Your Friday Clash Song: We’ll Never Get On The Radio Like This!

In honor of my meteoric rise to media stardom, “Capital Radio Two” from the Cost of Living EP (1979) and Super Black Market Clash (1994).

Last July I featured “Capital Radio One,” the original version of this song from the Capital Radio EP (1977). “Capital Radio Two” is a re-worked version with additional lyrics. The Clash Wiki explains:

As well as less tinny production, the re-recording deals with (as does the [sic] The Cost of Living EP itself) the commercialisation of music. As well as a joke acoustic intro, the song has a new coda where Joe unveils a parodic masterplan to get the band’s music played on the radio, which culminates with the band apeing [sic] a quasi-disco sound and Joe spouting hip catchphrases such as “I’m the one that I want!”, an allusion to the song ‘You're the One That I want’ on the then recently released Grease film soundtrack.

Heh. Strummer, man. Always the kidder.

Even better, though, is the live version of “Capital Radio” off From Here To Enternity (1999):

I like the chatter towards the end: “I’d like to hear ‘Wooly-Bully’ by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs …”

That was a thing in the late ’70s/early ’80s. People writing songs about songs on the radio, songs about the radio, songs about deejays … it was a whole radio-centric thing.

You had, of course, Elvis Costello doing “Radio, Radio,” which he famously performed on Saturday Night Live over the objection of Lorne Michaels:

And the Ramones’ “Do You Remember Rock ’n Roll Radio?” from End Of The Century (1980):

Oddly enough, though, Joe’s ad lib from the live version of “Capital Radio” always reminded me of Cheap Trick’s “On The Radio”:

That makes no sense, of course, but who’s the radio star here anyway?

In any event, there you go. Your Friday Clash Song: “Capital Radio Two”:

Hey listen, I’ve been thinking


We’ll never get on the radio like this! …

You know what to do.

Turn. It. Up.