Top 5 Underheralded, Underappreciated Clash master oeuvres

"Pressure Drop", Black Market Clash



Cover versions are indelibly etched near the top elechons in the Clash musical lexicon ("I Fought The Law", "Police On My Back"); reggae of course features prominently as well (too many to mention); for that matter, "Police and Thieves" is a reggae cover that is often featured among top Clash song lists.  From where I sit however I'd take their rollicking take on the Toots and the Maytals classic any day.  Covers are a tricky business, naturally:  optimally one walks a fine line between roboticallly reproducing the original (why bother) and perverting the original into something uncomfortably unfamiliar, cringeworthy, or both.  The band imbues this classic with just the right measure of infectious abandon without contorting the original beyond recognition.






"Up in Heaven", Corner Soul and Let's Go Crazy, Sandinista



About midway through the sprawling multicultural epic, albeit surely the most polarizing of all Clash albums, lies this one-two-three knockout punch that ranks among the band's most brightly shining moments.  After the merciful fadeout of Lightning Strikes, a catchy four second riff masquerading as a 5 minute funk workout, intones the opening organ of Up in Heaven, one of Mick Jones' criminally overlooked Clash masterpieces.  Where Joe Strummer's ideological fervor often drove the bus through the band's trademark high octane manifestos, sometimes dangerously bordering on the bully pulpit, Jones was always more subtle, more nuanced in his approach to social justice, his signature compositions weaving character portrayals of the everyman struggling to deal with everyday challenges (ie the oft-celebrated "Lost in the Supermarket") rather than polemic bannerwaving.   (Of course, there's always an exception to every rule, witness Strummer's stunningly brilliant "Broadway" on this very album, which easily could have made this list, dripping in pathos as it evokes rain-soaked down and out New York street folks...). In my view nowhere is Jones' essence more evident than in "Up in Heaven", a pleasantly uptempo melody betrayed by a heartwrenching lyrical glimpse into the plight of London's underclass:           



And whatcha gonna do when the darkness surrounds?
You can piss in the lifts which have broken down

You can watch from the debris the last bedroom light
We’re invisible here just past midnight








After the final drums clatter and fade away into that darkness we are startled awake by Strummer's invocation at the outset of Corner Soul.  Loosely based on Enoch Powell's famous River of Blood speech (learn more about it here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivers_of_Blood_speech : newsflash - apparently xenophobia is nothing new!, and certainly not limited to ultraconservatie militias pacing the Arizona border...), musically Corner Soul defies easy music categorization.  Guitar, bass and drum chug away in an understated reggae vibe, but keyboard effects and ethereal choral vocals give the music a hypnotic depth.  But Strummer's  vocals are the centerpiece of this gem, conjuring up the sceptre of impending violence without rooting it in the historical grounding of any particular set of facts.  Simply riveting, spinetingling listening.







The third track in this sequence isn't the slightest bit opaque, nuanced, or subtle:  it's the Clash at their effervescent, pedal to the metal, celebratory best.  "Let's Go Crazy" is the "Party Rock Anthem" of the Clash anthology if you will - an unbridled celebration of Carnival's ebulllience, with a few touches of Strummer's wryly cynical views of law enforcement, the drug trade, and the like thrown in for comic relief.  The band dabbled in just about every musical genre imaginable on those three discs, sometimes more effectively than others for sure, and this calypso barnburner replete with steel drums, police whistles and streetcorner preachers positively captures the exuberance of this cultural phenomenon. 


  (i LOVE this viewer-created video!)




"Sean Flynn", Combat Rock



"You Know He Heard The Drums Of War."

Such is the haunting refrain that infuses this sinewy, softspoken track  hidden deep on side two of Combat Rock, perhaps the second most polarizing of all Clash releases.  While the karaoke-friendly power chords of "Should I Stay or Should I Go" and the playful blues bar riffs of "Rock the Casbah" (drummer Topper Headon's finest moment?) remain permanently ingrained in top 40 rotation to this day, having rocketed the band's final release to commercial superstardom, Sean Flynn, along with the more widely acclaimed Straight to Hell and Ghetto Defendant, much more effectively capture the band's restless, experimental essence at the sunset of its glory.  No verse, no chorus, no real structure at all; just Jones' undulating, understated riffs punctuated by darting saxaphones and slowly galloping Asianesque percussion, with Strummer intoning with typical passion about the plight of the actor-turned-photojournalist son of the dashing Errol Flynn.  It doesn't characterize his disappearance and presumed tortured death at the hands of Khmer Rouge in anything resembling any sort of linear cohesion so much as summon his spirit cosmically.  It's virtually unfathomble that it was produced by the same quartet that just a few years before was blurting out hyperkinetic, three chord, twominute blasts about rude boys, hateful record company execs,  and condoms, but such was the evolution of the greatest band that ever mattered.  

 --Rhythm Slayer

Big Audio Dynamite – This is Big Audio Dynamite Legacy Edition

“It was still punk rock.”

That’s the way Don Letts, the dreadlocked documentary film-maker described his time with Mick Jones in the post-Clash ensemble, Big Audio Dynamite.

And it was punk.  Maybe not punk in the storm-the-Hammersmith Palais- variety of early Clash, but punk in and of itself.  If you define punk as going against the grain, striking out with rebel vision against the status quo, breaking new ground, being an outsider to the common theme, then there’s no doubt This is Big Audio Dynamite, was punk.  And not just punk, but one of rock’s great lost albums.

After getting kicked out of the Clash for being “ideologically unsound” Jones withdrew to West London and regrouped.  Letts pulled him out of his shell and the work on BAD began.  While Strummer put together an almost-Clash to cut the crap, Jones set about actually making some ground-breaking music.  Sampling was unheard of then, and armed with one of the first Akai sampling machines, Letts watched endless hours of television and movies, pillaging the perfect samples. 

Jones, meanwhile, set out to write the songs, building upon the more melodic streak he’d already established with The Clash.  Jones combined nacent hip hop, techno, reggae, dub, rock, and, yes, punk rock into a cleverly crafted amalgamation of sounds, effects, and melodies. 

And the album worked.  While Strummer was floundering and the Clash sinking without a wimper, Big Audio Dynamite became the rage.  Their sound was modern and fresh and unlike anything else out there.  “The Bottom Line,” the first single, was a smart and snappy reworking of Grandmaster and Melle Mel’s “White Lines (Don’t Do It)” with big, punky guitars, punchy beats and a chorus that buried itself into your head.  “E=Mc2” is a masterwork of pop, punch, and intelligence, complete with Clash-style vocal harmonies.   “Sony” is a tongue-in-cheek, stick it to the corporate boss declaration, showing that Jones hadn’t lost any of his punk sensibilities.   While “Stone Thames” showed Jones still had his finger on the social pulse, being one of the first songs written about the then-new AIDS epidemic.

Time has aged the album well.  The production holds up, the ideas still sound fresh, the beats still propulsive.  Add to that an entire second disc of remixes, extended versions, dub cuts, alternate versions, and non-album cuts, and this Legacy Edition is essential. 

--Racer


Buy here: This Is Big Audio Dynamite (2 CD Legacy Edition)