“For The People. By The People.”

I came to the Clash as a fan. I heard the British import of their first self titled album when it first came out … and I was hooked! When I went to the Palladium to see them for the first time in 1980, I went as a fan, who happened to bring his camera. And even as I gained access to get back stage at Bonds (thanks Brenda!) or got guest listed to the three Asbury Park shows in 1982 (thanks Kosmo!) I was still going as a fan … really. A very FORTUNATE fan.

It’s been over thirty years since I took my first live and street photos of The Clash at the Palladium in New York City. And in the following two years I’d have more chances to photograph them live and backstage. Since first publishing my photos on my blog go2jo.com, I have had many people ask me … ‘so Joe … when will you make a book of your photos?’ It’s taken me a while to get here. But here I am. I’m in the process of working on said book.

Here’s the twist. Continue Reading > > >

This past Memorial Day weekend marked the 29th anniversary of the Clash shows in Asbury Park, NJ, that started the U.S. tour for Combat Rock. I wrote about it in a previous post The Clash @ Asbury Park Convention Hall 1982.

Over the weekend a couple of friends of mine linked to that post from Facebook. I also commented about it in AP Boardwalk, and In! Asbury. Both Facebook groups about … Asbury Park, NJ. In a private note someone sent me. they relayed a story of how they too were there at one of the shows and the private party at the Casino. They also asked me if I had any other photos, because she was hoping tat she might be in the background of some of the party shots not currently on the aforementioned blog post. I said that was all I had. Which then made me think …. was it? I had to have taken several rolls. Even if I took only four 36 exposure rolls, that would have been 144 slides. Did I ditch all the “bad” shots or were there more someplace that I never scanned. A conundrum indeed! Continue Reading > > >

And so we did. On so many levels.

It was the summer of 1982. At least the beginning of it. I had graduated from CW Post Center of Long Island University. I had already seen all three Asbury Park Clash shows and my friend Charlie (also a Post toasty) and I were about to embark on a month long trip to England and France.

Charlie and I were both photographers. Me having hot new photos of the Clash plus my other photos from Bonds and The Palladium shows, and Charlie had his more social documentary black and white portfolio. Our first week there would be a mix of business and pleasure.

Before it all started there was a ton of preparation to get ready. I went out and bought 40 rolls of Kodachrome. This was going to be the biggest trip of my life, thus far, and it certainly needed to be documented in all its Kodachrome glory.

If documentation was in order I also needed at least three new thin red journals and red Flair pens to go along. On some level I have to thank Dorothy for getting me into journaling. I had started journaling shortly after we met. It’s especially wild to look back on any of those journals so many years later. It sure helps to fill in some of my memory gaps, but also sometimes stirs up feeling I had long since put behind me.

I have to admit, that as I post excerpts from my journals, they will be heavily edited. Never adding unless [indicated] and way more “removal” than anything else. More to protect the innocent, and at times, the not so innocent. As verbose and telling as they were, sometimes they were just the rantings of a 20-something year old man-boy-child groping his way through the world in the process of “coming out of the cupboard” / closet … literally.

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It all started with an idea and an eMail.

A long while back I started posting my Clash photos from the various shows I had attended over the years 1980-1982. My photos of the Clash @ The Palladium NYC 1980, the Clash @ Bonds NYC 1981, and the Clash @ Asbury Park Convention Hall 1982. When I was taking photographs I was more a fan with a camera. I wasn’t officially there as a journalist, but I have always been a documenter. A photograph by nature is a documentation of an event in time. Being a college student back then, if I had the money to spend on film and developing, or at least for the film, I would certainly take my camera to every show I went to. “In those day” (god did I just say that?) anyone could bring a camera into a venue and take photographs. Not so much now unless you’re press, or are sporting a camera phone or small digital number. But back then it was all allowed. No problem. So I have lots of “documentation” of bands I saw through the years. The Clash being one of them.

On March 7, 2009 3:45:30 PM PST I got a very interesting eMail from a gentleman named Daniel Garcia. It was a brief, yet rather interesting eMail, to say the least. Continue Reading > > >

“Police On My Back”

Well I’m running, police on my back
I’ve been hiding, police on my back
There was a shooting, police on my back
And the victim well he wont come back

I been running Monday Tuesday Wednesday
Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Runnin Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Saturday Sunday
What have I done?
What have I done?

Eddy Grant

These are the moments legends are made ….

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In 1980 I was attending school at  CW Post Center of Long Island University. I was also sharing an apartment in Oyster Bay Long Island with 3 women: Cande Roth, Ellyn Solis, and Dorothy (Orant) Morrison. The night I moved into this insane asylum I ended three years of being a non-smoker. I purchased that pack of Newports … and torched up the first smoke, and didn’t quit again until the early 90′s.

In my years at Post I was a communications major and later film major. I also did radio shows on the college station WCWP 88.1 on the FM dial. I also was a photographer for an NYC club magazine called Non-LP B-Side. Those were some exciting times. Musicly there was the whole UK & US punk explosion that brought so much amazing and exciting music. I use to spend a lot of my extra cash either at Bleaker Bob’s in NYC or a few of the independent music stores on Long Island that specialized in British imports. Buying the latest import singles & LPs my radio shows were something to hear. I loved bands like The Clash, The Jam, The Sex Pistols, XTC, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury And The Blockheads, Fashion, Richard Hell And The Voidoids, Tom Verlaine with or without  Television, Graham Parker, The Undertones, Ultravox, The Ramones, Talking Heads, all the assorted Stiff and Two-Tone bands and so much more. And what money I didn’t spend there I was spending on photographing some of these bands and paying to have the film processed at professional color labs, in NYC or on “Lonkisland”.

Dorothy was also an avid musicologist and fan girl of so many of those bands. That was one of our many connections. She also turned me onto a lot of stuff that she loved too. We influenced each other. Hell … when I met this girl she was “sittin’ on the hood of a Dodge” in the parking lot at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. A friend of mine and I were waiting to buy Springsteen tickets. We drove in from southern NJ the night before and slept in  my car. Early the next morning, before “the line formed”, I was wandering around the parking lot and here was this beautiful blond wild child, sitting on the hood of that car (but no soft summer rain) and asking me … “hey you like Costello too?” I was wearing an Elvis Costello t-shirt at the time. And that was that. We talked and that started the long slow process of friendship … and years later … a bit more.

Dorothy and I were in L. O. V. E. with the Clash. There was always something about their music, attitude and politics that resonated with us, and the world. They were so much less nihilistic than the Pistols. Plus they had huge hearts. You could see it in the passion they showed onstage and off. Continue Reading > > >

I’m feeling horribly sad. Pain welling up. Like having the crusty brown crackling scab of a deep wound ripped from my flesh. Feeling the pain and discomfort, but realizing, I was only feeling a pea under the mattress of time, poking me in my minds eye. Hey you! Wake up! Wake the fuck up! Joe is gone. Joe? Joe who? Joe Streno? No! Joe Strummer.

I’m back stage at Bonds, NYC. It’s 1981. I’m seeing it though the eyes of another. Out of body? Am I still dreaming? I am the camera. I’m on one side of the curtain divider, tagged by others before me. He’s on the other side. They … are on the other side. Dorothy is next to me. “I’ll pull it back …” she said “… be ready.” Was I? Could I? Should I? Suddenly the curtain is drawn. He turns, looking into my eyes, dead on. There is a blinding flash. He doesn’t blink. He knows what is needed. He knows what is required. Focused like a laser. Peering into the elements of time, space and visual acuity. His essence has been received. His likeness captured. In a microsecond, the curtain returns to its place. Both of them. Light levels return to normal. Did that really happen? Continue Reading > > >