The Clash = The Ca$h flyer (1982)

THE CLASH = THE CA$H

It's painfully obvious. What a bunch of shit. A "radical" punk band who has made it to the top. And it’s clear, whatever the so‑called message these guys are singing about is irrelevant. What is relevant is the form and the hype of the "entertaining show." Nothing else matters, no communication is possible; big music can only be one more capitalist commodity.

"The agent of the spectacle, put on stage as a star, is the opposite of the individual; he is the enemy of the individual in himself as obviously as in others. Passing into the spectacle as a model for identification, the agent has renounced all autonomous qualities in order to identify with the general "law of obedience to the course of things." (Debord)

Just look around at the rent‑a‑cops and remember to be obedient. Pay your money, stand in line and be searched; sucker.

It is certain, the Clash don't believe in class struggle, but the struggle for cash. No white riot here, somebody might get in for free! No equality, just try saying something on stage and see what the bouncers do!

Given the general context of a bourgeois performance, the Clash's "radical" lyrics are a sad joke. Combat Rock? Sure. Non-combatant schlock! It was certain from the start punk could be bought out by capital. The Sex Pistols had enough sense to auto-destruct. But the Clash went from a garage band to international pop stars, using politics as window dressing to sell more albums. They really aren't much different from Aerosmith or Kansas when it comes right down to it. Believe it or not there are real live punk bands in Austin you could check out, and you don't need ten bucks to be "impressed".

I DREAM OF A HOLIDAY
WHEN HATE AND WAR
COME AROUND.
—JOE STRUMMER

(Image of a star, lightning bolts, and an open book labeled “THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN” with banner: “KNOW YOUR RIGHTS”)

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SHUT UP
AND PAY AND GO TO WORK TOMORROW.

We want a different world. We sure as hell are sick of this one. We want to determine the nature and condition of everything we do; abolishing work, money, authority and anything that stands in the way of our desires. We want the whole world to be our conscious self creation, so that our days and nights are full of wonder, learning and pleasure. Let the earth be seized once and for all by the living and let the very air ring with the sounds of joy!

GUTTER SNIPES P.O. BOX 8368 AUSTIN, TX., 78712

Libcom note: Taken from the Shit-Fi.com site which added the following:

Anti-Clash Flyer

From Austin, Texas, c. 1982

Here’s an old flyer, ostensibly distributed in Austin, Texas, around the time of a Clash gig there, probably on the “Combat Rock” tour1 It’s notable for its para-situationist politics, complete with Debord quote (using the ’77 translation of The Society of the Spectacle). I hate the Clash’s pomposity and political posturing as much as the next punk, but this flyer does strike me as a bit overwrought and humorless. Still, I thought this would be a pretty cool artifact to share. What I really would like to know is which bands the flyer’s creators did like. Really Red or AK-47 perhaps? Certainly this sort of political rhetoric was uncommon in the US punk scene circa 1982, prior to the LP by The Feederz and Bill Brown’s “Introduction to the Situationist International” published in MRR #19 in November 1984 (which generated a bit of a kerfuffle between Brown and The Feederz). I would love to know who was behind this flyer. The rhetoric is a bit tiresome today, especially because the acerbic tone used here has been reproduced ad nauseum by other parasituationists in the 25 years since, but at the time this must have been one of the most radical and articulate (though a bit wide-eyed) critiques of the Clash ever written. As the hagiography of Strummer, the Clash, and pretty much the entire original London punk scene grows apace, I wish there were more people talking about the other side of the story, the truly underground bands and fans, who took the lessons of these original punx to heart and kept their spirit alive long after being abandoned by their originators.

• 1Libcom note: The Clash played at Austin's City Coliseum on 8th and 9th of June 1982. The video for the single "Rock The Casbah" was also shot over these two days.