GLASTONBURYOFTHEMIND

CUE UP HOWLING WOLF’S DECORATION Day as found on Ain’t Gonna Be Your Dog (Disc 1). Just the way he sings that word Lord at 2.26, couched in there with the hottest cut throat band that ever stalked the Chess Killing Floors. Hear his voice - a mystic shiver to make you backbone - and liver - quiver. Then - if the random play on the pod is similarly mystically switched on, which it evidently was - you will go straight to Do The Do from New Orleans street musician Randy Red Cohen’s Street Dogs. And you may think if that Wolf spirit ain’t ascended into that dog. Chips aint spuds, fried.

June 1981. Rather than choose to play, as offered, Madison Square Gardens The Clash take a residency, eventually stretching to 17 nights at Bonds a tacky NYC disco where the crowd is MEANT to be limited to 1,750 each night. What were they thinking? “making far more money for far less effort not only was not the point, it was more like the anti point,” explains writer, film maker, Joe’s pal and my very own avocado cherry breaker Chris Salewicz in his AWESOME Redemption Song, the authorised Strummer biography out in October. Oh how times have changed, eh. I bet Bono , who met Mick Jones in a hotel lift during the Clash’s residency and recently acquired an interest in financial bible Forbes magazine, would never entertain such cavalier business practice. The full story of Gentleman Joe as told over these 600 odd pages? Suffice to say they don’t make em like they used to! Great work, Chris.