Sharoma The Clash Death Or Glory

Death Or Glory

Tracks 1 - 7 recorded live at the Sun Plaza Hall, Tokyo, Japan on 1st February, 1982. Tracks 8 - 11 recorded live at the Bob Marley Centre, Jamaica, 27th November, 1982. Tracks 12 and 13 were by performed by Joe Strummer & The Pogues on Irish TV in 1988. Track 14 from the 'Something Else' TV show broadcast on 11th March, 1978.

Track listing

Side A:

  1. Train In Vain
  2. Washington Bullets
  3. Ivan Meets G.I. Joe
  4. Career Opportunities
  5. Janie Jones
  6. Clash City Rockers
  7. London's Burning

Side B:

  1. Junco Partner
  2. Spanish Bombs
  3. Bankrobber
  4. Radio Clash
  5. I Fought The Law
  6. London Calling
  7. Tommy Gun

Review

I first picked up a brand new (never been played) Death Or Glory LP in early summer of 2001 from one of my favourite shops in Manchester, 'Clampdown Records', and it's pretty good. The first side is the common seven songs from the '82 concert in Japan and they feature on a few other bootlegs. Side 2 has some rarer material on it, however. The first four songs of side 2 are taken from the Jamaica World Festival show (also 1982) but are not up to the quality of the From London To Jamaica bootleg, having a slightly different (and inferior) mix to them. Tracks 12 and 13 are not Clash at all, but lively performances by Joe Strummer & The Pogues, which were broadcast on Irish TV in 1988. As far as I am aware these are not available anywhere else. They perform the songs well, I especially like the flute accompaniment on London Calling. The last track, Tommy Gun, was on a TV show put out by teenagers in 1978. The quality on it isn't as good in comparison to the rest of the LP, and a much better quality and slightly alternate version is on the Golden Bullets LP.

Death Or Glory makes a pretty decent compilation album, and though it is now somewhat obsolete with the many CD bootlegs compiling almost all of the material here, it's a decent collection.

Rated: 7 / 10

Extra

The sleeve of Death Or Glory, while very nice, has some errors on it. It wrongly claims that the Jamaica World Music Festival songs as from 27/11/1983 - they just got the year wrong - and the 'Something Else' TV show as from 1981. I've also seen two versions of this sleeve. The only difference being the photo of the band on the back. My version has a pic of the band at a press conference. The centre of the vinyl itself is blank white labels on both sides.

The Pogues tracks

Here follows an e-mail from John Stokes. A well spotted bit of info. The two live tracks actually saw an official release. (Thanks for this John.)

...The Joe Strummer/Pogues tracks on the 'Death or Glory' LP were actually released legitimately on some pressings of the Pogues' 1993 single 'Tuesday Morning' I'm not a Pogues nut but remember seeing this record somewhere or other (it also explains their perfect sound quality) - check out this page of a Pogues discography Pogues discography.