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.
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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.

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.
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Certain Songs #216: The Clash – “Capital Radio Two”

June 9, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Cost of Living EP.
Year: 1979.

Originally given away on an NME flexidisc, the original version of “Capital Radio” was an attack on the London radio stations that were playing hits instead of the early punk songs.

And as such, the original “Capital Radio” is slotted into the “Punk Band Rails at The Man Who Won’t Help More People Hear The Music That is Trying to Destroy Everything The Man Stands For” sub-genre with such songs as “Radio Radio” and “The Unheard Music.” But even The Clash knew it was kinda slight, so they never officially released it in 1977. It eventually surfaced on Black Market Clash in 1980.
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Certain Songs #215: The Clash – “Groovy Times”

June 8, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Cost of Living EP
Year: 1979.

So this is how it went: in late 1978, I bought Give ‘Em Enough Rope, and almost instantly I bought the U.K. version of The Clash and whichever import singles I could find at Tower Records. Which, as I recall, were “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais” and “Complete Control”.

So what that means is that The Cost of Living EP was the first piece of brand-new music The Clash released after I became a rabidly crazed Clash fan. And as such, it holds a special place in my heart, as it proved definitively that The Clash were going to continue to move their music forward at a dizzying pace.

Certain Songs #214: The Clash – “I Fought The Law”

June 7, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Cost of Living EP.
Year: 1979.

In my opinion, there are two types of cross-genre covers. One type is the ironic, sneering “we’re better than this stupid song” cover that was so prevalent in the early days of hardcore. You know, the “Hey ma look at us, we’re covering ‘Afternoon Delight!!!’ Isn’t that hilarious?” school.

It was kinda funny maybe the first time somebody did it, but not the 3,567,684,896th time. We get it. You’re more authentic than Starland Vocal Band. Congrats!

Certain Songs #213: The Clash – “Stay Free”

June 6, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Give ‘Em Enough Rope.
Year: 1978.

This is probably some kind of sacrilege or something, but when The Clash first took over my life, my favorite member wasn’t St. Joe Strummer, but rather Mick Jones. Even at the time, my working theory about punk rock wasn’t that it was the utter destruction of rock ‘n’ roll, but rather the next phase of rock ‘n’ roll.

And Mick Jones — the Keef-haired guitar hero who wrote and sang the the poppier songs — was the human face of that theory. He was the guy who was able to point the way forward while respecting the past. Or something: I was 16 when I came up with this particular theory.
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Certain Songs #212: The Clash – “Guns on the Roof”

June 5, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Give ‘Em Enough Rope.
Year: 1978.

The familiar chords rang out of the first track of side two of Give ‘Em Enough Rope, a bit more staccato than I might have been used to, but utterly recognizable as “I Can’t Explain” to any kid who was discovering The Who at the same time he was discovering The Clash.

Except it wasn’t. The Clash were rewriting Pete Townshend’s rewrite of “You Really Got Me” and going into a completely different direction.
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