Fucking Long Innit? The Sandinista Poll

those Ranking demos are lovely to hear, ta Josh

Alfred, you break my heart calling Hitsville UK "meh". It might be partly a novelty, but sign me up for The Clash do Motown any day.

― Jimi Buffett (PBKR),

Too compressed, which doesn't help Ellen Foley's non-singing.

yeah hitsville's weird muddy mix has always made it hard for me to love. 'the card cheat' does a better job with that sound imo

u ppl have no heart, "Hitsville UK" is fab and unique

("The Card Cheat", which I love, has a way louder and more triumphant sound imo)

Hitsville is all about that stiff drumbeat

also extra love for

"when lightning hits small wonder
it's fast rough factory trade"

so good to listen to on a long drive. see also Songs In the Key Of Life and just about every double, triple, etc album.

"The Card Cheat" is an homage to Phil Spector, not Motown, right down to the "Be My Baby" drums, multiple pianos and the wall of saxes playing the same lines.

listened to this on my walk today. "up in heaven" is my favorite clash song of all time

I always thought The Card Cheat was a nod to Springsteen (in his Spectorian mode).

yeah i hear card cheat as spector-via-springsteen, but idk i guess i compare them bc they both have a ton going on in the mix, and i think card cheat pulls off sounding grand and urgent without being too busy, while hitsville has always just sounded like a plodding soupy mess to my ears, with the xylophone and doubled monotone vocals and everything else all taking up space in the middle. when i think of motown, before i even think of specific beats i think of really great mixes with every instrument in just the right place, which i dont get from hitsville

btw those ranking roger demos are fucking great! his rock the casbah remix should have been the b side, crazy that never saw the light of day. (although the bside that happened, "long time jerk", is also one of my fav combat rock outtakes)

listened to this on my walk today. "up in heaven" is my favorite clash song of all time

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson)

Rob Sheffield's too

the general vibe of sandinista is white album as hell but that song specifically is like a post-punk fleetwood mac "the ledge" to me

more like "Think About Me" but yeah

more like "I Know I'm Not Wrong".

I had no idea Tymon Dogg wrote and sang another song with the Clash c. "Combat Rock:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=famxzR7Gyxs

Played and wrote the piano part for "Death is a Star," too, though didn't get writer credit.

Weird, I've never heard or heard of this, either:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_St._Louis_(album)

Also search for "Janie Jones and the lash" then.

Extra weird, that one I know of.

I am more obsessed with this album than I have been with a "classic" album in a long time. I've had rotating songs bouncing in my head for weeks now, currently Rebel Waltz and Something About England. I just got a supposedly near-minty copy of it at the local record store. My preamp is being serviced and probably will be for another month so I have intentionally stopped streaming it so I can listen to the vinyl afresh when I get the preamp back.

It's so fucking long it's really hard to digest, but there is great stuff on here that's as good as any of their other albums and if you paired it down to a single or double it would be amazing. But what to cut?!

Jones is kind of right about his "Arctic stations" joke - if you've got a lot of time to fill, like a long-ass car ride or day-long chore, it's pretty fucking great having this play in the background. I never tire of it in that context. But for active listening, it gets to be a chore in spots, especially towards the end. Adapted from what I have on iTunes/my phone, I'd prefer this double LP:

DISC ONE

Side A:
The Magnificent Seven 5:25
Hitsville U.K. 4:17
Junco Partner 4:49
Ivan Meets G.I. Joe 3:12
The Leader 1:32
Something About England 3:40

Side B:
Rebel Waltz 3:22
Kingston Advice 2:34
Charlie Don't Surf 4:52
Somebody Got Murdered 3:27
One More Time 3:30
The Street Parade 3:25

DISC TWO

Side C:
Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice) 4:48
Up In Heaven (Not Only Here) 4:25
Corner Soul 2:40
Lets Go Crazy 4:20
If Music Could Talk 4:33
The Sound Of Sinners 3:57

Side D:
Police On My Back 3:14
Midnight Log 2:07
The Equaliser 5:45
The Call Up 5:15
Washington Bullets 3:48
Broadway 5:47

and then a bonus 45 of "Lose This Skin"/"Career Opportunities" (the kids remake)

With the rest (mostly dubs), I'd like to hear them together as a separate album - I imagine it being a fine LP for someone to toast over.

I think the full on flow and sprawl (dubs and versions included) is essential to appreciation of the record as intended, that being said the sequencing there is very nice

It's long, but it's only maybe 10 minutes longer than "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below."

It's long, but it's only maybe 10 minutes longer than "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below."

In similar fashion (if I listen to Speakerboxxx then The Love Below), it gets to be a chore for me in the back half. I LOVE that album (or those albums?) but Big Boi's half is pretty tight, maybe the best work he's ever done, while The Love Below is REALLY uneven to me. I want to say if they cut it down to one CD, it would've been a tremendous, stone-cold masterpiece, but it would probably make Big Boi's work less cohesive if you drop in the handful of gems from The Love Below.

I can attest - it really is fucking long.

Best track: Police on My Back
Worst track: Career Opportunities

It's not fucking long enough.

the dubby production ends up flattening out all the stylistic variety, it doesn't really do the album many favours

dubby production ends up making everything dubby and awesome

Yeah, the production sucks. Back in the day, I had the cassette version. It sounded so muddy.

oh i love the way this record sounds

cf. "up in heaven" the greatest song ever made

it's muddy and echoey and weird but in a way that gives it character

The Black Star liner sank at the docks

*White

yeah its weird how the production does flatten everything out into this limited sonic palate, which hurts a lot of the songs but makes it cohere better as an album. i kinda feel like if the individual songs were all better produced it would ironically end up feeling like a weaker and more haphazard collection, in a way.

I have no idea what critics of the sound are talking about, but I have the remaster from the recent (2013) 5 Studio Albums CD box set, which sounds great. (It should be noted that the music is split up the way it would be on LPs, so Sandinista! is a 3CD set and London Calling is a 2CD set.)

I just looked on eBay and the box is now pretty expensive, which is too bad.

The streaming version on Apple sounds clearer than the cassette did. Of course, it could have been my shitty speakers. But, as someone else said, there is a certain remoteness or flatness to the sound. It's kind of like the cover photo: you can tell it's them, but the details are kind of hard to make out.

What's really remarkable about this album is that it was made by the same band that made The Clash three years earlier. It's a transformation on par with that of the Beatles.

Does anyone else feel a bit like this transformation is willed, somewhat forced, when listening to this record? Like they decided they wanted to be the type of band that puts out a triple LP, rather than having 36 songs worth of things to say?

I believe it is true that Strummer wanted to put out a triple album to piss off Columbia.

yeah its weird how the production does flatten everything out into this limited sonic palate, which hurts a lot of the songs but makes it cohere better as an album.

― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Friday, January 21, 2022 2:21 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i agree with this

I do think the Clash did it because they could, but that sort of oneupmanship seemed common in the '80s. "The River" was a double inspired by "London Calling." "Double Nickels on the Dime" was a double because of "Zen Arcade" ("Take that, Huskers!"). Were there more like this? The Clash I know also made a point of pricing it cheap, too, which was also a thing; they charged $14.98, which was about the price of a double (and coincidentally or not I guess a dollar cheaper than "The River"). This was also the era when Tom Petty, who refused to release "Hard Promises" at MCA's requested price, which I think was a dollar per LP increase.

The record doesn't sound like they made it that long for the money, but as a quixotic gesture (and almost to confuse the audience, giving them so much information it challenges interpretation).

The best quote about its length:

Mick Jones said, "I always saw it as a record for people who were, like, on oil rigs. Or Arctic stations. People that weren't able to get to the record shops regularly."

They definitely didn't do it for the money; iirc, they agreed to be paid royalties as if it were a single in order to get the record company to agree to the triple.

yes, exactly

I love the sound on this record fwiw

I think I voted for "Charlie Don't Surf" in this poll (uh, 15 years ago, wow). Would probably pick "Magnificent 7" now. Besides the groove it has some of Joe's best one-liners.

Why a triple album? “I don’t care about all the artistic reasons,” Joe Strummer told Rolling Stone in 1982. “That’s all bullshit. We were having a joke because everyone said we were mad to release London Calling as a double and then Springsteen put out The River as a double. So we thought, ‘Right, Bruce. Suck on this!’”

The only sane response would have been for Bruce to put out Nebraska as a 4 LP box.