Music Video of the Day: London Calling by The Clash (1979, directed by Don Letts)

Posted on July 18, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

“This is London calling…” were the opening words used by the BBC World’s Service’s station identification. Those words especially became well-known during World War II, when the citizens of occupied Europe would listen to the officially-banned BBC in order to discover how the war was actually going.

In The Clash’s song, London is calling because it’s worried about what’s happening in both the UK and the rest of the world. Along with mentioning police violence, the rise of drug use, and the risk of the Thames overflowing, the song also finds time to mention the recent nuclear accident at Three Mile Island on the other side of the pond. At the time the song was written, it seemed that London was drowning in more ways that one.

The Clash managed to go for 23 years before finally allowing London Calling to be used in a commercial. At the time, Joe Strummer said that, after 20 years, the members of the group deserved something for having recorded one of the most iconic punk songs and, as such, the song was used in a Jaguar commercial. It has since gone on to be used in a British airways advertisement.

The video was directed by longtime Clash associate and Big Audio Dynamite co-founder, Don Letts.

Enjoy!

Music Video Of The Day: Tommy Gun by The Clash (1978, directed by Don Letts)

Posted on June 13, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

“I was saying us rock ‘n’ rollers are all posers and egomaniacs, but we know that terrorists are as bad, or worse than we are. They definitely love to read their own press… I know they dedicate their life to a cause, but they’re always posing for pictures.”

— Joe Strummer, on Tommy Gun

It’s always hard for me to listen to The Clash without also thinking about the way that Johnny Lydon dismissed them as not being a real punk band. (Lydon was fond of pointing out that Strummer was a diplomat’s son and that he had previously been in a “pub band” before getting involved with punk scene.) Johnny may have had a point about The Clash never really being as working class as they claimed to be, though that didn’t stop him from collaborating with members of the band on a few projects after The Clash broke up. Still, I’ve always liked The Clash’s music.

Tommy Gun was the band’s take on international terrorism. When it was first released, there was some controversy over whether the band was pro-terrorism or anti-terrorism. As with many of The Clash’s songs, it could be read both ways. It was The Clash’s first top twenty hit in the UK, peaking at #19.

This video was one of the first of many to be directed by Don Letts. Some sources say that this was the first video that Letts shot for the band, though Lett’s video for The Clash’s White Riot was actually released before the video for Tommy Gun. I don’t know how true that is but I do know that Letts went on to direct several videos for both The Clash and Mick Jones’s Big Audio Dynamite.

Enjoy!

Music Video Of The Day: Bankrobber by The Clash (1980, directed by Don Letts)

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Jedadiah Leland

My daddy was a bank robber
But he never hurt nobody
He just loved to live that way
And he loved to steal your money

Some is rich, and some is poor
And that’s the way the world is
But I don’t believe in laying back
Sayin’ how bad your luck is

So he came to jazz it up
Never learned to shovel
Break your back to earn our pay
Don’t forget to grovel

My daddy was a bank robber
But he never hurt nobody
He just loved to live that way
And he loved to take your money

He’s gone now

No, the lyrics of Bankrobber are not meant to be autobiographical. Joe Strummer’s father was a foreign office diplomat and apparently never robbed a bank. As Mick Jones would later describe it, Bankrobber is meant to be a modern folk song. Like many The Clash’s best songs, Bankrobber dealt with a working class hero getting back at the establishment. In this case, he does it through robbing banks.

This video was considered to be controversial enough that it was banned by Top of the Pops. The two masked robbers were played by two Clash roadies named Johnny Green and Barry Glare. The bank that they’re robbing was located in Lewisham, South London.

Enjoy!

Music Video of The Day: Everyday I Write The Book by Elvis Costello & The Attractions (1983, directed by Don Letts)

Posted on July 7, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

“(A) song I wrote in ten minutes almost as a challenge to myself. I thought, maybe I could write just a simple, almost formula song and make it mean something…”

That was how Elvis Costello described Everyday I Write The Book in an 1998 interview. The song went on to become one of Costello’s best-known compositions and the subsequent music video was a hit during the early days of MTV. Directed by Don Letts, the video features Elvis performing while Prince Charles haplessly attempts to woo Princess Diana (both of whom are played by celebrity lookalikes). Released just two years after their royal wedding and at a time when the story of Diana and Charles were still being held up as the ideal romantic fairy tale, this video proved to be prophetic in its portrayal of Charles and Diana’s marriage.

According to Costello, director Don Letts was solely responsible for the idea of using the royal lookalikes in the video. Letts is best known for his collaborations with The Clash. Not only did he direct several music videos for that group but he and Mick Jones later co-founded Big Audio Dynamite.

Yesterday, Elvis Costello announced that he would be cancelling the last six performances of his current tour because his battling what has been described as being “very aggressive cancer.” I know that I speak for a lot of music fans when I say that we’re all keeping Elvis in our thoughts and that we hope he makes a full recovery.

Music Video of the Day: Pass The Dutchie by Musical Youth (1982, dir. Don Letts)

Posted on February 16, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

When you read about the color barrier at MTV, then you’ll always hear about how Billie Jean by Michael Jackson was the music video to break it. That is usually accepted fact, but some people argue that this music video was actually the one to do it. Others dispute that by saying it didn’t really break the barrier so much as it was a case of MTV thinking that it wouldn’t matter if they were black seeing as they were children. Personally I lean towards that theory since even Billie Jean didn’t really break the barrier. It just set events in motion that would open a crack in the barrier which other black artists would seep through at greater and greater rates till MTV got rid of it altogether.

According to Wikipedia, Musical Youth were the first black artists to appear in a studio segment on MTV. They were hardly the first black artists to be played on MTV though. The “barrier” was more of a general bias that was applied to the day to day decisions about what to play on the station. Certainly legacy artists who they couldn’t ignore and already had a large fan base were snuck in from time to time. However, there is a big difference between that, and getting brought in for an interview on the station. You can read an article here where Designer Magazine interviewed members Dennis Seaton and Michael Grant.

The video was directed by Don Letts, and was shot partially on the southern banks of the River Thames in London, by Lambeth Bridge. It should come as no surprise that Don Letts also directed a bunch of music videos for The Clash, did at least one for Bob Marley & The Wailers, and numerous ones for Musical Youth.

Enjoy!

Update:

This is pretty cool, and a first for me. Musical Youth themselves chimed in on our Facebook page to give me some additional information. They were told that they were the first to get on a regular playlist on MTV. Based on what I have read in the book I Want My MTV, MTV would throw in a black artist here and there, but getting into regular rotation is another matter altogether.

Thank you, Musical Youth!

Music Video of the Day: Rock the Casbah by The Clash (1982, dir. Don Letts)

Posted on August 2, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

If I can find an excuse to spotlight a particular music video, then I try to take advantage of it. This is one of those days. Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the Gulf War. This song happened to be the first one played on Armed Forces Radio when that war began. Apparently since then all sorts of nonsense has been piled onto the shoulders of this song. I really didn’t need to know that this is apparently considered to be one of the most “Conservative Rock Songs”. Sure, that makes perfect sense. The music video shows both a Muslim and a Rabbi running around, having a good time, and then going to a concert by The Clash. They also throw in capitalism, consumerism, oil, and immigration. Yes, it’s very political. It’s a song by The Clash, but it turns my stomach to think that it has been co-opted like it has for such a purpose. Can we perfect that green goo from Re-Animator (1985), bring back Joe Strummer, and let him tell people what he thinks about it?

The thing I love about this video is its’ interesting tie to Texans. I remember many years ago when I saw a Pop-Up Video on Rock the Casbah. According to it, the shoot for this music video was rather popular with Texans at the time who showed up to watch. Not necessarily because they were fans of the band, but because despite being native to Texas, few Texans had actually seen an armadillo alive instead of roadkill. I like to remember this music video for that rather than what has been done to the song since then. I really didn’t need to know that had happened, but came across it while doing a little research for this post.

That said, I’m not sure what’s worse. That this song is considered conservative, or that Men At Work were successfully sued over the flute portion of Down Under. That’s for another day. Enjoy!