Syncher Things: Must Be a Clash, There's No Alternative

There’s a general consensus that World War One and World War Two weren’t really different wars, but one long war with a twenty-one year armistice. 

In much the same way, we’re seeing the resumption of the Cold War after a thirty-one year pause, depending on where you choose to mark the ceasefire.

Of course, the administrative layer of the Regime is dominated - still - by Deep State rogues and worn-out old Cold Warriors like Grandpa Dribblecup, Smirking Schumer, Malevolent Tortoise McConnell, Gore-Whore Graham and the rest of the hideous death cultists. And then there's the bloody horror show in Gaza, which also harkens back to the dangerous days of the early 80s. 

And in a real "blast from the past" for attentive old GenXers like me, NATO and the emergent BRICs alliance are quietly but fervently moving major military assets into fighting position.

So we’re not free of the past- it’s very much still with us. And the replay of historical cycles lies at the core of the Synchromystic endeavor, least how I define it.

IN 1983, A MERMAN I SHOULD TURN TO BE

So since I'm writing this on the official Quadragennial of the kickoff of Stranger Things timeline - a series which seems more and more like some egregore heralding the resumption of the Great Game of Nations - let me just review some of the core arguments of why I call 1983 the Year that Broke Reality:

So, I hear you asking: what exactly happened in 1983 that was so earth-shaking?

Well, how about the birth of an obscure little venture called the Internet?

That "earth-shaking" enough for you?

No? Well, how about the dawn of the Cellphone Age?

Or the premiere of a plucky little upstart of a software package called Microsoft Word?

Or a little something called the Macintosh computer, which put a spectrumy whiz-kid from the Bay Area on the wider world's radar?

Starting to get the picture yet? Weird, right?

 

LET THE SYNCS BEGIN 

I hear what you're all saying: "Yes, yes, but what does any of this have to do with the Cocteau Twins?"

Glad you asked. 

As you remember, Our Beloved Sibyl figures directly into some of the hairiest events of Cold War 1983:   

September 6, 1983: Elizabeth and Robin's iconic version of "Song to the Siren" premieres on John Peel Show the same day Soviet Union admits shooting down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, causing major crisis between the superpowers.

November 7, 1983: Cocteau Twins release Sunburst and Snowblind the same day NATO troops launch Able Archer war-games, bringing world to the brink of nuclear war

Sunburst and Snowblind was my initiation into the ceaseless mysteries of The Sibyl and it was released the same exact day the boys encountered Eleven (or "Elevenabeth," as I like to call her) in the rainy woods.

And course, 11 is commonly associated with Twins.

LATE OCTOBER, BACK IN '83

The Sibyl's most dread collection of prophecies - Head Over Heels - was revealed to the world on either October 24th or October 31st of 1983, depending on which date you believe. It's a bit unsure.

But one thing we can be sure of is that John Peel, self-admitted pedo and likely MI6 asset (but I repeat myself), played the first side of Head Over Heels on October 22nd, on British Forces Broadcasting Service.

Oh, you know what happened just a few short hours later...

October 23 – Beirut barracks bombing: Simultaneous suicide truck-bombings destroy both the French Army and United States Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. servicemen, 58 French paratroopers and 6 Lebanese civilians.

Note the last Twins tune Peel played on the 22nd was "Glass Candle Grenades," a song a reader once described as a terrifying message channeled through the Sibyl from ultraterrestrial extra-dimensionals in our midst. 

Read the lyrics and see if you agree:

There's only a hair's breadth between us, obscure as we are

Obscure as we are, there's only a hair's breadth between us

There's only a hair's breadth between us, as sure as we be

As sure as we be, there's only a hair's breadth between us

Glass sandstorms
(Still we'll not keel over, keel over, keel over)

Glass candle

(Still we'll not keel over, keel over, keel over)

Grenades are popping

(Still we'll not keel over, keel over, keel over)

Like the prophetesses who preceded her, the Sibyl sings dread riddles, but the mention of sandstorms (the Middle East) and "grenades are popping" should get your attention. We won't get into it now, but I'll remind you of the quatrain I find most troubling from the same album:

Wheezing and Sneezing

Tenfold it blew apart

It halved them in half

And went gushing gust wind

  

Let me just interrupt this program to remind all and sundry that The Spandex Files is on sale now!

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THE SONG THAT BROKE REALITY

While the Sibyl and her servants were opening for Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (whose breakthrough hit "Enola Gay" was named for the plane that bombed Hiroshima) in Germany, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (33º) was throwing his own private Woodstock outside San Bernadino, which he called "The Us Festival." 

It featured a host of the biggest bands of the time - and arguably launched perpetual-underperformers U2 into the big leagues - but is important for a specific reason to our purposes.

The headliner for "New Wave Night" was The Clash, and the festival was the last concert cofounder Mick Jones played with the band. 

The video compilation of the festival featured Jones' hit "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" and Joe Strummer's grinding rant "Know Your Rights," the only two songs from the band's low-T crapfest Combat Rock (The Clash's Stranger Things 3, basically) that bore even a passing resemblance to the white-knuckle punk rock the band made its name with in the 70s.

The Clash took the stage after midnight of May 28/29th, meaning they played their last gig with Jones exactly 7+7 years before the Sibyl's beloved Shepherd Boy swam to the Siren in the muddy waters of the Wolf River Lagoon in Memphis, Tennessee (home of Joe Strummer's hero, Elvis) and in the shadow of the hideous glass pyramid on the shores of the Mississippi.

The Clash fired Mick Jones on the Sibyl's 20th birthday. He was replaced by one Nick Sheppard, who hailed from Bristol, of all places. 

It never, ever ends.

Of course, The Clash and "Should I Stay or Should I Go" play a central role in the first (read: "the only real") Stranger Things, as it's the favorite tune of young Will Byers. In fact, some fans thing the song is even more central than some might think.

SHOULD I FLAY OR SHOULD I GO?

As the archvillain attempts to control her mind, Kate Bush’s voice gives Max a chance to escape back to reality, as she flees from his control. And Stranger Things obsessives think that the music of The Clash saved Will during his unplanned trips to the Upside Down way back in seasons one and two.

Reddit user Agentfoxywind explains: ‘[Did] Will survive so long in the Upside Down was because he kept singing Should I Stay or Should I Go?’

‘Since Max’s music kept Vecna away, did Will’s song do the same for him?’ they asked, after Will managed to survive for weeks in the dangerous parallel world.

Now, all of this garnered my rapt attention, not only because (the real) Stranger Things was so impeccably rendered, but also because having also been a scrawny aspiring artist obsessed with The Clash at Will's age - a lot of the series hit a little too close to home. 

From an earlier post:

A strange confluence of events entered my life at the same time as The Clash: my (divorced) mother was teaching at a public school, and befriended a Wiccan art teacher, my first exposure to this lifestyle. 

Then I got sick. Really, really sick.  Some kind of bacterial infection. I was running 105/106º fevers for more than a week, couldn't move from the couch and I'm not exactly sure how I didn't die.

 

And then as longtime Secret Sun readers may remember, my own living room became a doorway to another dimension. 

And I had a...visitor.

I didn't realize it but there was also a UFO flap going on in the area at the time. I'd only find that out in the past couple years.

 

I talked about some of these experiences in the recent SSI livestream on Jacob's Ladder, another of my insane obsessions favorites. Which makes this a good time to point out that Mick Jones appeared in Michael Winterbottom's 2003 film Code 46, which starred Jacob himself (and Clash fan) Tim Robbins and Silver-Screen Sibyl Samantha Morton.

Note that "Damian" needs fake papers to go to India to research bats. He later dies of a rare bat virus. Note too that Code 46 was filmed in Shanghai. It's all a genius story that ends in tragedy.

Now the Sibyl and Joe Strummer may seem like polar opposites -- aside from the fact of both being diminutive, elfin singers of Scottish extraction well-known for indecipherable vocals whose birthdays were a week apart and who both came up out of the punk movement -- but there are actually quite a number of indirect connections between them, most of which I won't bore you with now. 

There's also the fact that The Clash were very much a product of the Cold War and were often cited for having an apocalyptic bent.

Now let me tell you the connection they have for me.

As some of you may know, I really never fully cottoned to The Clash's mainstream records. Even London Calling - which is really just a souped-up pub rock album - never truly pressed my buttons. I needed The Clash to do one thing and one thing only - play cathartic punk rock so I could release my endless frustrations by shouting along with their records after school.

I mean, I was a loyal soldier and their weirder dub stuff was great to smoke weed to, but I remained loyal only because I hoped beyond hope that they'd stop fucking around with the wimpy Trustafarian bullshit and go back to playing punk rock music again. 

It was frustrating, especially since they were still pretty much the same old Clash live, but it was like someone was progressively draining away their lifeblood in the studio, and their records just got wimpier and wimpier.

It was kinda like the kid who would play with you in the neighborhood but totally ghost you at school. Of which I knew a lot, mind you.

Unfortunately, Mick Jones was a lost cause altogether, and never made a real rock 'n roll record after London Calling, never mind a punk rock record. But Joe Strummer made my dreams come true when he emerged four interminable years after London Calling, vowing that the new Clash were going back to basics and playing real punk rock again.

It's a long and messy story you can read about here if you're interested, but let me just I was so obsessed with this restoration, I'd buy a magazine or newspaper even if they had just a short article about the new Clash.

 

Kind like how I bought this issue of Boston Rock just for a brief report about the new Clash's tour.

And who did I lay my eyes on for the very first time in that same issue?

Could it be anyone else? 

Needless to say, that fact that that Streisandian voice was attached to the kind of punk rock pixie I usually crushed on (Annabella Lwin, Belinda Carlisle) only made me love her even more.

And the rest is history.

Bonus factoid: Since we're focusing on November of 1983, I should note that the two rival halves of The Clash recorded their initial demos that month, which showcased their wildly-incompatible visions of what Clash music should be. 

Strummer and his new Clash rough-sketched some rootsy, riff-driven garage punk with Third World seasoning, using the same essential formula as "Should I Stay." Mick Jones and "Rock the Casbah" cowriter Topper Headon served up some dickless New Wave dogshit that sounded like Spandau Ballet and Heaven 17 having a clown orgy in a Roman vomitorium. 

I thank God every day that unlistenable drivel never made it to a Clash album. Well, almost every day.

Now let me take you back to the present day, because The Endless American Midnight is finally available on Kindle. A lot of folks have asked me to do so and I'm happy to say that their ship has finally come in. 

You can get it here in the US, here in the UK, here in Canada, here in Australia and here in Germany.