London Calling

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 #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.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #221: The Clash – “Clampdown”

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.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #219: The Clash – “The Right Profile”

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.

Certain Songs #217: The Clash – “London Calling”

June 10, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: London Calling
Year: 1979.

Gonna have to start with a little housekeeping: because it came out in the U.K in December of 1979 but came out here in the Colonies in January of 1980, I’ve spent most of my life going back and forth as to the actual release date of London Calling for any kind of Best Albums of the Year / Best Albums of The Decade list I might be making.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #217: The Clash – “London Calling”