The Clash: Classic or Dud

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

That's a damn fine Big Three, but the first Clash album still sounds like balls-out Punk Rock to me.

Fer Ark OTM.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Rock the Fucking Casbah - that one. DESTROY

"Give 'em Enough Rope" tho, apart from Safe European Home, is a load shit.

"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

I missed
'I fought The Law' from my shitty list. You out here must know what I mean? Fucking annoying overprived clash types

"Fucking annoying overprived clash types" - you're writing this from a Zapatista training camp, right?

^ do not understand? Is that a political statement? To change the world.

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.

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

Soukesian
I quite like the Clash
Just get a bit annnoyed about their canonical status. Apologies.Each to their own

(not that lipstick traces is exactly "the beginning" of the discourse surrounding punk, but yougetme)

The Big Three: Metal Box, Black Market Clash, Pink Flag

The Big Three: Metal Box, Black Market Clash Cut, Pink Flag

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

and the Boys.
top boys

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

^this

dylan was a big faker too but he either faked it so well or was so talented that it didn't matter.

next thing you'll tell me sid's name wasn't really vicious

but big ups for the johnny moped love

I'm a Hard Loving Mad ,Ted

Fer - re exasperation with 'canonical status', I totally understand. Actually feel that way about Wire myself, but let's not get into THAT.

x post
too true. Seriously

but listening to an entire album by them is fucking tiring.

-- Edward III

london calling??

especially london calling. by side 3 it's just fatiguing. woo hoo, stick around for "the card cheat"! the earnestness gets wearying, and frankly it's a mystery how they can make a 3:30 song feel like it's dragging on forever.

it's weird cause I'm not a clash hater, it's just that I can only take them in small doses.

its a mystery to me how you can feel like that (about LC)! the first half is a lot stronger, definitely (like, insanely, possibly unprecedentedly strong) but the 2nd half is still pretty great- its always been one of my favorite albums, & definitely my favorite clash album: there isn't the same degree of sameness as the first two or the schizophrenia of sandanista; maybe that's what you mean by 'earnestness' - they were definitely going for a beatles-like masterwork with this one, lots of mood & stylistic variance centered around seriously catchy songs.

so as far as the title track is conerned: are most of the haters here old-school punk fans who think LC was hypocritical, in that sense?