Sharoma The Clash Radio Brixton

Radio Brixton

Tracks 1 - 3 taken from the 'Return To Brixton' CD, 1990. Tracks 4 and 5 from the 'Radio Clash' 12 inch, 1981. Track 6 from the 'Rockers Galore' promo disc, 1999. Track 7 from 'This Is England' 12 inch, 1985. Track 8 from a promo LP, 1985. Track 9 from a live concert in Jamaica, 1982. Tracks 10 and 11 from a live concert at Bonds, New York, 4th June, 1981. Tracks 12 - 17 recorded at various live shows throughout 1984.

Tracks 1 - 7, and probably 8 as well are copyright to CBS but they are not available on any of the regular Clash albums / compilations (and I doubt they will ever be reissued). Track 10 is the exact same track as the one that appears on Clash On Broadway, but I put in on here because I am not too keen on the song that follows it on that album ;-)

Track listing

  1. Return To Brixton
  2. Return To Brixton (Extended Mix)
  3. Return To Brixton (SW2 Dub)
  4. Outside Broadcast
  5. Radio 5
  6. Rockers Galore
  7. Sex Mad Roar
  8. Fingerpoppin' (AOR Mix)
  9. The Guns Of Brixton (Live)
  10. Lightning Strikes (Live)
  11. The Call Up (Live)
  12. Glue Zombie (Live)
  13. Ammunition (Live)
  14. In The Pouring Rain (Live)
  15. Sex Mad War (Live)
  16. Are You Ready For War (Live)
  17. Three Card Trick (Live)

Review

This is simply a compilation CD I made to fill in the gaps of studio material no longer available to buy, but which was once available. Also, great live versions of all the unreleased Cut The Crap era tracks are here. The first three tracks were released in 1990 on a CD - 'Return To Brixton', along with the London Calling track on which they are based. Two of the songs also made it onto a 12 inch vinyl called 'Return To Brixton - Extended Mixes'. There was also a 7 inch vinyl release with Return To Brixton and Guns Of Brixton as the b side. The songs are excellent and well produced, with heavy basslines and great use of sound effects. Paul Simonon headed this project, and gets writer credit on the songs. Remix and additional production is credited to Jeremy Healy. Guy Stevens gets a namecheck on the sleeve for production, but this will only refer to the original song.

Tracks 4 and 5 I also have on a 12 inch vinyl, and have been mastered to CD excellently. They are just two more remixes of the Radio Clash song, Outside Broadcast being somewhat longer than the rest. Track 6 is the Bankrobber style Rockers Galore (along with Robber Dub making three very similar sounding and superb songs), and has Mikey Dread on vocals. It made its way onto the Bankrobber single as a b-side in 1980 and is an enjoyable track. The version here is from the Rockers Galore promo CD.

Track 7 is the 2nd b-side song that appeared on the This Is England single of September 1985. I have both the 7 inch and 12 inch versions of this single and Sex Mad Roar is only on the 12 inch version. It also wasn't added to the remaster of Cut The Crap, when the other b-side song, Do It Now, was. It's a good song, and seems to have survived the transfer from vinyl pretty well, sounding almost like an official CD release[1]. The AOR mix of Fingerpoppin' is a remix of the track on Cut The Crap, and is very similar to it. For more info see Fingerpoppin' (AOR Mix).

I've always especially liked live versions of The Guns Of Brixton, and this version is straight from From London To Jamaica. It has a great sounding drum intro and a good guitar mix. Lightning Strikes, as mentioned, I picked from the Clash On Broadway album because it's great and on the album the song that follows it, Every Little Bit Hurts, is awful. As one person once said on the London's Burning message board "Every little bit of that song hurts my ears...". The live version of The Call Up has been taken from the Bonds 1981 show simply because it's great and I like it.

Then follow all the great unreleased songs from 1984's tours that did not make the Cut The Crap album. Excellent performances of Glue Zombie (Glasgow Barrowlands, 10th February 1984), Ammunition (Paris, 1st March, 1984) and the rest of them straight from Give 'Em Enough Dope.

[1] I originally transferred my copy of Sex Mad Roar to digital format to replace the mp3 version that was 'doing the rounds' on the Internet. This version was slower and not converted very well. I think it clocked in at something like 3.06 minutes, compared to around 2.54, the song's proper time. Do It Now also appeared online slower than it should be. Hopefully, this version of Sex Mad Roar is now the one in circulation.

Rated: 8 / 10

Extra

Just for the record I burned the first copy of this CD on 28th December, 2001. Burnt with CD TEXT. It's a good collection for people relatively new to the Clash phenomenon can have official material no longer available and non-album Cut The Crap era songs on one convenient album.

Versions of this compilation may be circulating that are sourced from individual mp3 files that have been downloaded from various places. These will be inferior to the proper versions of the compilations. A way you can test is to check if it has CD TEXT on the disc (names of the songs). If it does, the chances are it's a proper copy.

Thanks to Graham Jones for the version of Ammunition.