The Singles - The Clash

One of the earliest Clash CD's released, before the albums themselves had been issued on what was then the newfangled medium of Compact Discs, The Singles is actually at an advantage over every other attempt at a Clash compilation, purely on the basis it limits itself to what it's goal is. In their 10 year career which brought forth 6, 7 if you count the alternate version of the debut, albums, The Clash amassed a huge amount of tracks in a variety of styles and genres, and trying to condense a career like that into a single package is always going to turn out flawed, purely because it's impossible to compile any sort of comprehensive overlook of the band's career without ...

Fore runners of the British Punk scene, The Clash have been one of very few bands who actually survived the disintegration of Punk and leapt successfully into the eras that followed. New wave, as we know, had been the watered down, commercial idea of the media to calm Punk down. What society had failed to do was disperse the crowds of adoring fans that still hung desperately onto their Punk heroes. The Jam, The Stranglers and The Damned remained true to their roots only on a handful of occasions daring to step gingerly over to the world of commercialised pop just to make a buck or two out of the British charts. Born from an era of futureless lives, Punk had ...