The Clash – Live at The Lyceum, London – December 28, 1978 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
The Clash tonight- live at The Lyceum in London and recorded on December 28, 1978.
Seems only fitting we have something to drown out the noise of our political season here in the U.S. – so we look to The Clash to provide at least some semblance of sanity, if only for an hour.
The Clash’s music was often charged with left-wing ideological sentiments. Strummer, in particular, was a committed socialist. The Clash are credited with pioneering the advocacy of radical politics in punk rock, and were dubbed the “Thinking Man’s Yobs” by NME.[ Like many early punk bands, the Clash protested against monarchy and aristocracy; however, unlike many of their peers, they rejected nihilism. Instead, they found solidarity with a number of contemporary liberation movements and were involved with such groups as the Anti-Nazi League. On 30 April 1978, the Clash played the Rock Against Racism concert in London’s Victoria Park for a crowd of 50–100,000 people; Strummer wore a T-shirt identifying two left-wing terrorist groups: the words “Brigade [sic] Rosse”—Italy’s Red Brigades—appeared alongside the insignia of West Germany’s Red Army Faction.
The moment that best exemplifies the Clash … took place in August 1977, at a music festival in Liege, Belgium. The band was playing before 20,000 people and had been under fire from a crowd that was throwing bottles at the stage. But that wasn’t what bothered lead singer Joe Strummer. What enraged him was a 10-foot-high barbed-wire fence strung between concrete posts and forming a barrier between the group and the audience … [He] jumped from the stage and attacked the fence, trying to pull it down … The Clash were the only performers at the show who tried to do anything about the obstacle. They were more willing to run the risk of the crowd than to tolerate barbed wire that was meant to fend off that crowd. This is more or less what the Clash were about: fighting the good fight that few others would fight.
Now all that’s left is for you to hit the Play button and crank this sucker up.
It’s the least you can do.
