Ooh Ooh Ooh, Complete CLASH POLL (that's a laugh) - ILX Artist Poll #41 (?) - Voting Ends July 9th at Midnight (EST)

http://thisiheard.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-clash-train-in-vain-1979.html

I believe the US CD version came out first, to alacrity over here, and a vague promise was made by CBS/Sony that they would do the right thing at some point..

My kids got into a Jam vs Clash argument, which seemed like a fair fight to me. I looked to see if ILM had actually done this one, but was disappointed with the level of debate on the thread. it's official The Jam are 10 times better than The Clash

tipsy otm -- maybe 'noisy' isn't the right word, but the clash just used sound in such an in-your-face and confrontational way, more like public enemy than the damned. those early singles have so much going on in them, they're kind of dizzying.

Yeah one thing that always struck me about Clash records was how weirdly the songs were sometimes mixed, things like backing vocals being unexpectedly loud or little guitar parts jumping out of the mix. It's obviously prominent on Sandinista! but it was right there from the beginning I think.

Tipsy otm about the musicality too - I mean what genre is 'London Calling' as a song? It's got a reggae-ish arrangement but the rhythm is very much rock.

All over London Calling too - see eg the number of hooks that burst out of Rudie Can't Fail

Guy in Tim Hortons (50-ish, maybe a bit younger) wearing a London Calling T-shirt this morning.

Not to take anything away from the Clash--and I don't expect agreement on their poll thread--but I think there were noisier and wilder punk bands on things like the Streets compilation. I understand what Tipsy means by noisy-in-a-conventional-way, but for me, Slaughter & the Dogs' "Cranked Up Really High" is a purer distillation of that moment. The Sex Pistols, too, on "Anarchy" and "Holidays in the Sun." That doesn't make them inherently better or worse. Didn't critics--maybe because of their adeptness with reggae--tend to write about the Clash as being more musicianly than other punk bands at the time?

Yeah, was it Lester Bangs who said something early on about wanting them to slow down a little and explore their grooves? But the thing there is, they were all obviously decent players but (maybe Topper aside) they didn't start with serious chops the way that, e.g., the Police did. You can hear them learning things as they go. Paul says he really didn't know how to play his instrument until London Calling.

Paul doesn't play his instrument on the first album

(or lots of Sandinista, but he could by then)

Townshend's brief stint as their drummer didn't pan out.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lg6rbtIqvq1qb6i1fo1_1280.jpg

xpost

That's an exaggeration, isn't it? I know Mick wrote the parts early on and I know Paul didn't play on "Magnificent Seven," but I think it's him on most of the recordings.

He didn't play on "Magnificent"!?

They had some of Ian Dury's guys in aiui, who then claimed to have written it. Certainly it's very slick.

the "bit fucking long, innit?" at 4:59 makes me lol

Norman Watt-Roy (bass player): "There was Topper, me, Micky (Gallagher) and Mick (...) Jonesy says 'We need something really funky 'cos Joe says he wants to do a rap.' So we started that riff and looped it, and Joe wrote the words there and then. Totally spontaneous, a couple of hours and it was in the can."

C. Sandanista, wasn't the band in and out of the studio at all hours in all sorts of groupings and pairings? It's like the making of Exile on Main Street. But I think Paul meant that he couldn't play his instrument well. My fave Clash story may be the tale of Joe writing in the chalkboard of the studio two columns, one that said "musicians" and other that said "not musicians" (or something like that). Mick and Topper were under the first column, Paul and Joe under the second.

Was always struck by how much more hi-fi "I Fought The Law" is compared to anything else in that early salvo of recording.

I think it was the first thing they recorded with Bill Price (along with the rest of the Cost of Living EP).

I don't think they ever had time to figure out their musicality either. A lot of their music is hard to say what it is beyond the first two albums, because they were absorbing so much and spitting it back out so quickly.

this is very well said, and kind of sums up what i love about the clash -- there's no other band like them, and not because of the 'last gang in town' mythology stuff, but because no one else SOUNDS like them.

Despite nearly two decades of the Clash being my default answer to "what's your favourite band," I had never actually listened to the UK debut in sequence until this poll came up. Its impossible for me to assess it on its own terms, I find; I miss "I Fought The Law," "White Man In Hammersmith Palais," etc too much and the four songs that were cut are no substitute (even "1977" > "Deny," "Cheat," etc). Never realized that the "White Riot" that's on here is a different version than what made the US cut, though again I prefer the latter.

Will say that, as far as opening tracks go, "Janie Jones" > "Clash City Rockers," though I'm so used to hearing JJ follow "I Fought the Law" that even that feels weird.

Paul literally couldn't play at all when he joined the band, Mick put coloured stickers on the frets as cues for him to remember lines when they started, and Mick played the bass on the first album

on Sandinista!, Paul was off making The Fabulous Stains for a large part of the sessions - I think Mick and Topper both play some bass in addition to Watt-Roy (and eventually Paul), and Micky Gallagher stuck around for most of the recording and some touring.

I knew he couldn't play at the start and Mick taught him and all that, but I've never heard he didn't play on the first album. Not that I wouldn't believe it, but I don't see anything online that suggests that. There's interviews with him about the Polydor demos that at least make it sound like he was playing on them.

dunno if this is true but the wiki entry for "Magnificent Seven" sez:
The song was recorded in April 1980 at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, built around a bass loop played by Norman Watt-Roy of the Blockheads.

Bass (song?) does sound a bit like "Reasons to be Cheerful" ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcjh1a9Yoao

I recently put in a shift with the Libertines' first album. It certainly makes hearing the first two Clash albums a strange experience - if you could meet your friends' parents as young people it might be a bit like this.

My fave Clash discovery (or realization) was when my teacher and I were going through London Calling track by track. OK, actually, two discoveries. One, Lost in the Supermarket is in open E, a pretty weird tuning or a rock song. And two. The Card Cheat is a total Phil Spector pastiche, with wall of horns, maybe multiple pianos, Be My Baby beat the whole deal. It's been there the whole time, but it never clicked as such.

Haha, so it is!

Scorsese should use it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khH7L786w6Q

My word.

And they lifted that Travis Bickle speech for "Red Angel Dragnet"

Re: Card Cheat. I remember Mick talking about how they just doubled everything on the track to get that sound, which felt very Spector-ish to me.

I had forgotten "Somebody Got Murdered" was written for Scarface.

but I've never heard he didn't play on the first album. Not that I wouldn't believe it,

I think I'm going off a memory of reading Marcus Gray in the 90s tbh, or BAD-era interviews so possibly myth-building by Mick

Okay 15 ballots in with 3 days to go. If people need extra time I can extend the deadline if I have to.

open E, a pretty weird tuning or a rock song

Not on rock songs that have a slide guitar part. It's actually fairly standard.

Super Black Market Clash is a kick, finding out that on the b-sides these guys got down with goofy songs like "1-2 Crush On You" and "Groovy Times"

I have a first cull done, and will send my ballot tomorrow.

No rush, I was just giving a heads up.

xpost But for non-slide guitar rock songs? Pretty unusual. Clash ain't the Allman Bros. Can you think of any other rock song in open E, that's not tuned that way for slide?

Be My Baby beat the whole deal

"White Riot" is a variation on the "You Can't Hurry Love" beat that quickly got picked up and reused by countless bands...

I know that comment is barely related, just something I noticed.

Norman Watt-Roy on "Magnificent Seven" makes sense, had always wondered about that. Turns out he also played one of yr funkier bass lines on a Nick Lowe track, "Nutted by Reality."

Um, I don't hear the "You Can't Hurry Love" connection in "White Riot."

It's not a direct lift or anything, it's in the bounce of the beat.

I think I buy the noisier thing, at least in terms of pure guitar punch. The key is to listen to punk chronologically (which I've happened to be doing the past couple years for this: http://twitter.com/punkchronology).

The Clash's influence might be one of those things that was so immediate and pervasive that it's difficult to hear now, especially when it comes to seemingly basic stuff like singing about class oppression, or playing distorted guitar on the reggae offbeats. There was definitely a lot of Jamaican influence in rock before the Clash, but nothing like "Police and Thieves," which really launched a genre.

Were they the first to punkify a known reggae song?

On record, for sure.

Or even something as basic as codifying the Ramones as THE punk template. Legs McNeil always blamed the Clash for ruining the Ramones moment, but listening backward, I hear the Clash extending it into what the Sex Pistols started, which really was a different parallel musically, bringing that sound into a social movement the Ramones couldn't have managed.

Yeah, it is interesting how the Clash were pretty much the first social punk band, vs. the glut of anti-social punks.

Voted!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_E_tuning

"... one of the most familiar examples of Open E tuning is the beginning guitar part on the song "Jumpin' Jack Flash" by The Rolling Stones as well as their distinctly earthy blues song "Prodigal Son" from the Beggars Banquet album, originally by Robert Wilkins. This tuning is also used in Guns N' Roses' "It's So Easy," The Black Crowes' "She Talks to Angels", Glen Hansard's "Say It To Me Now", Joe Walsh's "Rocky Mountain Way", Billy F. Gibbons in "Just Got Paid", and many others. Open E tuning also lends itself to easy barre-chording as heard in some of these songs."

Who knows why it's written in open E? But it's not that odd of a thing to do. When I regularly played, I would write shit in bizarre tunings just because I could.

If either Joe or Mick spent any time learning by listening to Stones records (which I'd have to think they did), they probably fucked around with a lot of open tunings.

^^Fuck yeah they did. Back when Mojo did their Top 50 Stones tracks survey, Mick Jones shared in his entry that back in the mid-70s he used to hang out outside the gates of Jagger's place in London, and one time he saw Jagger come to the window and wave a spoon at him.