Westway to the World…

Documentaries? What do they mean when I see them? Do I get a sense of enjoyment or sadness? A sense that what I’m watching feeds me the joy of communicating to others that this or that was a great documentary? Well, it can be anything really but yesterday morning I started watching this documentary and I realized how much more the Clash mean to music and to other people as well. Watching the documentary I loved hearing stories about how crazy things were in terms of how they made their music and the opportunities that inspired them to make the music they recorded. For example, Joe Strummer explains on one part about how the song “White Riot” was inspired and to hear them talk about how they saw everything that happened in front of them at a protest made me think about how crazy musicians have to be in order to get involved in that and how they may be endangering themselves. It was crazy to hear the Clash speak about how fast they would get their records recorded which in this day in age it takes someone 3 or four years to release one album after the other. For example, the Clash spoke about how they recorded Sandinista! in three weekends which could be exaggerated but considering that the way they flowed together it would seem strange not to believe that. I also found out stuff I didn’t know before about the Clash such as hearing them talk about playing 16 straight shows in the same venue, one of there biggest songs “Bankrobber” being rejected by American radio stations, hearing them talk about recording in a studio when they shouldn’t have or else some horrible things would have went down, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon killing pigeons with guns, and all this other great stuff that just blew my mind that I couldn’t believe actually happened to them. I also appreciated their music a lot more when I heard Joe Strummer talking about Authority and how people say it’s supposed to be grounded into wisdom but authority is only a system of control. I appreciate their music that speaks about life and it’s battles such as a great song that I just started to get into called “Up in Heaven (not only here)”. The line that got me is Fear is just another commodity here, they sell us peeping holes to peek when we hear. The one thing that got me thinking about this documentary was when I saw how much the band talked about the internal conflict that existed within the band. I believe Joe Strummer was right on the money when he said the chemical mixture of four people was what made a group work and you don’t mess with it and whatever you can do bring it forward. Sometimes when you have a band that strong it is really hard to keep it together for long periods of time. Hearing Simonon speak about how Jones and him got into a fight and Strummer would relate notes back to them both made me see that when we get upset with people it isn’t even close to what these guys did because they were making money while still trying to tend with each other’s ego’s. I thought the best part of the documentary was seeing the old footage of shows they used play as the crowd was just going insane for this band that was trying to bring their music to the public and those around them. This documentary gave me reasons to believe that in any type of music there are messages and very few of them ever have the impact that this group did. I’m intent on hearing more of their music in the future and next I’ll watch “The Future is Unwritten” with the focus on Joe Strummer and his life.