The Station, Gateshead - Greys Monument, Newcastle -
Underpass on edge of the Town Centre -
Newcastle Exhibition Park Subway - St James Centre
... your comments ....
BUSKING TOUR...Joe and Paul took the boys on an impromptu busking tour - playing publicly and outside venues acoustically... the 'shows' generated some excitement about the forthcoming album... They all hitched from London by the M1 and agreed to meet up in the pub near Nottingham Railway Station. The Last Days of the Clash - Vince White pg 226
page updated - June 2000 - began
page updated - April 2020 - redesigned and added too
Exhibition Park Subway
Acoustic Toon 7" - Sound 3+ - 9min - tracks 3
Johnny To Bad (Exhibition Park Subway)
The Sound is quite good and quite clear and must come from a low source.
This gig took place in the afternoon. It is unclear whether there is a full recording or just three tracks were recorded. There seems no cuts and after Police on My Back Joe annouces the next Busking performance at the Gateshead, Newcastle.
The Station, Gateshead
The Station, Swinburne Street, Gateshead NE8 1AX
Newcastle Upon Tyne, England UK
Audio 1 - Acoustic Daze CD - Sound 4 - 48min - tracks 14
Spanish Bombs (Acoustic Daze)
Audio 2 -Back to Basics LP - Sound 4 - 48min - tracks 14
Spanish Bombs (Back to basics)
Audio 4 - Sound 4 - 48min - tracks 14
Spanish Bombs (audio tape)
Notes from Audio 4:
Courtesy of the Stonecutter Archives is this glimmer of light from the final sad days of the Clash. It comes from their brief busking tour with Strummer leading the band as they armed themselves with acoustic guitars and popped up throughout England playing for whatever money was given to them.
This show has been misidentified as having taken place in Sunderland probably because they played there the day before and later in the evening on this date. The venue has also been wrongly attributed to busking at a Gateshead tube station, but the Station refers to a former police station at the old Town Hall, where a music collective had set up shop. At some point the boys were trailing the Alarm and busking outside their shows, and not because they were paying respect to the group, but because they felt they were a watered down carbon of the Clash. And then of course, there were probably the Topper and Mick loyalists who pondered whether this final lineup of the band under the dictatorial sway of Bernie Rhodes had any right to even call themselves the Clash.
This set has been on dime several times before (2006, 2010, 2012, and 2016 to be exact), so it won't be new to most of you. However, most if not all of those were sourced from boot CD releases like "Acoustic Daze" (3D Reality 3D-CL-064; 1995) which incorrectly attributed this to Sunderland, "Friday Night Saturday Morning" (Redline RL8923; Italy, 2003), and "Unplugged At 'The Station' Pub" (Back To Zero BTZCD-012; Japan, March 2005).
This pre-dates those discs and comes off a 2nd gen tape of the vinyl boot which was the source of the subsequent CDs and it's a clean one at that. In contrast, the 2006 upload required some speed-correction work, the 2012 upload had a corrupt track, etc.
That doesn't mean this is a masterful recording by any means, but it's still a precious look at that odd moment in Clash history when they almost sounded like David Peel and the Lower East Side. Like the Jeff Buckley mini phantom tour, one wonders how anyone was in the know to be at the ready to record these, and also be enough of a Clash fan to sing along to the lyrics of "Straight to Hell." The conjecture here would be that the Clash had already been busking around in the days before and started out elsewhere in Newcastle earlier in the day before they arrived at the Station. So it's possible word of mouth got around, someone grabbed a recorder, and then searched high and low around Sunderland and Newcastle until they spotted the band busking.
There are flaws in the master like the taper messing around with the auto gain at the start of "Guns of Brixton" and "Spanish Bombs" and other things that are the nature of off-the-cuff audience recordings, which either make this more intimate or annoying, depending on your tolerance for such anomalies.
To quote the "Back to Basics" vinyl boot: "This is not a high-fidelity album. The historical importance of this album transends [sic] fidelity of sound."
Enjoy,
elegymart
Both the CD and the LP seem originate from an identical source though it has been suggested the CD was mastered from the LP. The CD has less surface noise than the vinyl .
A much talked about busking tour. The sound has been critised for being outside and rudimenatary, but with no distortion and a clear capture of instruments and band, busking on an underground, this is quite good.
The the clarity of the spanish guitars on Spanish Bombs definately marks this out as a decent recording, though some comments refer to it as poor.
Cool Under and Heat and Movers and Shakers are the only live versions known. There is also a version of Stepping Stone.
Greys Monument, Newcastle
No known audio or video
Underpass on edge of the Town Centre
No known audio or video
St James Centre
No known audio or video
If you know of any recording, email blackmarketclash
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This gig took place in Gateshead, Newcastle. The venue was actually a pub called 'The Station' and not the [as in the train] station. (the taper edited and bootlegged the LP)
Sunderland is 40 miles south on the Wear. The organiser of the Sunderland bash in the evening confirmed the band had been in Newcastle in the afternoon. Anon1
the gig was actually at The Station (not Station Pub), which was a building used by the gateshead music collective for gigs, rehearsals etc. it was actually gatesheads old police station and was situated on swinburne street as opposed to the station pub which is situated on hills street. these two buildings would have been within 5 minutes walk of each other had the old police station not have been demolished since. Anon2
The Bunker, Sunderland. I never made it to this one, but did get to the Gateshead Station gig the day after. Afterwards we got the train back home and went for a drink with them in the Salem.
The Gollumns gig was originally booked for local band 'Patrick'...who eventually 'supported' The Clash that evening. That was a mental gig in a tiny basement room!!
Then it was onto The Drum Club for the final show of the day....... i was 16 at the time, i saw the clash 3 times in one day.....life somehow was never the same again!! Cheers Dave
i saw joe and paul and the other guys playing at greys monument in the centre of newcastle one afternoon...
i guess it was the same day they were in gateshead too...1985....from what i remember joe just kind of appeared and said "we are the clash" and they started playing.....
a large crowd quickly gathered and the police turned up and duly got "on their back" and moved them on - they went about 30 yards off in the direction of the central station they started playing again...by which time i couldn`t see them any more in the melee that quickly developed...
They managed to squeeze in another set in the afternoon after moving on from Newcastle's Monument. A small underpass/tunnel on the outskirts of the town centre. Only about a dozen there, including a couple of local kids on BMX's circling the curved wall around Joe.
Could this be the gig mentioned above? 3 tracks only
Acoustic Daze CD and Back to Basics LP; the gig was actually at The Station (not Station Pub), which was a building used by the gateshead music collective for gigs, rehearsals etc.
it was actually gatesheads old police station and was situated on swinburne street as opposed to the station pub which is situated on hills street. these two buildings would have been within 5 minutes walk of each other had the old police station not have been demolished since.
Gary Alikivi
also busked at Greys Monument in Newcastle on the Friday afternoon.
Mick Clarke
Actually got a cassette recording of them doing it in Gateshead.
Connor Acid
I used to have a live bootleg tape stall and had some brilliant clash tapes -
Donna Van Senior - 5 February 2009
That`s the thing I remember most about the Clash busking at The Station...the plastic chair, I thought it was pure genius (& obvioulsy the fact I got to see them for a measley 50p hoyed in a collection hat or something was canny alright as well!). I had to go to work after - washing dishes at the Scotsman, so I never went to Sunderland that night. Stupid dishwashing fool that I was!
Did you go? What do you remember?
Info, articles, reviews, comments or photos welcome.
Please
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This gig is mentioned by Chris Knowles
The Essential Clash Bootleg Bible
If you know of any recordings, 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
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