The 101ers - A Bit A Rockin' (1976)

A recent comment on a Clash post prompted me to investigate Joe Strummer's first band The 101ers, as even thought I'm a massive fan of The Clash, I'd never gone further back to see how Strummer started out, as I'm not really that keen on pub-rock, which I always thought was the 101ers forte. The group was named after the squat where they lived together at 101 Walterton Road, Maida Vale, and consisted of John 'Woody' Mellor (aka Joe Strummer) on guitar/vocals, Clive Timperley on guitar/vocals, Dan Kelleher on bass, guitar, and lead vocal on 'Surf City', and Richard Dudanski on drums. Their early gigs included several at the Windsor Castle pub, and a residency at the Elgin, which is why they were bundled together with other pub-rock bands of the period, but by the time their debut single 'Keys To Your Heart' was released in 1976, Strummer had joined The Clash and the 101ers were no more. During their short career they'd recorded a number of demos in 1975 and 1976, all of which were original songs, and these were collected together on the 'Elgin Avenue Breakdown' compilation in 1981, along with a number of live recordings of rock 'n' roll covers. By extracting just the demos and adding in a couple of live originals which didn't make the first issue of the compilation, plus an alternate, rawer take of 'Keys To Your Heart', we can approximate what an album could have sounded like had one been issued in 1976.   

 

Track listing

01 Letsagetabitarockin'  
02 Silent Telephone  
03 Steamgauge 99  
04 Rabies (From The Dogs Of Love)  
05 Keys To Your Heart   
06 Lonely Mother's Son  
07 Sweet Revenge  
08 Motor Boys Motor  
09 5 Star R 'n' R Petrol  
10 Keep Taking The Tablets  
11 Surf City 
12 Hideaway  
13 Sweety Of The St. Moritz  

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The Clash - Kingston Calling (1980)

From the very start of their career, The Clash have never been shy about proclaiming their love of reggae, even including a lengthy cover of Junior Murvin's 'Police And Thieves' on their debut album. Over the next few years they covered a variety of classic and lesser known reggae songs, as well as incorporating the style into their own songwriting, and so I thought it would be interesting to collect together the best of their reggae songs onto one album. I've chosen my favourite songs from their first four albums, both covers and originals, as well as some stand-alone singles and the odd b-side to make a great 50 minute reggae album - slightly longer than I'd liked, but I just couldn't pick one song to leave off.

Track listing

01 Police & Thieves
02 Revolution Rock
03 Pressure Drop
04 Rudie Can't Fail
05 Armagideon Time
06 The Guns Of Brixton
07 (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais
08 Wrong 'Em Boyo
09 Junco Partner
10 Bankrobber
11 One More Time
12 The Magnificent Seven

The Clash - This Is Dub Clash (2000)

Following on from the 'Kingston Calling' post, the logical next step is collating the dub versions of tracks from that album. This is a collection put together and pressed up on vinyl in the late 90's, which contained six dub remixes of Clash songs, and which was expanded for a CD release in 2000 by adding a further eight tracks. This took the running time to one hour and thirteen minutes, which I felt was a bit too long, so I looked at what was included, and removed a couple of tracks that weren't actually by The Clash - Futura 2000's 'The Escapades Of Futura 2000' and Mikey Dread's 'Radio One' - and I also deleted 'Outside Broadcast / Radio 5' and 'Mensforth Dub' , neither of which I felt were entirely successful, leaving a more palatable 46 minute album. We've already established that 'The Magnificent Seven' is not really a reggae song, but it really does lend itself extremely well to a dub treatment, and so the album opens with the superb 'The Magnificent Dance', and in a similar vein it also includes a dub version of 'Rock The Casbah', in 'Mustapha Dance'. If you want to hear the full CD album then it's not too difficult to find on the net.

Track listing

01 The Magnificent Dance
02 Justice Tonight / Kick It Over
03 Robber Dub
04 The Cool Out
05 One More Dub
06 Version Pardner
07 Mustapha Dance
08 Silicone On Sapphire
09 Return To Brixton (SW2 Dub)