WITH the demolishing of the old Shea Stadium, Queens is losing not only a famous ballpark but a venerable concert venue as well.

Billy Joel recently gave the place a grand sendoff with some farewell concerts, and of course, Shea was the epicenter of Beatlemania when the Liverpool Moptops played there in the sixties.

But for Generation X-ers like me who were in high school on October 13, 1982, Shea played host to a changing of the guard in musical history.

The Clash were riding high on the charts with their hit album Combat Rock, and they had nabbed a spot opening for The Who at Shea on their umpteenth comeback.

"They're the only band that matters now," Pete Townshend declared at the time.

With the release of The Clash: Live at Shea Stadium, that defining moment in punk rock has been immortalized online and on CD. Once you take the disc for a spin, you could see why Townshend heaped such praise on the band's head.

The Clash played a tight set that was heavy on the hits. "Magnificent Seven" sports a rubbery groove on record, but in this open air environment it sounds like corrosive punk-funk.

"Armageddon Time" finds the band shifting effortlessly into reggae, proving this band could play anything.

"Right away when we heard we were going to play there we thought about the Beatles at Shea," guitarist Mick Jones recalled recently. "Everybody knew about it."

Other than the huge influence he had over Bono and the boys, Joe Strummer would not have yet set his sights on Irish music; he would later fill the huge shoes of Shane MacGowan after his messy divorce from the Pogues and then apply what he learned with the Pogues into his Celtic global gumbo recipe with the Mescaleros.

For this moment in time, he was ushering in a new British invasion on the coattails of the old British invasion through sheets of rain that fell on Queens that night. It was arguably the Clash at its peak.

The band had a few radio hits by then, like "Rock the Casbah," "Train in Vain" and "Should I Stay Or Should I Go," and each was hauled out to impress a stadium-sized audience.

The band played to a hostile crowd waiting for The Who, which peeled the pop sensibilities off of these radio hits in favor of a defiant punk energy that is electrifying to hear.

Sadly, this would be one of the Clash's last shows, but buying this piece of history means this great music will live on in your mind for years to come. Try getting this off the CD player once it lands - I dare you!