not after The Clash song “Rock the Casbah.” He and Mays became friends in 1980, when Mays started booking punk-rock shows at downtown’s short-lived Skeleton Club, where Verbrugge was a DJ.

Released in 1982, off The Clash’s fifth album Combat Rock, “Rock the Casbah” made its radio rounds and got the then-obligatory video rotation on MTV, quickly becoming the biggest U.S. hit ...