This has been a long week,
principally because our shower isn’t working.
I’m just not much of a bath guy.
It takes too long to run one, you’re never fully submerged and let’s
face it, washing your hair in the tub is awkward.
Ah well, at least there’s music.
Disc 474 is…Combat Rock
Year of Release: 1982
What’s up with the Cover? Just a bunch of ne’er-do-wells hanging out at the
railway tracks. One band member commits
the cardinal sin of wearing his own band’s shirt. It is not cool to wear your own band’s shirt
– only other bands.
How I Came To Know It: As I’ve said before, Sheila put me on to the Clash
in general. When I met her, she had this
album and “London Calling.”
How It Stacks Up: We have five Clash albums (as I was recently
reminded we are still missing “Sandanista”).
Of the five I must put “Combat Rock” last, or fifth. Truth hurts.
Since this is my last Clash review until I get Sandanista, it is
customary that I quickly recap and rate what has come before. So in order of preference:
- London Calling:
5 stars (reviewed at Disc 258)
- Self-Titled:
4 stars (reviewed at Disc 256)
- Black
Market Clash: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 16)
- Give ‘Em
Enough Rope: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 227)
- Combat
Rock: 3 stars (reviewed right here).
Rating: 3 stars, but just barely
Even a
band as influential and amazing as the Clash was bound to lay an egg, and
“Combat Rock” is that egg. The record
has enough high points to still be good in places, but overall this was a
disappointment.
“Combat
Rock” sees the bad continue with their experimentation with other genres. This I approve of in their career overall, but
just because it is a good idea generally doesn’t mean it always works out.
It starts
out strong, with the very punk “Know Your
Rights” – a song that has me wishing every public service announcement had
guitar. Sadly, few do.
One of
the challenges I have with this album is that two of the songs were unavoidable
in 1982, and weren’t good enough to stand that kind of exposure. “Should
I Stay or Should I Go” is particularly annoying. It is catchy enough the first time you hear it,
but at its core it is simply a novelty hit like so many others. From the first time I heard it I knew it was destined
to be overplayed and then sung off-key by drunks at karaoke bars for the next
thirty years. This has well and truly
wrecked it as a song, and it just isn’t musically interesting enough to recover.
“Rock the Casbah” also got a bad case of
overplay in the day (and the video of the Clash prancing about the desert is
truly stupid) but it is at least a better song.
It may just be a pop song, but it is a pretty catchy pop song. While this one used to annoy me in the day, sufficient
time has elapsed that this time around I found it was relatively rehabilitated.
Many of
the other songs take the band in strange directions, including jazz influences
and even what sounds like early attempts at spoken word resembling a kind of
English proto-rap. Unfortunately,
Strummer isn’t really suited to that, and his attempts at catch-phrasing his
way through a beat make him sound more like a soccer hooligan than a rap
artist.
The
worst example of this is “Red Angel
Dragnet” where he sounds like he was taught to speak by the kids who rescue
Mel Gibson in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Also weak is “Ghetto Defendant”
which starts out with a promising relaxed reggae beat, but starts doing a weird
techno-rap non-sequiturs like:
“Do the worm on necropolis
Slam dance cosmopolis
Enlighten the populace.”
It made
me think of the 1927 movie “Metropolis” but not in the good way I usually do.
For all
this criticism, there are some standout tracks on “Combat Rock” that lift the
quality of the overall album, even although most of them were not well known
outside of diehard Clash fans.
“Overpowered by Funk” is a fine display
of funk guitar and bass that show the Clash are far more than a pop punk
act. For all their other failed
experimentation on this album (the unlistenable jazz/folk fusion of “Sean Flynn” comes to mind), “Overpowered by Funk” really works, and
dare I say it, overpowers you with funk.
It is easy to see how Strummer and Mick Jones would go on to form the
dance-hall friendly Big Audio Dynamite when you hear this song. It is fun, cheeky and makes you want to get
up and move your hips.
My
favourite song on the album by a wide margin is “Straight to Hell,” a reggae inspired dirge about the hopelessness
of the underclasses both in the rusted out industrial cities of England and the
less-than-utopian third world communist state of Vietnam. Joe Strummer’s vocals have never sounded so
raw or heartfelt on this song, which for all of “Combat Rock’s” other
shortcomings, is one of my all-time favourite Clash songs.
I think
part of my disappointment with “Combat Rock” is how much more I enjoy the other
records by the Clash. This one suffers
by comparison, but that doesn’t make it bad.
It just makes it merely good, when I wanted it to be more than good.
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