Hey, MTV Vee-Jay, get it right!

Goodman confuses The Clash with The Sex Pistols, GEEZ!

So I’m driving back to the fort, Sirius on, didn’t particularly care for the song on Channel 32 U2 Radio (it wasn’t them) or on Channel 31 Tom Petty Radio (wasn’t him either) so I spun the dial to Sirius Channel 26 Classic Vinyl and I hear The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” - the late-in-band-life Mick Jones’ pop hit. Good song. I generally prefer the harder-edged Joe Strummer-penned songs like “London Calling” or “Clampdown” or “White Riot” or “Safe European Home,” this is a fun song, especially Strummer hollering lines in-between Mick’s vocal in Spanish.

The song ends and former MTV VeeJay Mark Goodman comes on — his voice is immediately familiar — and he says “That was The Clash. And they are back on tour…”

Shame on you, Mark Goodman! The Clash and The Sex Pistols are two different bands

This is shocking news, especially since Joe Strummer died a few days before Christmas in 2002. You cannot have The Clash without Joe Strummer. You can’t have it without Mick Jones, either as we found out on “Cut The Crap” which didn’t, sadly.

So, I’m still a bit stunned by the announcement and Goodman continues, “Yes, The Clash are back - Glen Matlock, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Frank Carter are back and on tour. So if you missed The Clash in their heyday, here’s your chance to catch them.”

WHAT AN IDIOT!

What Goodman did was list the members of the Clash’s rival punk group, THE SEX PISTOLS, minus, of course, Johnny (Lydon) Rotten, their lead singer and really, the main reason anybody heard of them in the first place. Lydon’s appraisal of the new band was epic. He called them “woke.”!

I was always pretty skeptical of MTV with some of the lame swill they subjected America to. And I heard Nina Blackwood on Sirius the other day and she sounded like Howlin’ Wolf! So maybe playing some of that crap and what ELSE they did off-air has scrambled their brains and vocal cords.

People make mistakes. Look at the 2024 Presidential election. Look at Madonna camping out at a plastic surgeon’s office for months at a time. Look at the Academy giving the Oscar to that fat-assed Brendan Fraser for his fat-assed role in “The Whale” instead of Austin Butler’s amazing “Elvis.” Or the Academy honoring the insufferable Adrien Brody for “The Brutalist” instead of Timothee Chalamet’s pitch-perfect Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown.”

But there is NO EXCUSE for a supposed “Music Expert” to confuse The magnificent Clash with The Sex Pistols! Not that I didn’t like the Sex Pistols. Their one legit album, “Never Mind The Bollocks” is a terrific, roaring piece of music and I often played the classic “Pretty Vacant” in my mind, re-reading some of my students’ weaker test attempts.

The Clash, though, “The Only Band That Matters” was NOT false advertising. And if brain-dead MTV VeeJay Mark Goodman didn’t understand that, well, shame on him. That’s like remembering Ted Williams playing for the Yankees, Jimi Hendrix playing lead guitar for The Monkees, Pee Wee Herman in The Godfather, Donald Trump in the White House. Oh.

I never got to see The Sex Pistols, though I did get a bootleg of their final concert where Johnny Rotten’s parting shot to the audience, leaving the stage: “Did you ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” was just classic.

I got to see The Clash three times, the first at Boston’s Orpheum Theatre in March of 1980, the absolutely loudest show I ever heard, so loud I stuffed tissue paper in my ears. It was incredible. They were so dynamic, explosive and having heard “London Calling” on vinyl, I couldn’t imagine how great it would be live and it absolutely was! They were angry, they were political, they had something to say on song after song, revolutionary songs that proved Joe’s epic line — “Let fury have the hour, anger can be power, did you know that you can use it?”

There were politically active groups outside the theater. One even handed me a little red book of Mao’s sayings. (Never read it). They were pissed about unemployment in England, about governments that didn’t give a monkey’s butt about the people that elected them, about war, injustice, how boring the USA was “killers in America work seven days a week” (and this was before CSI!)

For a 27-year-old rock and roll idealist upset about the political direction of our country (Reagan had just been elected, if I only knew what lay ahead!) The Clash hit like a thunderbolt; I loved them right away. I heard The Sex Pistols for the first time in a radio interview with Pete Townshend of the Who, thought they were great.

While my punk tastes didn’t really go much beyond The Clash and Sex Pistols, that was enough anarchy for me and something I thought music as a whole really needed. I don’t know that I realized it at the time but it seemed to be a cleansing experience somehow, not all that different than Bob Dylan opting for the soft, simple “John Wesley Harding” while The Beatles and Rolling Stones fiddled in the studio (brilliantly in The Beatles’ case), pointing us back to the roots.

Burning that brightly, there was no way The Clash were going to last. I was at the Cape Cod Coliseum when Joe Strummer stood on stage with his back to the audience because he was upset over a Boston DJ busting him over turning 30. I’ve watched several DVD’s on The Clash, read about how Mick Jones’ “star turn” showing up late, being a jackass and drummer Topper Headon’s drug problems sort of tore things asunder. I remember reading a story about their dual bill with The Who at Shea Stadium, I think it was and how all the members of The Who arrived in separate limos and the Clash did the same thing, making it pretty clear they’d stopped being “a band” and becoming instead “professionally wealthy accompanists.”

Which is OK. They certainly made their mark, not just with a guy from New Hampshire who was a long way from seeing someone with a safety pin through a cheek or ripped clothes or studded leather jackets. Their music still jumps off the vinyl and even out of the radio, even if the knucklehead pushing the buttons doesn’t quite realize what he’s doing. Those of us who loved The Clash understood and still understand what that means. And always will.

HERE YOU GO, KIDS…JOIN ME IN THE THIRD ROW. BRING TISSUES!