Whatever happened to.. Ray Gange?

I have a love/hate relationship with the 'net, as I guess most of us do. For large parts of the time, I curse the day it ever came into being. My inbox is always full of the most ridiculous unsolicited garbage - always. No 'spam killing' products seem to do the job. They won't because they are by definition reactive. Such software won't know to treat 'Do you want v1agara??' as spam until somebody somewhere has told it that it is. By which time of course the genius who sends it out has changed it subtly ('v1agarra', maybe) and your spam filter is back where it started. Perhaps you can hear me tearing out my hair in frustration. Please don't send me emails promoting Rogaine!

But at the same time I can't help loving the internet and all that it brings us. The access it offers to, well, just about everything, is nothing short of remarkable. Case in point: as any fule kno, the Clash was the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world. Ever. (Feel free to disagree, but obviously you'd be wrong.) But because their heyday was back in the days before we all had digital camcorders that fit in our bondage trouser pockets, there's never been a lot of footage of their live performances available to the general public.

There is of course, the movie 'Rude Boy', so let's divert for a second into the realm of movie reviews. A classic in its own way, but the live stuff therein only serves to focus the viewer's mind on the sheer awfulness of pretty much everything else about the film. We all know the Clash tried pretty hard to make sure it never got released - I suspect this was because they saw how cheesy it made them look (from Strummer's sibilant "the terroristssss..." to Mick's frankly scary "I'm watching you..."). And anyway, the live stuff has clearly been overdubbed significantly. Anyone who ever saw them in the early days will know, that, blistering as they were, they never played that well!! Much like Thin Lizzy's groundbreaking 'Live & Dangerous' double LP, the strength of Rude Boy is that the live stuff has been tweaked just enough to make it sound more listenable, while retaining the live edge.

However, completists like me have always wanted more. And the shoebox of dusty cassette tapes doesn't satisfy in the digital age. Enter eBay! I've been able to build quite a network of saddoes like myself, at the same time as building quite a collection of video performances of my fave band (among others). Of course, it could be argued that, by paying someone for a DVD full of grainy footage transferred from a dodgy VHS of a TV show from Japan, I'm contributing to the sad decline of the entertainment multinationals (altogether now, "Aahhh..."), and robbing my own heroes of their dues. I can't see it that way.

Why not? Well, I have faithfully bought every single damn thing the Clash ever issued officially (even 'Cut the Crap'), in several cases paying more than once for the same material (when buying a compilation just to get the 'previously unreleased' tracks, for instance - told you I was sad). I've also bought stuff on CD that I already bought on vinyl. And - how dumb does this make me sound, given my comments earlier? - I even bought the DVD of Rude Boy, even though many many years earlier I had bought it on VHS - AT A TIME WHEN VHS MOVIES WEREN'T GENERALLY ON SALE!! That's right, I went into my local video rental store and bought their copy, for nearly forty quid. They thought I was mental. My mates thought I was the coolest kid in town. We almost wore out the heads on my parents' Radio Rentals top-loading VCR.

So, buying illicit DVDs of stuff from my youth is a way of reminding myself of a simpler, happier time - hang on? Happier? Thatcher had just come to power, the miners were being systematically destroyed, the unions retreating up their own backsides, the NF were winning London council seats.. can I really have been happier then? Answers on a postcard please...