3. London Calling by The Clash

I generally have my iPod cycle through albums at random. On 5 January 2010 I read a posting on Boing Boing about the 30th anniversary of the release of London Calling in the United States. That very day it started playing during my commute home from work. It came up again today. I am listening to it as I write this post. Personally I think it has aged very well. It sounds as fresh to me now as it did when I first heard it on CITR when I was a student at UBC in the early 1980's.

Update:

I forgot to mention that I actually got to see The Clash in concert. They opened for The Who during their first farewell tour in 1982. This was at the Kingdome in Seattle. A friend drove a bunch of us there for the concert. I was not a fan of The Who but my friends were. I had heard that The Clash were opening and that was good enough for me. We were miles away from the stage. Up in the cheap seats. Even the huge screen showing the performers was too small to be seen clearly. The first act was, interestingly, T-Bone Burnett. I had never heard of him before. Later on he became a favourite. In part because he married Sam Phillips whose music I loved. I don't really remember anything about the music. I believe I was underwhelmed by The Clash. I didn't know much about The Who. Their music washed over me and left me unchanged.

Since that was The Who's farewell tour and I was there I have refused to listen to anything by them ever since! Why no, I am not vindictive. Heh.

Final Update:

While I remember almost nothing of the music I heard at this concert I do have two very clear memories: one from before and one from after. My friends and I were living at a residence on UBC and the cook there made us all bag lunches to take along since we would be missing dinner that night. We waited outside the Kingdome for a while until they started letting people in. When it was our turn to enter, the security guards made us throw away our bag lunches. I guess they were worried we'd start throwing apples at people or something.

On the way home, being quite hungry, we stopped at a restaurant that was open late. Some kind of fast food place no doubt. In the parking lot was one of my friends from Vancouver who had also driven down for the concert.

Those two memories are very clear. Everything is kind of blurry.

I still like the Clash...