London Calling - The Clash

This album has very special memories for me. I can remember buying the double LP on its first week of release from a branch of Subway Records in London. I had travelled 90 miles, as a 16 years old, to see Chelsea v Swansea and for some strange reason I just had to buy this album before going to the match. Somehow the records survived the match intact. This was 30 years ago, I can't remember the score (although my team Chelsea won, I think) but I sure can recall the songs on this great package. This was the third LP from this four man, UK punk outfit and definitely their most accomplished (their subsequent offerings - Sandanista and Combat Rock certainly ...  Read the complete review

WHO WERE THE CLASH? ------------------------------------- The Sex Pistols invented punk. The Clash developed it, rode it and then killed it. And thank goodness they did, otherwise we'd still all be walking around with safety pins on our jackets, green mohicans and gobbing at everyone over 25. They were made up of MIck Jones, Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon. Mick and Joe shared the vocals duties on most Clash tracks, but it's Joe who sings on their better known tracks: Bankrobber, London Calling. However, Mick does sing on their only number one (the reissued Levi's ad song Should I Stay Or Should I Go?). Paul sung a bit and played bass ...  Read the complete review

Between 1976 and 1978, Punk had turned from a genuinely interesting social movement into a depressing commercial sell-out. By 1979, the Sex Pistols had imploded and punk was turning into a mainstream fashion phenomenon, and the second generation of bands were punching out identikit music. Punk was dead. Or so it seemed. You see, most people had forgotten about the Clash by now. They'd always been the poor man's Pistols, competent enough, but apparently lacking the energy of Rotten et al. However, most people forgot that Mick Jones and Joe Strummer weren't the type of people to just fade away like some fashion trend. Maybe in 1977 all they ...  Read the complete review

'No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones,' bawled Joe Strummer in '1977', but two years later that vow was shattered by The Clash. Their 1979 album, 'London Calling', showed them to be very much the inheritors of the torch carried by all three of those talents. The rockabilly sounds of the 79 vintage band were rooted deep in the Sun recordings produced by the King and the cover of the album paid startling homage to one of Presley's earliest LP's. Similarly, the Strummer-Jones writing partnership was proving to be the new wave version of Lennon and McCartney and just as the Scousers started going their separate ways and ...  Read the complete review

THE CONTEXT: 1979. While in the US groups like The Dead Kennedys are ready to bring back what is rightfully theirs, in the UK Punk is holding out for its last huzzah...The Sex Pistols and The Damned already sucumbed to Punks self-destructive vein, and in a few years Billy Idol would make the transistion from Johnny Rotten wannabe to MOR bore...the world is threatened by The Village People and Debbie Gibson, and only Rocks primodial heroes, The Clash, could save it. THE EFFECT: “London Calling” was widely accepted as the best album of 1979. “Rolling Stone”, funnily out of touch as ever, decided it was the best album of the 80´s (Yup. And ...  Read the complete review