CD Odyssey Disc 258: The Clash

I had serious thoughts about giving up on the Odyssey this week. Blogspot has done some kind of code changes, and it has made posting something as simple as a paragraph an exercise in html programming. This is not what I signed on for.

Fortunately, the next album helped make up for it. So here I sit, a little electronically frustrated, and a little sore (I'm just back from the tattoo parlour), but ready to carry on in the name of music.

Disc 258 is...London Calling

Artist: The Clash

Year of Release:1979

What’s Up With The Cover?: This is a great cover. It is a take off on Elvis Presley's debut album from 1956. On that cover, Elvis is playing the guitar in a black and white shot with the words "Elvis Presley" in the same location as "London Calling" on this record. Of course, the Clash aren't playing their guitars - they are smashing them. It is a shout out to Elvis - but it is also a challenge being issued to mothers across the land - rock and roll has grown a new level of attitude.

How I Came To Know It: I had heard a few songs off of this record over the years, but it was Sheila that put me on to it - it is one of her favourite records, and it is easy to understand why.

How It Stacks Up: We have five Clash albums - I'd say this is the best, so let's just end the suspense and crown their ass, already! (Thank you, Denis Green).

Rating: 5 stars.

I just finished reviewing the Clash' debut album two albums ago and here we are again. As statistical anomalies go, this has been an enjoyable one.

"London Calling" is quite simply, one of the greatest rock records ever made. A modern day classic that thirty years later, has lost none of its edge.

It is actually two of the greatest rock records ever made. While the miracle of CD technology has all nineteen tracks on one dic, the original release was a double album. Releasing nineteen songs is usually a recipe for mediocrity (or at the very least a verbal lashing at the hands of the Creative Maelstrom), but this album sails a perfect course through the seas of excess, and never gets wet.

I think a big part of the record's strength comes from its variety. There are pop songs like "Lost in the Supermarket" and "Train in Vain", rock songs like "London Calling" and "Clampdown" and reggae flavoured songs like "Rudie Can't Fail". Every one of them is a classic.

Putting all these styles in one room could have seemed crowded, but despite the number of songs, and the number of styles everything fits. It is like the musical equivalent of an overcrowded club, where everyone is having a good time, and no one spills anyone else's drink.

I once spilled a guy's drink at an old club called The Drawing Room and even after I replaced it, he still wanted to cause trouble. Naturally, I replied with even more fervent apologies until he eventually realized there was no fight to be had. I did this was for two reasons. First, I am a naturally happy drunk and second - dude was huge. But I digress...

Back to "London Calling" which is also sometimes belligerent, but never to the listener. There is one section of the album - which I assume would be side 2 of the first album and side 1 of the second, (starting at "Lost in The Supermarket" and ending with "Death of Glory") which represents one of the best five song runs I've heard.

"Lost in the Supermarket" gets you started, a song that takes the early childhood memory we all have of being lost in a large grocery or department store, and transfers that alienation and fear to a commentary on suburbia:

"I wasn't born so much as I fell out/Nobody seemed to notice me/We had a hedge back home in the suburbs/Over which I never could see."

This moves to adulthood, with "Clampdown" a song about selling out, working in a job you hate, but doing it anyway. A song that unpleasantly reminds us the person best suited in this life to sell you out is yourself.

From there, we move to a song about the hard choice of not selling out in the face of a totalitarian regime, with "Guns of Brixton" which begins with the ominous lines:

"When they kick down your front door, how you gonna come?/With your hands on your head, or on the trigger of your gun?"

From there, we go to "Wrong 'Em Boyo" that reminds us that even in dire straits, we must not hurt our own - yet features the story of two thieves that do exactly that.

Finally, we come to "Death or Glory" that reminds us these two things ultimately become 'just another story'. It may be a disheartening song, but it has long been one of my favourites on "London Calling" - with its driving guitar, and pounding drum, it was the right key into this old metalhead's heart.

Every one of these songs is a classic in its own right, and they come at you one after the other, with no respite. The themes are stark - often evoking class or generational warfare, but they are wrapped in melodies and arrangements so beautiful, you might not even notice their themese if you aren't listening closely.

There are a host of other great tracks on "London Calling" but time and space preclude me from gushing over all of them. I'll just say that if you're wondering why it took so long for this last review to post it wasn't just that I've been busy, or that the record is a little long - it is because I've enjoyed having it in my car, and in no hurry to take it out. When this whole Odyssey thing is over, it'll be back in there, early and often.

Best tracks: All tracks, except maybe "The Card Cheat" but only because the beginning of the chorus always reminds me of that Harlequin song, Innocence ("Innocence - that's all you ever plead" etc.). Particular favourites are Jimmy Jazz, Rudie Can't Fail, Lost In The Supermarket, Clampdown, The Guns of Brixton, Wrong 'Em Boyo, Death or Glory, and Train In Vain.