Day 250. The Last Gang In Town. (7/9/13)

Day 250 then.

So, the 250 greatest inventions in the history of....no, sod that. I said I was never doing another list and I'm sticking to that. Too much bloody work involved.

But it's day 250. Surely there should be something of note here for such a momentous event?

Okay, a statement then.

The older I get, the more I absolutely love, beyond all reason,  The Clash.

I mean, I'd always liked the Clash, like really liked them but over the last couple of years it's turned into adoration. Adoration of everything that they ever recorded, every statement they ever made, every pose they ever struck, no matter how ridiculous or overblown it may appear.

There's a new box set out on Monday, alongside a new greatest hits and the re-release of their entire catalogue, remixed and remastered and I'm desperately trying to find a way to justify wanting 70 quids worth of box set, the majority of which I already own. And you'll notice that I said 'want', even I'm not daft enough to claim that I need it, I just really, really want it. It's in the shape of a ghetto blaster and it's got all the CDs and unreleased stuff and badges and posters and....I'm not really doing this justice am I?

Okay, consider the music. The Clash were punks, right? Yeah, for about ten minutes in 1976, after that they were a rock band who would tackle absolutely anything that they found interesting, rockabilly, blues, jazz, reggae, dub, pop, soul, hip hop before any other English act had even heard of this new genre from New York.

Single albums weren't enough to contain everything that they wanted to put out so London Calling (the title track of which is still one of the greatest pieces of art of the 20th century) was a double which they insisted on selling at the price of a single disc.

A double album wasn't enough, within a year they had produced another album, a triple, a baffling blend of styles that isolated the media and fans alike, named itself after the Sandinista rebels fighting in Nicaragua and again retailed at substantially cheaper than was wise to make money for either band or record company.

Why worry about money when you can treat your fans as though they matter to you? The Clash treated their fans as an extension of the band itself, always giving time to them, treating them as the equals that they truly believed that they were.

And belief was everything to The Clash. Belief in themselves, in their abilities no matter how limited at times, in their politics which were always more personal than party driven, in their intention to follow their instincts to wherever they may take them, knowing that they were always right. Even their mistakes were the right mistakes.

It could be claimed that their biggest mistake was never reforming. In an age where everybody gets the band back together for a fast final fling, The Clash stood resolute. They never aged, the loss of Joe Strummer some ten years ago means that, though the individual members may bow to the vicissitudes of time, 'The Clash' never will; they will always be in their twenties, whip thin with the three pronged attack of Strummer, Simonon and Jones hurling themselves to the front of the stage as one unit, dedicated to every second of being quite possibly the greatest, most important  band of the last 40 years, of actually meaning something as a band, of showing others what was possible in music.

"Music can't change the world but it can change the way that you walk through then world" - Joe Strummer said that.

"Let's raise a toast to Saint Joe Strummer, I think he may have been our only decent teacher" - Craig Finn of The Hold Steady said that.

With a bit of luck 'The Clash Hit Back' will be advertised during X Factor at some point and somebody, somewhere will realise that there is a better way.