Gig 063 The Clash / The Specials
The Clash/The Specials Aylesbury Friars 28 June 1978 Everyone raved about The Clash. The press adulation was off the scale, they had amphetamine intensity and political militancy, no question they were the big punk act once the Sex Pistols had imploded; personally I just didn’t think they were all that. Their one album at this time had its moments, notably those where they sounded a bit like Dr Feelgood e.g. Janie Jones, and their take on Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves was charming if a little ham-fisted, but I found much of it rather plodding, back-of-a-fag-packet lyrical agitprop welded to predictable chords. Perhaps they weren’t taking enough speed. That said, the subsequent single Complete Control (produced by Lee Perry, not that you’d know) was a cracking record, as was Clash City Rockers, and White Man in Hammersmith Palais, released a couple of weeks before this gig, was something else again. Lyrically it was streets ahead of their contemporaries, a rumination on betr...