The Clash: Classic or Dud

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I think I'd be fine with that, actually.

See, that sounds cool.

All those digs at the Clash: venomous hogwash. SCORIA. ALL OF IT!!!!!! TAKE IT BACK, SUCKAZ!

I love them so much,
always did and always will,
fun and cool and smart

I do prefer "London Calling", but their debut is also nice enough due to its great melodies and choruses.

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

i love the way strummer's voice sounds during 'train in vain' - what a great song.

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..

The Clash are classic.

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.)

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.

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.....

White riot, I wanna riot
White riot, a riot of my own
White riot, I wanna riot
White riot, a riot of my own
Black man gotta lot a problems
But they don't mind throwing a brick
White people go to school
Where they teach you how to be thick

[Emphasis added.]

How is this a "longing for solidarity" rather than simple envy?

Clash: Dud. Sorry.

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...

like everyone really.

it is a great song, but that's not strummer.

I had a long post here, but on review this is the most important thing:

Pash used to sign posts with "xoxo"?!!

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

https://artsfuse.org/117329/fuse-book-review-stealing-all-transmissions-how-the-clash-conquered-america/

Thanks---btw did I mention my Voice coverage of The Sandinista! Project, archived here w link to more TSP comments on my Nashville Scene ballot: https://myvil.blogspot.com/2016/06/clash-stash-actually-cuts-crap.html
Also, did yall see this?

The new Joe Strummer boxset, Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years, will be released on September 16th, 2022, as part of the celebrations honouring Joe’s 70th birthday year. The first-ever comprehensive collection highlighting Joe’s work with his post-Clash band, The Mescaleros, the collection includes remastered editions of all three of the band’s studio albums, plus 15 rare and unreleased tracks spanning the first demos Joe wrote for the Mescaleros, and outtakes of several tracks of Joe’s final recordings with the band...

Cool.

That book starts off talking about this, of course:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyuGLHnZhOI

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

toss up whether to put it here or on the kevin ayers thread.

Wow, guess I have to click to see.

Viz. Costello thing: yes! That Spanish This Year Model is super great. You also get to hear how No Action and I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea were recorded basically as one track. I was fearful of that project but it's so good. Now if we could only get the real Rat Patrol (which I know we won't).