Meanwhile, In Frestonia

The Clash's re- issue programme continues with a forthcoming special edition of Combat Rock released for the album's fortieth anniversary. Combat Rock, the last album by Strummer, Jones, Simonon and Headon, is the definition of uneven. Mick was holding out for another double, a sixteen song whopper/ double album. Everyone else wanted something more concise that might push them to another level in the USA. They tried mixing it while on tour in Australia and the Far East and eventually Glyn Johns was brought in to mix it, shorten some of the songs and cut the number of songs. This did nothing to repair the fracturing relationship of Mick and Joe. Mick was already smarting from the return of Bernie Rhodes. Topper was sacked by the time they took Combat Rock on tour. The end.

Combat Rock is still full of golden moments though wildly uneven as I said above- two enormous singles (one written by the soon to be ex- drummer), some funk and rap, some agit- prop, some spoken word stuff, a few killer album songs, Allen Ginsberg, Sean Flynn and the weird, stunning modern jazz/ soundtrack finale of Death Is A Star. It's all along way from Janie Jones and White Riot. The re- issue is coupled with a bonus disc (two CDs, three vinyl although only five sides of the vinyl contain music) called The People's Hall, an attempt to entice the collector with extra/ new material. The bonus material is pulled together from a variety of sources, much released elsewhere in previous re- issue campaigns. It's named after the venue the group rehearsed in Frestonia, a heavily squatted part of West London that tried to secede from the UK in the late 70s and form a breakaway republic. It's a strange collection of songs, some that aren't even from that period (Outside Bonds and Radio Clash date from prior to the Combat Rock sessions when The Clash took over New York, played Bonds and recorded Sandinista!), some from B-sides from Combat Rock singles (First Night Back In London, Long Time Jerk- both intended for Mick's double that never happened that he wanted to call Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg), previously unreleased alternative versions of Sean Flynn and Know Your Rights, an unreleased instrumental called He Who Dares or Is Tired, The Fulham Connection (which seems to be The Beautiful People Are Ugly Too outtake renamed), Midnight To Stevens (a tribute to Guy Stevens which was first released on the Clash On Broadway box set) and Radio One with Mickey Dread (B-side, previously released). There is a booklet and a poster. The CD is fourteen quid. The vinyl is just shy of fifty. 

*shrugs*

Two pieces of Clash related music for you today. The first is an edit of The Magnificent Seven (The Magnificent Dub actually) by Leo Zero, dating back to either 2012 or 1981 depending on how you look at it. Leo has cut the song up in fine style, looping Norman Watt Roy's bass riff, adding some sound from a gig along with sections of Joe's vocal and new drum loops. Nine minutes of fun. 

The Magnificent Dub (Leo Zero Edit)

Much more recently, Jezebell (rapidly becoming a weekly fixture at these pages) released a new EP called Dancing (Not Fighting), built around a sample of Mick Jones berating the bouncers at a gig, it's a riot of drums and bass and horns, acid punk funk, with remixes from Matt Gunn and Markus Cooper. All proceeds to assist the victims of Putin's war in Ukraine. get it at Bandcamp. 

Half An Hour Of Weller Remixed And Live At The Apollo

Paul Weller played The Apollo on Friday night, I was there courtesy of a ticket from a friend (who also took the photo in the middle, capturing the curving sweep of the Apollo's balcony rather beautifully). Weller and his band took the stage at eight thirty and played a two hour set, long standing guitarist Steve Craddock present and at the front and two drummers. The first few songs were largely drawn from recent albums, White Sky and Long Time from Saturn's Pattern from 2015, Cosmic Fringes from last year's Fat Pop, sounding tough and very Seventies, lots of guitar and rhythms. From The Floorboards Up, with its Wilco Johnson inspired riff, kept the tempo up. From there Weller dipped in and out of his back catalogue: a slightly ragged Headstart For Happiness; a lovely, low key Have You Ever Had It Blue?; the 90s single Hung Up; recent songs like Fat Pop and Village set against older solo ones like Stanley Road; a dip into the later period Style Council with It's A Very Deep Sea, a song which has aged unexpectedly well. The crowd, many of whom seem to have been out all day in the warmth of some Good Friday sunshine seem a little subdued at times- maybe some are just waiting for the hits or maybe too many beers have sapped the energy (not the two blokes near us who were ejected by the bouncers following a couple of scuffles with people around them).  

The run in towards the end of the set- a trippy version of Above The Clouds, the circling psychedelia of Into Tomorrow, a raspy Shout To The Top, the quickfire blast of Start! followed by full on guitar heroics of Peacock Suit and Brushed- demonstrate the riches in his cupboards, songs from different decades and different parts of his life all sounding like the work of one person, a lineage despite the stylistic differences each one had when first released. When they band return to the stage for the first encore Paul sits at the piano, the fluid, rolling Broken Stones followed by You Do Something To Me (not a favourite of mine I should add), a crowd pleasing That's Entertainment (a definite favourite of mine I should add) and then the slowed down, folk tinged shuffle of Wild Wood. The second encore is the two song punch of The Changing Man and A Town Called Malice, the Apollo's crowd now dancing and singing along in full voice. Weller's reputation as a prickly character and as a traditionalist (the Dadrock tag of the 90s sticks to him) is undeserved- his albums over the last ten years have been full of detours into krautrock, psychedelia, drones and noise and whatever The Style Council were, the weren't unadventurous. His band tonight are young (mainly) and give the songs a thumping (two drummers should do that) but they're delicate when required too. Paul Weller himself doesn't seem to have any less desire in his sixties than he had in his twenties, a man who just wants to get the songs out, get them written, recorded and played. 

For today's thirty minute mix I've pulled together some of the remixes of Weller's songs, drawn from the range of his solo career and taking in trip hop of Portishead, the crashing noise and thumping beats of Richard Hawley's take on Andromeda, some lovely widescreen Balearica courtesy of Leo Zero and Drop Out Orchestra (on Weller's own mid 2010's Balearic groove Starlite), some psychedelic adventures with Amorphous Androgynous and Brendan Lynch's still stunning psyched out/ dubbed out version of Kosmos from 1993 (a record Weatherall used to play as a set closer to fried minds at Sabresonic). 

Thirty Minute Paul Weller Remix Mix

• Wildwood (Portishead Remix)
• Andromeda (Richard Hawley Remix)
• No Tears To Cry (Leo Zero Remix)
• Aim High (The Higher Aim) (Amorphous Androgynous Remix)
• Starlite (Drop Out Orchestra Remix)
• Kosmos (Lynch Mob Bonus Beats)

This blistering Two Lone Swordsmen remix from 2000 didn't seem to fit in the mix, Weller sent to some place where Killing Joke and krauty- techno co- exist, but I though I should share it again anyway. It's never had an official digital release and when it came out in 2000 it was a white label 12" limited to just 75 copies worldwide. One of which sits is downstairs from where I type this. 

Heliocentric (Swordsmen 4UR Mix)

When All This Is Over

A new Bagging Area mix for Sunday, an optimistic sounding one now that the days are getting longer and the summer seems to be just round the corner. A lot of these songs have been posted here recently individually but they sounded good together. I'm not sure there's a huge amount of cause for optimism with the continuing, ceaseless flow of bad news, bad government and virus rates increasing but maybe it's best to turn the news channel off for a while and unplug. It's at Mixcloud, it won't embed but you can find it here. 

As the voice says in the opening Coyote song, 'when all this is over.... I plan to go north...' 

• Coyote: CafĂ© Con Leche
• Private Agenda: Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)
• Chris Coco: Rainy Season
• Reinhard Vanbergen and Charlotte Carulaerts: Julien
• Primal Scream: Inner Flight
• Justin Deighton and Leo Zero: I Feel Edit
• Cantoma: The Mountain (Lexx Remix)
• HiFi Sean Ft. Yoko Ono: In Love With Life
• A Certain Ratio: Berlin (album version)
• Coyote: Feedback Valley
• Future Beat Alliance: Birth (Claude Young Remix)

I Feel

Some uplifting feelgood musical biscuits for Friday courtesy of some veteran DJs and producers. First, an edit of a 70s folk rock song, refitted for 2021 by Justin Deighton and Leo Zero, out on 7" and digitally at their own 7s Clash label (with a tie in bar at Two Tribes Campfire in King's Cross, London). I Feel is a funky/ Balearic number, acoustic guitars, a chugger of a bassline and lots of chanting- I'm getting hippy parties in the Med in the mid 1970s, unspoilt beaches, kaftans, hash, sunsets, sandals, love beads. Find it here. The B-side is a Pete Herbert dub of the edit, a more laid back version but still with that chuggy rhythm. 

Balearic overlord Phil Mison records under the name Cantoma. This Pete Herbert remix of Cantoma's Verbana from 2018 fits perfectly with the I Feel Edit above, more music for dancing, acoustic guitars, bubbly bassline, handclaps and a soaring synth part.

This one, another Cantoma/ Pete Herbert pairing, shows the Balearic revival (if it ever really went away) was well underway back in 2014. Very laid back magic. 

Just Landed (Pete Herbert Remix)

Tiers

Tonight at one minute past midnight Greater Manchester goes into Tier 3, the highest rank of the government's new Coronavirus restriction system- if this government can really be said to anything as planned or thought out as a system. The government have had months to prepare for an autumn wave. Literally everyone said it was coming. They've had months to set up a functioning testing service, to create a Track and Trace system, to come up with a coherent plan for dealing with the rapidly rising numbers of new cases and the influx of hospital admissions. Instead, they paid people to go to the pub for food in August while turning the blame for non- compliance with the rules onto the people. 

What they have signally failed to acknowledge is that this government lost all it's moral authority to govern, every last ounce of it, when they failed to sack Dominic Cummings in May. At that exact moment and that charade in the garden of 10 Downing Street where their senior advisor- an unelected member of the government remember- refused to admit any wrong doing, Johnson's government could no longer tell anyone what to do. They had broken the rules themselves and didn't care. They were laughing at us. They were contemptuous of us. 

Since then some people have kept to whatever rules are in force wherever they live, some people have largely followed the rules using their own judgement and common sense about where they can bend them and some people have taken the view that if the government don't play by the rules then why should they? Some of us have barely crept out of lockdown at all- we are still effectively shielding an extremely vulnerable person. Watching other people flout the rules hasn't been easy. The feeling that existed back in April, that we were all in this together, which existed genuinely for a while, has been blown apart. As numbers have crept up again since September Johnson has dithered and delayed. They locked down too late in March, they opened up too early in the summer. They introduced local restrictions that were difficult to understand and changed seemingly on a whim. They left Leicester in a local lockdown that never seemed to end. They announced that one place would go into further restrictions almost instantly while another would be able to wait until after the weekend. Now, with Merseyside, Lancashire and Greater Manchester all in Tier 3, gyms in Merseyside must close while in Lancashire they can stay open. Pubs serving 'substantial meals' can stay open but pubs that don't must close- does Covid 19 not infect people while using a knife and fork? They bullied the civic leaders of Liverpool into accepting Tier 3 and then found that the elected mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, the leaders of the council and a cross party group of MPs wouldn't roll over. Funnily enough the pair of Conservative MPs refusing to accept new restrictions without a fight (including the Chair of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady) weren't attacked with the same venom Burnham has been. The politicians fighting the government's attempts to impose Tier 3 on Greater Manchester weren't even necessarily arguing that the restrictions weren't called for, they just wanted the evidence that the ones being proposed would be effective (which wasn't forthcoming because this government is shit at details and just relies on the selective use of data to try to prove points). What Andy Burnham and the rest also wanted was financial support for the thousands of locals who would be affected by the loss of their jobs and the withdrawal of income. Johnson's middle man, Robert Jenrick (himself guilty of breaking lockdown restrictions in April), found himself up against a Zoom wall of anger and disgust, from Tories as well as Labour, and when it came to finding another £5 million, told his boss Johnson that the deal was off. Andy Burnham stood in front of GMex- the site of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819- and quite rightly told the cameras that this government promised to level up the north and here they were further levelling down. 

It seems pointless to close some businesses while leaving many others open. It seems pointless to close some pubs while leaving many still serving. Schools, colleges and universities are one of the main breeding grounds of the infection currently but since various opponents have called for a short 'circuit break', Johnson's government refuse to consider this- not for scientific reasons but because it's politically unacceptable for them to do what the opposition have asked for. A circuit break policy is now taking effect in Wales and it wouldn't be a surprise to see Scotland follow suit, but once again Johnson dithers until it's too late. Their own scientific advisors recommended it several weeks ago. Johnson rejected it but still claims to be 'following the science'. Tiers, as someone pointed out recently, are not enough. 

Here are The Lilac Time, mid 60s psychedelic style, in 1990...

It'll End In Tears 

Here's Paul Weller remixed by Leo Zero, Blackpool Northern Soul style, in 2010... 

Tears Are Not Enough (Leo Zero Remix)

A couple of days ago on social media I said this about Andy Burnham...

It's fair to say that this man becoming a genuine hero in Manchester and the north west wasn't predictable. His reasons for becoming mayor didn't always seem clear, his run for the Labour leadership in 2015 was a disaster and I don't think everyone here has always trusted him, but he's shown true leadership and grit the last few days, standing up to the useless bunch of chancers and incompetents in the government and standing up for us. More power to him.

And I stand by all of that, cometh the hour, cometh the man etc. It has been a truly absurd year, a nightmare in many ways, full of personal and public disasters and political horrors. It's genuinely encouraging to see the odd green shoot while also keeping that anger burning.

The Berlin Wall

Thirty years ago today the Berlin Wall began to crumble. The exodus of thousands of East Germans had begun in the summer as Hungary relaxed its travel restrictions following Gorbachev's softening of the USSR's position, not least his economic decision to start pulling the Red Army out of the satellite states. Many East Germans realised they could travel to Hungary from Dresden and from Hungary westwards to The F.R.G. On the night of the 9th November 1989 the East German government, faced with a losing battle and  mounting civil unrest lifted the their own travel restrictions. A bemused official at a press conference, when asked when the freedom to travel from East to West Berlin came into effect, shuffled his papers, shrugged and suggested from now. Crowds began to gather at the wall and pass through the border points without any kinds of checks. Guards looked on but did nothing. More and more people arrived. Some climbed the wall. Some danced on top of it. West Berliners arrived with hammers and chisels and started taking chunks out of the wall. East Berliners flooded into the western side of the city and filled the bars. Euphoric crowds partied through the night. Berlin had been divided by the wall since August 1961. Over 130 people were killed trying to cross it. Watching these events of November 1989 live on TV was bizarre and sticks in the memory as one of the seeming certainties of life vanished.

The Berlin Wall is littered through pop culture. Bowie and 'Heroes' and Iggy at Hansa in the shadow of the wall, Johnny Rotten in Holidays In The Sun 'I gotta go over the wall/please don't be waiting for meeee', Keith Haring painting the western side of it, West Berlin's isolation and interzone status, acting as a magnet for all sorts of outlaws, artists and reprobates- Einsturzende Neubauten, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. On the eastern side of the Wall life was more dangerous especially for those who chose a non- conformist lifestyle. There's a set of photographs here of East Berlin punks, photographed, arrested, beaten and harassed by the Stasi for their dress and haircuts.

The pictures above are from my visit to Berlin a few years ago. The section of wall with the graffiti on it, the only real length of wall still sanding in the city centre, is poignant- 'Astrid,maybe some day we will be together'. Checkpoint Charlie is more of a tourist trap but worth a visit. The line the Wall took is laid into the streets in Berlin so you can follow the route it took but it's difficult to visit today and picture the city of the 70s and 80s, divided in two, with watchtowers, the death strip, machine gun posts and roads stopping suddenly, bisected by a concrete Cold War boundary marker.

This is from a series of remixes and re-edits released on the legendary Trax label, classic Chicago house music redone for the 2010s. Bring Down The Walls by Robert Owens, re-edited by Leo Zero.

Bring Down The Walls (Leo Zero re-edit)