I fucking hated The Clash. I heard them years ahead of any US punk I ever met, as I was living my life listening to the World Service of the BBC...back when they still transmited to the US.
Some of the tunes were pretty good, so I read every thing I could on them. Everything went on and on about how much they hated this, that or the other kind of music...or group. I became so annoyed at their on-going whining that I wrote them off.
Then, I met Strummer for about 10 minutes, in Northen California. It was a wreird gig, the audience was mainly like 13 year old girls trying to be hip. It was one of the few gigs where I was tall enough to see the stage from the floor. The band played well, but looked completley perplexed at the crowd. After the show I was ready for an arguement, and worked my way to Strummer. He greeted me with a warm hello and said he hoped I'd enjoyed the show. He mentioned he had noticed me, as I was a foot taller than everyone else down front. I got him right on music, and he was not at all what I expected. he said, "Whatever music you love is great! Just do it like you mean it! I hate all the magazines, they cut so much out of what I said and make it look like I hate all sorts of things. Christ, I wouldn't have started playing guitar if I didn't like what came before me!"
In that monet, I heard The Clash a whole new way. I ended up liking them.
But the bass player was the biggest prick I've ever meet in music. He was walking with a boombox, and thinking I recognized the reggae tune he was blasting, I asked what it was. He gave me a snotty answer that it was reggae. Asshole, I was probably listening to it 10 years before he ever even heard it. Why is it that the wrong one in a band always dies first?
