Most of the DVDs at the local store consisted of "Friends" box sets and widescreen versions of "Spy Kids 2" in hopes of snagging a copy of "Bamboo House Of Dolls or something from the Russ Meyer canon.
Then it was a last minute idea, when already out of the store and in the parking lot, to go back and look at the music section! Hidden behind some Phish DVD, there was "The Clash - Westway To The World" (Sony/Epic - 2001), an amazing documentary put together by ex-DJ Don Letts, punk rock insider and the man who purportedly introduced the London punk scene to dub reggae.
Letts unveils a treasure trove of crystal-clear live footage of the band, never ever released and most of which looks like it was shot yesterday. Thankfully, the majority of said footage concentrates on the boys pre-"Combat Rock", before they began to lose the plot and while they really were The Only Band That Mattered (trademark pending).
Weaving the live footage with band interviews that are actually interesting and compelling (what a concept!), Letts tells the story of a bunch of regular Joes (no pun intended) that on any given night might well have been the best damn band on the planet and a group of guys many of the naive among us, myself included, felt were somehow going to change the world.
The interviews reveal the late Joe Strummer (rest in peace sweet prince...) to be, not surprisingly, the master storyteller in the group, Paul Simonon to be not as quiet as previously thought, Mick Jones to have dental work rivalling that of Mike Meyers as Austin Powers, and, sadly, Topper Headon as a drug-addled mere shadow of his former self, barely intelligible most of the time.
Bonus features include a Letts-shot featurette, "The Clash On Broadway", chronicling the band's two-week-plus residency at Bond's International Casino, additional interview footage, photos, a discography and many other things I'm still too technically inept to describe with any degree of accuracy. A glowing testimonial as to how the beautiful noise made by a bunch of ragged louts with guitars, amplifiers, drums, and absolutely no computer technology can change the lives of so many.
