THE CLASH - CAPITAL RADIO EP

Video: THE CLASH - CAPITAL RADIO
On this date in 1977, THE CLASH released the CAPITAL RADIO EP, (April 9th, 1977).
“I want to slag off all the people in charge of radio stations,” raged Joe Strummer in 1977.
“Firstly, Radio One. They outlawed the pirates and then didn’t, as they promised, cater for the market the pirates created. Radio One and Two, most afternoons, run concurrently and the whole thing has slid right back to where it was before the pirates happened. They've totally fucked it. There's no radio station for young people any more. It's all down to housewives and trendies in Islington.
They're killing the country by having that play list monopoly.”
"No 2: Capital. They're even worse because they had the chance, coming right into the heart of London and sitting in that tower right on top of everything. But they've completely blown it. I'd like to throttle Aiden Day [the then-Head of Music]. He thinks he's the self appointed Minister of Public Enlightenment.”
Given away to readers who sent off the coupon printed in the NME, plus the red sticker found on the band's debut studio album The Clash (1977), the extended play CAPITAL RADIO featured an interview with the NME's Tony Parsons conducted on a Circle line tube train in central London, and the instrumental track ‘Listen’, one of the first songs ever written by The Clash, and featured as the set opener at their first ever show in July 1976.
‘Capital Radio’ finishes with a parody of an actual Capital jingle; the band replacing the lyric "in tune with London" with "in tune with nothing".
'We've just written a new song called Capital Radio and a line in it goes "listen to the tunes of the Dr Goebbels Show."
“They say "Capital Radio in tune with London". Yeah, yeah, yeah! They're in tune with Hampstead. They're not in tune with us at all. I hate them. What they could have done compared to what they have done is abhorrent. They could have made it so good that everywhere you went you took your transistor radio - you know, how it used to be when I was at school. I'd have one in my pocket all the time or by my ear'ole flicking it between stations. If you didn’t like one record you'd flick to another station and then back again. It was amazing. They could have made the whole capital buzz. Instead Capital Radio has just turned their back on the whole youth of the city.”