― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Monday, 29 September 2003 22:22 (twenty years ago) link
― Francis Watlington (Francis Watlington), Tuesday, 30 September 2003 03:09 (twenty years ago) link
Yeah, this = true, but at the same time, if you think a band sucks (like the clash, who i still think are totally dud) and there are a load of shit bands who copy them, then you can't help but hate them all the more!
(gier - the buzzcocks and the stranglers wrote better tunes than the clash or the pistols, as you must surely know!)
NB if you are near a branch of hmv, you can get the ruts' "the crack" c/w loads of bonus cuts for 4.99
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 30 September 2003 22:00 (twenty years ago) link
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 30 September 2003 22:26 (twenty years ago) link
― Ben Dot, Tuesday, 30 September 2003 23:58 (twenty years ago) link
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Wednesday, 1 October 2003 13:24 (twenty years ago) link
― Dadaismus (Dada), Wednesday, 1 October 2003 13:26 (twenty years ago) link
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 1 October 2003 13:35 (twenty years ago) link
― .adam (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 11 January 2005 22:16 (nineteen years ago) link
― Jazzbo (jmcgaw), Tuesday, 11 January 2005 22:47 (nineteen years ago) link
― Keith C (lync0), Friday, 20 January 2006 04:03 (eighteen years ago) link
i love the way strummer's voice sounds during 'train in vain' - what a great song.
― 6335, Friday, 20 January 2006 05:21 (eighteen years ago) link
perhaps you were'nt around in the late 70s, but the political situation was very different then. To ally yourself with black music was to be against the rise of the far right, who were on the march in London. Nobody disses the Slits or the Ruts for incorporating a lot of reggae in their sound. UK punk was forged in an alliance of outsider white music and outsider black music (reggae not soul/disco).I'm all for re-evaluating sacred cows, but get the context right, and you'll never convince me not to love the clash..
― dr x o'skeleton, Monday, 23 January 2006 11:37 (eighteen years ago) link
The Clash are classic.
― Gukbe (lokar), Monday, 23 January 2006 12:33 (eighteen years ago) link
Of course the Clash were keenly aware that their fetischization of Reggae music was problematic - thus "White Man (In Hammersmith Palais)", "Safe European Home" and the tongue-in-cheek "White Riot" (well, I've always hoped that it was tongue-in-cheek, because taken straight-faced it is one of the dumbest songs ever written.)
― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Monday, 23 January 2006 13:34 (eighteen years ago) link
Train in Vain and Lover's Rock are soul, Lost in the Supermarket is disco, and that's before Sandanista! and Combat Rock...
"White Riot" is a longing for white solidarity with black insurrection, which might be dumb as a newspaper editorial or thesis paper, when it comes to a riot, but was incredibly smart on a gut, emotional, rock&roll level. I still would have told the Clash to put down the bricks and organize, but it's not like they did much rioting after Notting Hill.
― Pete Scholtes (Pete Scholtes), Monday, 23 January 2006 22:16 (eighteen years ago) link
Ultimately, y'all heard them at an impressionable age, they had the right attitude and political agenda, and you are smoking crack if you don't think their reputation has been overblown a bit over the years. Not a dud per se, just an average band that somehow grew into a legend without the songs to really justify it. Sorry.....
― anne of seven crackers, Tuesday, 24 January 2006 07:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 08:08 (eighteen years ago) link
― stockholm cindy (winter version) (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 08:09 (eighteen years ago) link
― anne of seven crackers, Tuesday, 24 January 2006 08:16 (eighteen years ago) link
White riot, I wanna riotWhite riot, a riot of my ownWhite riot, I wanna riotWhite riot, a riot of my ownBlack man gotta lot a problemsBut they don't mind throwing a brickWhite people go to schoolWhere they teach you how to be thick
[Emphasis added.]
How is this a "longing for solidarity" rather than simple envy?
Clash: Dud. Sorry.
― xero (xero), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 08:20 (eighteen years ago) link
Even if it were pure envy, it would be brilliant. How many songs are about something you want, whether or not you should have it? It's the exact opposite of the "being down" nonsense at the top. The song says, in effect, "I'm not black. I have my own struggle. But I wish I could lash out like that. I identify with that feeling."
Did any whites come close to being this honest in the universalist '50s or '60s? Did Dylan ever mention being white at all? Imagine Elvis putting images from the '68 Memphis sanitation workers strike that broke into riots on a record sleeve, and singing about how black men marching on Beale Street might be something a white truck driver should emulate, and you begin to understand the impact this song had for punks at the time.
I only came to deeply love the Clash in '88, at a cool distance from all that (and when I was 18), so I'm at least objective enough to hear that Strummer is singing in key, whatever else you don't like about his voice or delivery...
― Pete Scholtes (Pete Scholtes), Thursday, 26 January 2006 04:55 (eighteen years ago) link
― Erick Dampier is better than Shaq (miloaukerman), Thursday, 26 January 2006 05:20 (eighteen years ago) link
― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Thursday, 26 January 2006 05:27 (eighteen years ago) link
like everyone really.
― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Thursday, 26 January 2006 05:28 (eighteen years ago) link
it is a great song, but that's not strummer.
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 26 January 2006 05:42 (eighteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 26 January 2006 05:52 (eighteen years ago) link
I had a long post here, but on review this is the most important thing:
Pash used to sign posts with "xoxo"?!!
― roxymuzak, Saturday, 19 April 2008 18:03 (sixteen years ago) link
Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and the Damned.The Big Three
The Clash always were those annoying student union types.Posturing and homourless Mick Jones had a way superior voice compared to Strummer's bark.
Overrated and embarrasing
― Fer Ark, Thursday, 31 July 2008 18:46 (fifteen years ago) link
That's a damn fine Big Three, but the first Clash album still sounds like balls-out Punk Rock to me.
― Soukesian, Thursday, 31 July 2008 18:50 (fifteen years ago) link
Fer Ark OTM.
― Bimble, Thursday, 31 July 2008 19:08 (fifteen years ago) link
oddly enough these guys are somehow classic AND dud. I love stuff like "white man in hammersmith palais" and "this is radio clash". hell, I even liked rude boy.
but listening to an entire album by them is fucking tiring.
― Edward III, Thursday, 31 July 2008 19:17 (fifteen years ago) link
wikipedia rude boy lulz
In a rare interview, Ray Gange subsequently confessed that much of his dialogue contained thoughts and ideas that he felt silly voicing. Therefore the pivotal scene when Gange's girlfriend leaves him after he tells her: "Don't call me love, I don't believe in it," should not interpreted to mean that the actual Ray Gange ever lost his faith in love or romance, a fact which should offer massive reassurance to women everywhere.
― Edward III, Thursday, 31 July 2008 19:18 (fifteen years ago) link
I can't tell if the "Strummer can't sing!" posts are serious or not. I mean, OMG WTF that Albert Ayler sure hit a lot of wrong notes! And that Thelonious Monk, his chords are just incorrect!
Anyway, classic. Given their actual origins/upbringings, the whole "student union types" thing applies to them about as accurately as it does to Lynyrd Skynyrd.
― Standing In The Shadows Of Bob, Thursday, 31 July 2008 19:28 (fifteen years ago) link
Because on the first records the sound so terribly thin (so weak in comparison with say The Pistols)
Yeh, maybe the first album could do with a "Raw Power" style remastering but the songs still stand up. For me, 'Deny' captures the sound of hopelessness and nilhism more than anything the Pistols did.
― Discordian, Thursday, 31 July 2008 19:29 (fifteen years ago) link
Tommy Gun safe Euro home Complete control White man.... garageland
classics
It's the reverence that does my head in.
the Ramones meant way more to me. As a Yankophile, that shouldn't be a surprise.
I hate shit Clash with a vengeance- the stuff that' made' them - 'Should I stay...' and that other shitter
― Fer Ark, Thursday, 31 July 2008 19:32 (fifteen years ago) link
Rock the Fucking Casbah - that one. DESTROY
― Fer Ark, Thursday, 31 July 2008 19:34 (fifteen years ago) link
"Give 'em Enough Rope" tho, apart from Safe European Home, is a load shit.
― Discordian, Thursday, 31 July 2008 19:34 (fifteen years ago) link
"of"
"this is radio clash" is one of my favorite videos ever. I grew up outside of nyc in the 70s/80s, and it captures in shorthand something essential about the feel of those times. a gritty vibrancy coupled with hopeless paranoia. yeah, they were posturing twats but all is forgiven in moments like these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-t52zc8Ex4
― Edward III, Thursday, 31 July 2008 19:46 (fifteen years ago) link
I missed 'I fought The Law' from my shitty list. You out here must know what I mean? Fucking annoying overprived clash types
― Fer Ark, Thursday, 31 July 2008 19:54 (fifteen years ago) link
"Fucking annoying overprived clash types" - you're writing this from a Zapatista training camp, right?
― Soukesian, Thursday, 31 July 2008 19:58 (fifteen years ago) link
^ do not understand? Is that a political statement? To change the world.
― Fer Ark, Thursday, 31 July 2008 20:00 (fifteen years ago) link
wasn't this kind of thing understood about the clash from the beginning? even in lipstick traces greil marcus calls the clash "the Yes to the pistols' impenetrable No" or some such, which is a polite way of saying what you're saying.
― goole, Thursday, 31 July 2008 20:05 (fifteen years ago) link
i think it's possible to understand the clash as sentimentalists, pretenders, counter-cultural dickriders, etc, and still want to bump them all the time. in their compromised way they were still very much the real thing, maybe even moreso
― goole, Thursday, 31 July 2008 20:07 (fifteen years ago) link
Soukesian I quite like the Clash Just get a bit annnoyed about their canonical status. Apologies.Each to their own
― Fer Ark, Thursday, 31 July 2008 20:07 (fifteen years ago) link
(not that lipstick traces is exactly "the beginning" of the discourse surrounding punk, but yougetme)
― goole, Thursday, 31 July 2008 20:08 (fifteen years ago) link
The Big Three: Metal Box, Black Market Clash, Pink Flag
― bendy, Thursday, 31 July 2008 20:14 (fifteen years ago) link
The Big Three: Metal Box, Black Market Clash Cut, Pink Flag
― Edward III, Thursday, 31 July 2008 20:18 (fifteen years ago) link
If you're gonna start listing shit like Wire
Eddie and the Hot Rods Eater Johnny Moped Adverts Prefects Suburban Studs Lurkers ATV
WIRE WERE FUCKING ACE. Beyond those three
― Fer Ark, Thursday, 31 July 2008 20:19 (fifteen years ago) link