Wednesday, August 1, 2018

The Clash - Clash City Rockers - Non-Album Tracks, 1976-1978

The Clash are one of my all-time favorite bands. They were only around a few years, so they didn't record that many songs, but practically everything they did was great, including most of their stray tracks.

They were prolific enough to come up with three albums' worth of stray studio material. This is the first of those three albums. I have the material for all three albums in rough chronological order.

This album starts with two songs from The 101ers in 1976. They were The Clash in all but name. One of the two 101ers songs here, "Keys to Your Heart," was performed live by The Clash from time to time at least until 1980. I wanted to use a Clash version, but unfortunately the sound quality wasn't very good on any of the versions I could find. This studio version is essentially the same, but sounds much better.

The rest of the songs are from 1977 and 1978. The first Clash album, simply titled "The Clash," is a bit confusing because the US and British versions are quite different. As I almost always do, I consider the British version the standard one, so there are a few songs here from the US version.

There are a lot of classic songs here. I think, had this been an album, it would have at least been rated higher than their second album, "Give 'Em Enough Rope."

01 Keys to Your Heart (101ers)
02 Letsagetabitarockin' (101ers)
03 1977 (Clash)
04 Capital Radio (Clash)
05 Listen (Clash)
06 Complete Control (Clash)
07 City of the Dead (Clash)
08 Clash City Rockers (Clash)
09 Jail Guitar Doors (Clash)
10 [White Man] In Hammersmith Palais (Clash)
11 The Prisoner (Clash)
12 1-2 Crush on You (Clash)
13 One Emotion (Clash)
14 Pressure Drop (Clash)
15 Time Is Tight (Clash)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15105148/TClas_1976-1978_ClshCityRockers_atse.zip.html

There was an official stray tracks album released while the Clash were still a group called "Black Market Clash." I considered using that as the title for this one, but I thought that could be confusing, so I went with the title of one of the A-sides on it instead. But I used the "Black Market Clash" cover, except for changing the text.

4 comments:

  1. They were great until they discovered reggae.

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  2. So... until side 2 of their first album?

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  3. It is not fair to say that The 101ers were The Clash in all but name, as Joe Strummer was the only member of both bands, and left the former to join the latter who already existed in rehearsal style. Although The Clash played 'Keys To Your Heart' live, and a version is on the DVD part of the ;London Calling' cd re-issue, it is also worth pointing out the 'Jail Guitar Doors' by The Clash is based on the melody of 'Every Mother's Son' by The 101ers, something unreleased until the 'Elgin Avenue Revisited' release of a few years ago.

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