Archives for June 2015

Certain Songs #227: The Clash – “The Magnificent Seven”

June 20, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sandinista!
Year: 1980

What happens when your favorite current band changes everything? If you’re lucky, you’ll get to answer this question more than once in your life. But as a hard rock loving newly-minted adult (legally only, emotionally years and years later) (maybe), “The Magnificent Seven” felt like a slap in the face.

I mean this was the band that did “Safe European Home?” While 1978 was only two years prior, it suddenly felt like light years away — and why not: The Clash had packed other artists entire careers into just two albums. Still, my thinking was that Rap was simply a passing fad. The last gasp of Disco with some (admittedly) clever rhymes on top. But did it rock? No! Rock ‘n’ roll forever dude!!

Certain Songs #226: The Clash – “Stop The World”

June 19, 2015 by Jim Connelly

B-side, 1980.

In retrospect it seems insane that the first single — “The Call Up” for those of you keeping score at home — from Sandinista! should also include a non-album B-side that ranks with the top cuts from those sessions.

But, of course, it just goes to how incredibly prolific that The Clash were in 1979-1980 — music was spilling out from them in all directions, and only the limitations of the contemporary formats could hope to contain them. Nowadays, they probably would have been releasing those songs as they wrote them, like Ryan Adams or Kanye West, or just put out a nonstop stream of albums, like Robert Pollard.

Certain Songs #225: The Clash – “Armagideon Time”

June 18, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Black Market Clash EP
Year: 1980.

Arriving as a 10-inch “Nu-Disk” (no really) stop-gap release in October 1980, and nearly as long as either The Clash or Give ‘Em Enough Rope, the original release of Black Market Clash might be the single weirdest entry in The Clash’s discography.

Side one was mostly punky b-sides, some of which (“City of the Dead,” “The Prisoner” & “Pressure Drop”) nearly made this project, and side two was all spacey Clash reggae, perfect for putting on as I desperately tried to sleep in the weird days of late 1980. The key track on the record was their cover of Willie Williams “Armagideon Time,” which — even more than “Police & Thieves” — they totally reshaped in their image.

Certain Songs #224: The Clash – “Train in Vain”

June 17, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: London Calling
Year: 1979.

The first thing you need to know about the infamous “secret hidden track” on London Calling is that it wasn’t all that hidden. Despite not being listed on either the sleeve or the label, it was in all of the publicity, not to mention that you could clearly see there were five songs on side four of London Calling.

To me, the mystery surrounding “Train in Vain” isn’t so much the fact that it was a hidden track, but rather “what kind of music is this even?”

Certain Songs #223: The Clash – “The Card Cheat”

June 16, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: London Calling
Year: 1979.

If “Lost in The Supermarket” bugged 17-year-old Jim with its relative lack of the big guitars, then “The Card Cheat” should have had me white rioting.

After all, there’s not an audible guitar to be found on the whole song. Instead, it’s all “M.Jones—-Piano” and the Irish Horns blaring away. There’s even a gods damned trumpet solo!

And yet, “The Card Cheat” always been one of my favorite songs by The Clash.

Certain Songs #222: The Clash – “Death or Glory”

June 15, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: London Calling.
Year: 1979.

And then there’s the cover of London Calling. That iconic Pennie Smith shot of Paul Simonon smashing his bass in New York City. I’d heard of guitars being smashed — I mean my other favorite band at the time was The Who — but whoever heard of a bass being smashed? Was it even possible? Those things are heavy!

Certain Songs #221: The Clash – “Clampdown”

June 14, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: London Calling
Year: 1979.

And then there’s “Clampdown.” Full of righteous fury and anger, and driven by a Topper Headon beat that shouldn’t possibly work, “Clampdown” is probably the closest thing musically to their early days. And by “early days,” of course, I meant “just a few months prior.”

I remember reading a Joe Strummer interview (probably in CREEM) just prior to London Calling where he was talking about how they were going to expand their music, and so even a song like “Clampdown” sounds different — guitars mixed down or doing subtle things, organ prominent, weird percussion effects — than it would have on the previous records.
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Certain Songs #220: The Clash – “Lost in the Supermarket”

June 13, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: London Calling
Year: 1979

My high school didn’t have a newspaper the year I was a Senior. If I remember correctly, it was a punishment for our class being terrible, rowdy trouble-makers and continually needing to be disciplined. Or something.

And if so, it was a weirdly arbitrary punishment, as it only affected folks who wanted wanted to use their talents to contribute something to the universe.

Maybe they were scared of what we would write: editorials in favor of legalizing weed, stories about hanging out in the Figs, the lyrics to Fugs songs.

Certain Songs #219: The Clash – “The Right Profile”

June 12, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: London Calling.
Year: 1979.

With its big bouncy beat, swinging jazz horns and lyrics about doomed actor Montgomery Clift, “The Right Profile” is a object lesson in what The Clash were on about during the London Calling sessions.

Which is this: taking every type of music they’d ever loved and cramming it into a single record.
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Certain Songs #218: The Clash – “Rudie Can’t Fail”

June 11, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: London Calling.
Year: 1979.

The first reggae song on London Calling isn’t just the most joyous-sounding song in the whole Clash canon, it also showed just how far their reggae chops had progressed. Whereas both “Police and Thieves” and (to a lesser extent) “White Man in Hammersmith Palais” were formal in the way that most Clash songs weren’t — every note and beat was exactly where it should have been — “Rudie Can’t Fail” is the exact opposite.

Like the rest of London Calling, “Rudie Can’t Fail” is loose and free, always a couple of beats away from completely falling apart, but holding together even as all the seams are showing.