A Riot of Our Own: Night and Day with the Clash
Chronicles of the 1970s punk era aren't scarce by any means, but Johnny Green's narrative escapes the multiple traps of dried-out historical reportage, sociological analysis, and glory taking. Instead, he offers a certain worm's-eye vantage point on the advance of theClash's career. A Belfast college grad when he met the band in 1977, Green accompanied them on endless tours, and he describes various episodes with a mix of detailed dialogue and picaresque humor. The Clash don't get the lavish hagiographic treatment one might expect from a fan. They come off, rather, as funny characters--intensely charged and, of course, young, sometimes-stumbling artists with insurmountable energy for performances. Green describes clearing the spit off band members' instruments in the same way that he recalls losing the demo tapes ofLondon Calling. And then it all winds to an uneventful close, as so many things do (remember T.S. Eliot's maxim, "This is the way the world ends, the world ends, the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper"?). There's not even a whimper here, though, just Green announcing to the band--at their career peak, on theLondon Callingtour in the U.S.--that he wanted to see more of North America. Such a low-key ambition to end such a high-key narrative! Nonetheless, this is an essential document in the annals of punk.--Andrew Bartlett