16 Tons Tour
Supported by Lee Dorsey & Mikey Dread
page updated - July 2020
No known audio or video
If you know of any recording,
email blackmarketclash
Jenny Lens: I was onstage for the March, 1980 Civic show, my color slides are beautiful. Neighbors stole the black and white from the lab before I ever saw them. I flew to England and shot either 6 or 8 shows there in June/July 1980. I didn’t label many of my slides and negs in my archive, so it’s hard to know exactly which shows I shot where, with some exceptions. I need to update my site. And one day I’d love to scan all my negs to see the pix — who knows, I may have some Palladium shots, and try to organize the thousands of slides. I continually find images that are a total surprise to me!
Joe was quoted in Rolling Stone: “some girl” backstage at the Santa Monica Civic had a Polaroid, so he went out and bought one. That’s me, after shooting and hanging with some of their crew, they didn’t know me. Cos as I said, I was too shy and too much in awe to talk to them. Then I got thrown out of the SMC backstage cos I was so broke and strangers wanted Polaroids. I asked for $1 to cover my cost and was thrown out. The dude who threw me out is the very same dude who picked me up the first night I was in England. I thought that was too funny, but that’s rock ‘n’ roll.
The out of focus shot was taken by a drunk Darby Crash of the Germs, with various members of X )Exene and drummer DJ and Go-Go’s original bassist Margo and manager Ginger behind the bar and Claude Kick Boy in the front right, so infamous at the first LA Clash show, writer for Slash and working for Virgin in London by spring 1980. Taken at the flat of the girl X sings about in “Los Angeles.” That girl, Farrah, hated me — I was the main Jew she hassled in the song, and named me Jenny Lens.
Review - March 1980, Los Angeles
By Sylvie Simmons [SOUNDS??]
Clash/Lee Dorsey/Mikey Dread
Los Angeles
FIRST CAME hard-working Mikey Dread. Jamaican DJ crooning over dub tapes, dodging missles. He was booed. Then ceme Lee Dorsey, grinning, working in a coal mine. He was tolerated. And the industrial-horizon backdrop fell, Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons" bellowed out the speakers and Clash strode on. Complete delirium. A working Clash hero is something to be.
Dread's set, bascially echo vocals over invisible reggae backing, was interesting, yet sounded too vacant in a hall still in the process of being filled at this festival setting (as in standing, arms pinned to sides). Lee Doney was the other extreme, smiling, jolly, chirpy good-time rhythms (the backing band, Score, deserve a special mention for extreme bounciness in the face of apathy) going through the roster of great nostalgia songs on a PA that sounded like a transistor radio, just right. "Holy Cow", "Working In a Coal Mine", "Ride Your Pony" (with camp gun-shot accompaniment by the dimunitive vocalist himself) were some of the numbers featured, and he was brought back for an encore by the efforts of the DJ rather than crowd reaction, though he certainly deserved one. (The old timers seem to be making a comeback lately, what with Roy Orbison opening for the Eagles down the road. They should be given headlining spots of their own.)
But the crowd had come to see Clash. Obvious? Not really. At their last LA gig, the Hollywood Palladium last year, it seemed like most of the audience had come to see themselves up on the stage, a lot more intent on drawing attention to themselves than to let the Clash get on with their job. The broadening out of the band's music on "London Calling" has brought the inevitable broadening of the audience, fewer jackboots and spiked hairdos, fewer fistfights, even a bit of teenybop appreciation for Mick from the young girls at the side, a smattering of imaginary guitar soloists and just the Clash on the stage (except for regular appearances by keyboardist Mickey Gallagher and a Mikey Dread-plays-Sinatra-to-Clash's-rude-boys bit at the end).
This was the nearest to mainstream that I've ever seen the band, but they make a bloody good mainstream, bloody good whatever, rock and roll band. The band have left the front line, but there's still the odd explosive attacks -- machine gun drums, shrapnel guitars, knife-edged vocals of the old songs, brought back to life more powerfully, more heroically than even before like some old war film that uses clever lighting, beefed-up sound, poses, pauses and expectations to make it stand out so unforgetably in your mind.
The band's new position has at least given them the luxury of getting the sound right and the lighting right and the overall presentation just so, which made tonight's show one of their best here on certain levels, though a bit hollow, a bit like a powerful memory of others.
The opening was hot. "Clash City Rockers", the first of several tough, tight, anthems. Quite a few at the front joined in. Then "Brand New Cadillac". Joe Strummer discovers rockabilly and looks surprised. Mick Jones looks in the direction of the young girl by my side and she screams and waves. A bunch of "London Calling" numbers, the title track making the rest pretty redundant, a wonderful song. "White Man in Hammersmith Palais", "Police and Thieves" were the best of the rest, though "I Fought the Law" went down well. Other than a couple of older songs, the show drifted along for a couple of dozen songs, showing various Clash's I'd never seen before -- frisky, lazy, be-bopping, amusing, brooding, positively wholesome -- some of them (the hard-edged ones) preferable to my ears over the wholly reggae numbers that slowed the set down a lot.
Echoed reggae closed the set, calls brought them back, and they got Mikey Dread to trade echoes with Joe on some cosmic reagge encore. Five more, the oldies "Tommy Gun" and "White Riot" speeding things up to a great finale.
Life goes on, everything changes and other cliches: Clash as Gene Vincent meets Phil Spector and argues the merits of reggae over Stax I never thought I'd see. But they did it well, got them dancing, and I guess a lot of people think a smile on your face beats a foot in your gut anytime, which makes this a hell of a lot more successful than the Clash's last performance in LA, as far as most of the crowd was concerned.
courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library
Did you go? What do you remember?
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David: I was looking at your list of gigs and I wanted to add one. The Clash played two gigs at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1980,
March 3 and March 4. I attended both concerts. (My high school was across the street.) For the first concert a barricade was placed ten feet in front of the stage. Naturally, once the concert began people went over it. The next night the barricade was gone. These were the two best concerts I have ever attended.
Don Waller: Los Angeles on March 3, 1980, the Santa Monica Civic. I was there. Mickey Gallagher on keyboards. The reason I remember this was the first SM Civic show, they used a backdrop created by sewing loads of flags from all the Third World countries together.
The second time they played the Santa Monica Civic, they used a seriagraph shot of the infamous Three Mile Island towers, but treated to resemble the back cover of the first album (much like on your site) as the backdrop. Lee Dorsey was the opening act. I remember going backstage afterwards -- again thanks to Sue Sawyer -- and Mick was listening to rap on a boombox. When I offered him some super-fine Northern California sensemilla, he rolled it up with tobacco, explaining "it's better that way." Yeah, right ...
Hey, I wish you had a set list posted for that particular show just like you do for the others (which is wonderful, really jogs the memory banks) 'cause I really don't remember the particulars of any of these 'cause they were just astonishing from top to bottom. The Clash were infinitely the best "punk-rock" band we'd ever seen here in L.A. (Don't get me started ....) And, verily, the slogan still rings true: "the only band that matters."
No known audio or video
If you know of any recording,
email blackmarketclash
There are several sights that provide setlists but most mirror www.blackmarketclash.co.uk. They are worth checking.
from Setlist FM (cannot be relied on)
from Songkick (cannot be relied on)
... both have lists of people who say they went
& from the newer Concert Database
Also useful: Ultimate Music datbase, All Music, Clash books at DISCOGS
A collection of articles, interviews, reviews, posters, tour dates covering the period the 16 Tons tour of the US, March 1980.
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New York 7 March 1980
Lifetimes’ TV documentary -
audio sound quality 4 -
video: poor picture quality - 6.36 mins
Lifetimes TV Documentary
An excellent and very positive 7-minute documentary appeared on US TV on the programme ‘Lifetimes’ with live clips from the Palladium show and interviews with fans outside and the band backstage. A good audio dub circulates but video copies are generally poor which is a shame as the live clips are brilliantly intense.
Capitol Theatre, Passaic New Jersey -
Saturday 8th March 1980
Boston 9 March 1980
Alan McPheely : I shot this March 9, 1980 on silent Super 8mm film. Recently, some thirty years later, I found the audio on the internet and matched it up. alanmcpheely@mac.com
Detroit Punks: We were there to catch them on super 8 ektachrome
at the Motor City Roller on March 10, 1980.
A brief Super 8 colour film and sound from both the Detroit 79 and 80 shows has surfaced.
1) Almost ALL of Safe European Home, camera mainly on Joe, Joe PLAYS to the camera near the end when he dos that spoken word thing. This is from the Jackie Wilson Benefit march 10/80 at Motor City Roller Rink.
2) Mick sings a song I've never really cared for. He sings Bang Bang something. Over 2 minutes of that.
25 Aprtil 1980 - 'Fridays' USTV
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