettin', you're sweatin' But did you notice you ain't gettin'? Don't you ever stop long enough to start? To take your car outta that gear Don't you ever stop long enough to start? To get your car outta that gear Karlo Marx and Fredrich Engels Came to the checkout at the 7-11 Marx was skint - but he had sense Engels lent him the necessary pence
What have we got? Yeh-o, magnificence!!
Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi Went to the park to check on the game But they was murdered by the other team Who went on to win fifty-nil You can be true, you can be false You be given the same reward Socrates and Milhaus Nixon Both went the same way - through the kitchen Plato the Greek or Rin Tin Tin Who's more famous to the billion millions? News Flash: Vacuum Cleaner Sucks Up Budgie Oooohh...bub-bye
An Oral History of The Clash’s “The Magnificent Seven”
Featuring Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Kosmo Vinyl, and the late Joe Strummer
Jeff Slate
December 10, 2020 | 9:00pm ET
“It’s perfect,” Joe Strummer insisted about The Clash’s fourth album, the sprawling, 36-song triple album set, Sandinista!, over beers in an East Village bar back in the early 1990s.
While Strummer’s tongue was firmly in cheek, he wasn’t backing down on his claim. He loved his former band, and Sandinista! loomed large in the legend about everything they stood for – the good and the bad, planting feet firmly in the future while still honoring the past, not to mention both their collective creativity and rock star excess – and still stands today as a remarkable, if beguiling, achievement.
Featuring forays into everything from jazz and gospel to hip-hop and rockabilly, Sandinista! was the ultimate rock and roll indulgence by a band that had only just started to crack the big time after releasing the near-perfect double album London Calling, which still stands as both their greatest moment and their manifesto.
“Sandinista! represents an amazing moment in time for us,” Strummer recalled that afternoon. “In less than a month, we recorded all that music.”
For all the genre-hopping and experimentation across its six sides of vinyl, Sandinista!, which actually took about six months to record and was named in honor of Nicaragua’s freedom fighters, featured an astonishing amount of highlights. The Eddy Grant/Equals cover “Police on My Back” and “Somebody Got Murdered” were instant hits with the AOR rock crowd. “Bankrobber”, “The Call Up”, “Hitsville U.K.”, “Washington Bullets”, “Ivan Meets G.I. Joe”, and “The Sound of Sinners” picked up where London Calling left off. Meanwhile, “Junco Partner” and “One More Time” – bearing the heavy influence of co-producer Mikey Dread – whetted the appetite of many of the band’s fans who were only just discovering reggae in a serious way.
But perhaps more than any other song, it was the lead-off track, “The Magnificent Seven”, that epitomized everything Sandinista! was about and all it has come to stand for in the now 40 years since its release on December 12, 1980.
The first foray by a rock band into rap — predating Blondie’s “Rapture” by almost six months – it’s also one of the earliest examples of a hip-hop record with political and social commentary. Built around a loping bass line (played by Norman Watt-Roy of Ian Dury and the Blockheads), those lyrics picked apart the human cost of capitalism, as Strummer chronicled a day in the life of a minimum wage supermarket employee.
“That’s when I started to pay attention,” Public Enemy’s Chuck Dtold me last year of “The Magnificent Seven”.
Below, Strummer, his writing partner, the band’s guitarist Mick Jones, and bassist Paul Simonon, plus band consigliere Kosmo Vinyl, recall the inspiration behind Sandinista! and its most famous track.
PAUL SIMONON: We’re instinctively very busy people. So, there was no agenda. It was just natural. With The Clash, it was a 24-hour lifestyle. There was no time off. You lived and breathed it on and off the stage.
KOSMO VINYL: I always used to think there was too much time in between stuff! I was always saying, “Credence Clearwater Revival! Three LPs in 23 months. Come on man, we are dragging here!” It never struck me as strange being as busy as we were. There was always a feeling that more could be done, because we also had the influence of the Jamaican record industry. They would just put their records out. If you had a song, something current, you put it out, and bam, it would be on the street. I think we were kind of immersed in that idea of immediacy.
MICK JONES: What I really liked about the bands that influenced me was that you couldn’t wait for their next record to know where they were at. And it also offered you the chance to find out where you might be at, as well.
VINYL: Joking aside, there was a very serious side to it. There was an ambition and desire to get ahead. Everybody was on that page. As comical as it was, and as ramshackle as it might seem it was at certain moments, it was really a forward motion. Everyone did want to do what was being done. As best could be done at a time, we were in control of our own situation.
SIMONON: We’d wanted to release a new single every month. The first one we recorded was “Bankrobber”. The head of CBS said he thought it sounded like David Bowie played backwards, whatever that meant. But we didn’t care. We kept up the same pace, and that’s why there were so many tracks floating around at the time.
VINYL: I think what happened after London Calling is that it gave the band a certain freedom to do what it wanted. They decided they were going to make the record they wanted to make. They weren’t going to make a record for anyone else.
SIMONON: But stardom meant nothing to us. We were too busy getting on with what we were doing. I suppose if we’d gone on a holiday to the Caribbean, it would have been, “Oh, this is what stardom is.” But we were too busy for all that rubbish.
JONES: We really were just playing the music we liked.
VINYL: Regardless of any consequence that might come of it. There was kind of that sense of “Fuck it, this is what we’re going to play.”
In the Spring of 1980, The Clash moved their London base of operations to the tatty Gramercy Park Hotel in New York City and set up shop in Electric Lady Studios in the heart of Greenwich Village.
JOE STRUMMER: I built a bunker in the corner of the live room, with our flight cases. I’d sit there and not bother anyone while they were working, smoking spliffs with whoever came by and writing lyrics for the tunes Mick was coming up with.
JONES: When we visited places, we were affected by that, and what was going on there, as well. When we traveled, our experiences broadened and we brought that music that was going on around us into what we were doing. And for me, New York City was really happening at that moment.
VINYL: St. Joe once said that we consumed music perpetually — that we listened nonstop. All the people involved brought all these various influences – the little flavors here, flavors there, different people bringing things in – literally nonstop. They’d make us turn off the boomboxes in the airport or wherever, but if they didn’t enforce it, I don’t think we ever stopped listening.
JONES: Besides, when you come off tour, that’s a really great time to make an album, because you have the momentum. We’d just come off the road, so it was like bang, bang, bang, we’re going to do this and that. It was like a burst. We never really thought about it.
“The Magnificent Seven” came from the burst of inspiration that New York City gave the band, coupled with the post-tour adrenaline rush they were experiencing.
STRUMMER: Paul was off in Canada making a movie, so we brought in Norman Watt-Roy and Mickey Gallagher so we could keep working. That’s when “Mag Seven” happened.
JONES: Because we’d come from a communal scene, we were used to building things from out of our community, and that’s what was happening in New York at that time. Joe looked at the graffiti artists, and I was taking in things like breakdancing and rap.
SIMONON: We found that in every town we went to, we’d get out and about and in conversation you’d say, “Well, what’s happening in this town?” They’d tell you, “It’s crap, there ain’t no clubs here.” Or, “This place is good, and you should check it out.” It’s getting communication. And by being informed in that way, you discover a lot more about the town. Our situation in New York, we were in town at that point, and that’s where we met people like Futura and Grandmaster Flash and Kurtis Blow and got informed. We were open for information.
JONES: We were going backwards to go forwards. You’re bringing everything from before with you, but you kind of make it your own, and then you’re in the present moment. I know this now because I can look back on it and understand it. But when we were doing it, we didn’t really think about it. We just did it instinctively and carried on.
With what the band thought was a hit single on their hands, they were hot to get it played on radio, to set the stage for the album that was soon to come.
VINYL: We went to the guy at the record company, and he was just not interested. So, we went to the R&B guy at the label, and he wasn’t interested. He wrote it on the record label, “No.” Right there. We took them to another place and shipped them out from there. We actually sent out these singles with blank labels that I handwrote.
JONES: We got them to WBLS and WBAI, which were just starting to play hip-hop at the time. The whole overall idea was that when they realized who these guys were, it would be too late.
VINYL: Somehow, that’s when the Frankie Crocker version called “Dirty Harry” started being played on WBLS. [NOTE: Crocker intercut audio clips from Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films with the white label version of “The Magnificent Seven” that the band had sent his station, WBLS, and it became a hugely requested track.]
STRUMMER: “Mag Seven” was everywhere. You’d hear it on boomboxes and coming out of car radios and in cabs. These four white guys from London on BLS. It was fantastic.
VINYL: That was the idea: That we could just slip it in there. Maybe if they didn’t know who it was, they’d just play it. But I think it’s a very interesting moment that to a degree gets swept over. That was really one of the first presentations of hip-hop to a rock audience. I think we felt that the audience would be more accepting than it was. I think speaking to people afterwards, culturally, there was a much bigger anti-disco resentment in rock fandom in the US at that time. The whole “disco sucks” thing. And I think when a lot of these people were confronted with that, they were like, “Shit, what’s this? It’s fucking disco!”
JONES: There was some hostility, but many groups now see it as a good thing.
After fighting with their label for months – and giving up any royalties in order to keep the price of the 3-LP Sandinista! down to the cost of a single LP – the album was released. DJs were overwhelmed (and a single LP “best of” version was released for their benefit) while critics and fans were baffled.
STRUMMER: It was too much information. But that’s what I love about it. It’s that moment in time.
SIMONON: The idea anyway was that it would be a whole experience. Getting to know The Clash would mean more than just buying a record. Maybe it would influence your politics, your worldview, the way you dress, the way you think. It wasn’t just music like a jukebox.
JONES: Six sides is hard, isn’t it? You get into the time-space thing at that point, don’t you? You’re getting into the realms where time is bent by that time.
SIMONON: I’ve just about finished the second side.
Taken from the iconic punk band’s fourth studio album, 1980’s ‘Sandinista!’, the song’s new clip was edited by filmmaker Don Letts.
It combines unearthed footage of The Clash performing the song on New York-based talk show, The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder, as well as archival shots of the band in Manhattan during their 17-night residency at Bond’s International Casino.
’Sandinista!’, which also features the singles ‘The Call Up’ and ‘Hitsville UK’, celebrates its 40th anniversary today (December 12).
“They were always ahead of the game,” Letts said of The Clash. “‘Sandinista!’ signposted the multi-cultural way music was going and the elements that make The Clash great are still a currency that’s recognised by youth in the 21st century.”
Watch the new video for ‘The Magnificent Seven’ below:
The track follows the release of the Spanish band’s third album ‘The Prettiest Curse’, which arrived earlier this year.
The band’s Carlotta Cosials explained the decision to share the cover, writing: “We’ve always loved doing covers. Maybe ’cause it’s the way we started, or maybe because there are so many good songs in the world already that we wish we had written! And we really enjoy hindsifying them heheh.”
She added: “The Clash were my mom’s forever favourite band and ade’s parents also, so it is always beautiful to connect generations through music.”
Zee Productions released two 500-piece puzzles depicting the album cover for 1978’s ‘Give ‘Em Enough Rope’ and the cover of 1979 single ‘English Civil War’
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2208.01 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2586 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
