I love, love, love this photo of The Clash that Bob Kondrak gave me permission to put up. He snapped it at the band's first Seattle gig, October 15th, 1979, at the Paramount Theater. It was $6 to see the show.
It had been two years since The Clash released their debut album. Like The Sex Pistols, the band instantly found fans in America, but whereas The Pistols seemed like nihilistic malcontents, The Clash gave a feeling of perseverance, and indeed hope, through their working class anthems and leftist ideals. Plus they'd already began to incorporate a lot more into their music beyond the blistering catchy punk tunes on their first album, including elements of reggae and rockabilly. They were the total package, the real deal. I would have loved to have seen them in this era, but sadly I was too young. I didn't discover The Clash until many kids my age did, via the more commercial "Combat Rock" album, when "Rock the Casbah" ended up all over MTV and radio. Thankfully I went back and found their older material when I was still in highschool and played the shit out of it. Their debut album to this day remains in my top ten albums of all time and I play it a couple times a month.
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