The Clash - "Ballroom Blitz"
December, 29th, 1978, London, England, Lyceum Ballroom
Remastered Audience Recording, (A Group/Personal project)
Lineage: "Buy Or Die!", Silver CD > EAC > WAV > Flac > TLH, Decode > WAV > Remaster > Flac (Level.8)
Label: N/A
Original Taper: N/A
Contrast Clause:
- This particular release has different lineage than the version posted below:
http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=340627
This particular release is a fan made/no label remaster of the bands performance in London, England, on December, 29th, 1978, it is different from the version posted below.
- The version posted here: http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=340627 is a straight raw transfer of the bands performance, it HAS NOT been remastered in anyway.
- This particular release has a different title than the version posted below:
http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=340627
- This particular release is from a different label than the version posted below:
http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=340627
This is a Group/Personal Project by "The Only Ones To Turn To When Your Castles Turn To Sand", The 7th Son, Joel, Mike, Grendel, And Acapulco gold.
We hope that everyone here will enjoy this, and will pass this along, and share it with others, or please just pass, the choice is yours.
This is not meant to be a "definitive" recording.
Cheers and thanks go out to:
- The taper for taping and sharing their recording with the community, if you're out there, and happen to pick this up, we hope that you'll enjoy what we've done.
- Kinmount for sharing the raw tape with everyone in the community.
Dedicated to Joe, we all miss you very much.
1) Safe European Home
2) I Fought The Law
3) Jail Guitar Doors
4) Drug Stabbing Time
5) Cheapskates
6) The City Of The Dead
7) Clash City Rockers
8) Tommy Gun
9) Whiteman In Hammersmith Palais
10) English Civil War
11) Stay Free
12) Guns On The Roof
13) Police And Thieves
14) Julies Been Working For The Drug Squad
15) Capital Radio
16) Janie Jones
17) Garageland
18) Complete Control
19) Londons Burning *
20) White Riot *
*: The Lyceum Ballroom, December, 28th, 1978
Enjoy!
Please Do Not Convert To Lossy Formats
Please Do Not Sell
Please Share With Others
Notes:
Notes and reviews from Blackmarketclash.com:
"The Lyceum dates"
The Sort It Out Tour London dates were added late due to difficulty finding a suitable larger sized venue. And partly to accomodate the finishing of the Rude Boy film.
The Lyceum Ballroom, just off The Strand was chosen not just for its larger capacity but because the stalls area was seat less. The fans could dance whilst those who wanted it could sit in the Circle and Upper Circle. In the late 70’s / early 80’s the Lyceum was a faded theatre used as a disco (with its large mirror ball hanging from the ceiling) and concert venue.
Nowadays its grandeur has been restored and it hosts bland West End Musicals. But at the close of 78 (and again in October 81) the Lyceum rocked (and how) to the Clash City Rockers.
The music press had covered the Sort It Out Tour in some depth earlier and only the Record Mirror reviewed these gigs. Sheila Prophet wrote, “Possibly the best gig I've ever seen Clash do. I can't think of a nicer way of ending `78.”
"Confusion over recordings and dates":
There has been confusion as to which of the 3 Lyceum gigs are found on Sort It Out etc and which night is the source for the “Rude Boy” 16 track mobile recording which includes the tracks found on Clash On Broadway and FHTE.
FHTE gives the 28th December but Clash on Broadway has January 79. Mick himself says on the complete “Rude Boy” recording before White Riot that this was there last gig (in UK) for 6 months confirming 3rd January as the correct date.
Sort it Out has the 29th December as the date for the entire recording except the last 2 tracks credited to the 28th. Which is probably correct as this is not thet recording used for FHTE or Clash on Broadway or Rude Boy, which is from the 3rd January.
"The Gig":
This is one of the best sounding Clash boots available and comes from a great live period. It is a superb audience recording (individual voices near the microphones can be heard) using professional quality equipment.
Of the instrumentation Topper’s magnificently powerful drumming comes through best, guitar’s are excellent too although a touch too far back in the mix, and Paul’s bass is very good but somewhat lacking in depth and focus. Vocals too are excellent but not quite as in your face as a soundboard recording. Overall there is a slightly harsh sound but these are minor criticisms of an excellent recording of a magnificent performance.
The Clash are really fired up throughout, producing brilliantly intense performances on almost every song. What other band could maintain this intensity of performance throughout the whole gig? Here are some of the best sounding versions of tracks off the Give Em Enough Rope Album including some that did last long in the set.
An inspired Safe European Home, leads straight into an intense I Fought The Law immediately followed by Jail Guitar Doors (so much better live than on record) with Mick singing a different third verse seemingly about himself! “See about me…it really wasn’t my fault”. Before a charged up Drug Stabbing Time Joe tries to whip up the intensity of the audience to match the band’s; “let’s hear some vocals from the back, sounds like the crowd watching Bournemouth
Don’t know what the song is but lets get on with it!” Joe introduces Cheapskates with a side swipe at Bernie Rhodes “this song was written by a used car salesmen who lives up the Camden Road, well he gave us the idea for it, he goes, why do you always sell yourselves too cheap, the answer, because it’s the only price we can get”
Intense performances follow with every song, Guns On The Roof with heavy echo being perhaps the best live recording anywhere. Police & Thieves is maybe the least inspired performance tonight. But Capital Radio is superb, Joe introducing it with a roll call of radio DJ’s he jokes are in the Lyceum, then ad libbing with Mick including “you have the power of life and death!” before Topper’s thunderous drum rolls brings the song to its climax. There’s no let up in intensity for the final first album songs and encore, with London’s Burning being especially brilliant here with Joe screaming adlibs over the ending.
An excellent recording and magnificent performance, an essential Clash bootleg.
Review of the performance from "Record Mirror":
The Lyceum - London, Thursday, December, 28th and Friday, December, 29th, 1978:
THE SLITS are one of thse groups who've achieved their small portion of notoriety through not making it.
A name from the past. While others move on and develop, they remain the same, frozen in time, a relic of how things were.
The Slits are a girl group - which is fine. But the Slits, it seems to me, are trading on the fact that they're a girl group.
Which is definitely not fine. Being female is not a justification of your existence. The Slits' playing, most of the time, is merely competent. Some of the time, it's not even that. Their songs are mediocre. They quickly become tedious. If they were an all-male group, I doubt if they'd get a second glance.
It's a shame - I'd love to support girls who are breaking the barriers, who are doing something more than satisfy in the business's insatiable appetite for sex symboIs. There are girls who're doing it, slowly but surely, but the Slits, I'm afraid, are not amongst them. If you're attempting to compete with men, the simple fact is, you have to be as good as they are, if not better. If you fail in that aim, not only is your own cause lost, but you damage other women's too. Oh and by the way girls, I don't think a song called `She's A Silly Tart' is terribly helpful to the cause, either. Or maybe I heard the lyrics wrong?
The Clash - ah now, that's a different matter. By the time they came on, the Lyceum audience was transformed from being bored, restless and shifting to a bubbling cauldron of over-excited bodies jostling and jarring in shared anticipation under the Christmas decorations, the lights and the mirror ball (very posh).
They couldn't fail really. It was going to be magic tonight, you could just feel it. The energy was really pouring out of the audience, lifting the group and carrying them along. A glorious shared experience between band and fans, as they tore through one great song after another - I don't have to list them, you all know them by now, don't you? (Y6u don't? Shame on you). Suffice to say, they were all great - and so were the band.
They finished, as always with `White Riot', the song they'll never be able to leave behind - and nor should they want to. As the spotlights hurtled across the expanses above the audience's heads, and the kids collectively roared their lungs out - `White riot, we warina riot' - the night ended on note of total exhilaration
Possibly the best gig I've ever seen Clash do. I can't think of a nicer way of ending `78.
- SHEILA PROPHET
I've been personally wanting to do a Clash project for sometime because The Clash are my 2nd favourite group of all time.
Reason it took so long for us to try our hand at one is because we were looking (and waiting) for the right tape to work from.
This performance from the Lyceum is absolutely epic, a stunning performance from the group and an excellent sounding (almost professional) recording.
There's a remastered version of this show up on The Traders Den that states that this show is a soundboard recording, but both the uploader and blackmarketclash.com state that it's an audience recording.
After multiple listens, I feel that this show is in fact an audience recording and not a soundboard tape because of the clarity of the audience in the tape (their cheers, whistles, and claps), those things can be picked up on a soundboard tape, but not as clearly as an audience recording, so I'm of the believe that this is definitely an audience recording, and an exceptional audience recording at that.
It's almost like the tapers equipment was right on the stage.
What we've done to make this project:
- we've tried to balance the instruments as much as possible, and have tried to add things in the raw recording that were missing (low end, more drum fills)
- we've given the tape a volume boost, the raw tape source was playing a little too quiet, we hope that it isn't too loud for everyone here.
- we've tried to open up the recording a little more, breathe more atmosphere and the venues acoustics into it.
We were originally going to call this remaster "We Sell Ourselves Too Cheap, 'Cause It's The Only Price We Can Get", which sounded very good, and is a reference from the show, but it's a bit of a mouthful to say, so we decided to play on the fact that this show took place at the Lyceum Ballroom.
The ballroom was originally used for Opera and classical works, it was severely bombed by the Germans in World War II, and after it was repaired, it continued to showcase opera but as rock and roll grew in popularity, they started to bring rock groups in the 1960's and 70's, groups like Led Zeppelin played there.
Hope everyone here will enjoy this.
Cheers!