London Calling (Original Recording Reissued, Original Recording Remastered)

by

The Clash

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This is one of the few rock albums ever released that is almost impossible to over praise. One can heap on the superlatives, pile on a few more, and still have room for even more laurels. It is probably by any standard one of the five greatest albums released in the rock era, unquestionably the greatest album released by a band with its roots in punk, the greatest explicitly political album ever released by someone who was not Bob Dylan, and one of those rare albums that doesn't seem to age at all. There isn't a weak cut on the album. In fact, the songs are not merely good but great.

Although The Clash started off as a punk band, they were never adequately defined by that phenomenon. Although rooted in the attitudes and political sympathies of the punk movement (and above all else, English Punk, as opposed to the earlier American Punk, was highly political; originator Malcolm McLaren was deeply influenced by Guy Debord and the Situationist International, and included many political ideas in promoting the Sex Pistols and his punk fashions), The Clash quickly outgrew the punk aesthetic. While most of the original punks were merely two-chords-and-a-cloud-of-dust bands, the Clash almost immediately began effortlessly and seamlessly assimilating a host of musical influenced. They were the first rock band, for instance, to use reggae rhythms and not make them sound like a gimmick (compare The Clash's extraordinary "The Guns of Brixton" with Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Maker," which while good sounds a bit like a novelty song, while The Clash sound like they ripped the song off some Jamaicans). The songs are remarkably sophisticated and polished, even when they sound casually. For instance, check out the almost haphazard way "Jimmy Jazz" starts, as if the band can't decide whether to allow the opening riff develop into a full fledged song. Even when it gets fully underway, there is an effortless looseness to the song that persists throughout the impeccably orchestrated song. It is a masterpiece of nonchalant virtuosity.

Most of the songs are so brilliantly original to seem almost impossible. It isn't just that the songs are original; nothing else even remotely like many of them had ever been done before. Where is the predecessor of "Hateful"? Who cooked up "Lost in the Supermarket," with its amazing conglomeration of political and social ideas? Before hearing "The Right Profile," could anyone have imagined it possible to write a classic about Montgomery Cliff's car wreck? Even songs that remind one vaguely of previous songs manage to sound underivative. For instance, there is more than a little Phil Spector's wall of sound in "The Card Cheat," but where do those horns come from?

A mark of the genius of this album can be seen in the fact that although it is one of the great leftist albums of all time, the most reactionary rock fan could still love every song. It is unquestionably great political rock, but more than that it is just flat out awesome rock. It is almost as if The Clash recreated on this album all the rebelliousness contained in the first rockers of the 1950s.

These days, when every other album seems to be getting special expanded versions, this one truly could benefit from such treatment. The liner notes on the current U.S. edition are nonexistent. Hopefully this will be corrected at some point in the relatively near future.

This isn't a review of the Clash's "London Calling" album, which for all purposes is one of, if not the, greatest albums of all tie. This is a critique of this package of the album.

The record itself is amazong, though it is the exact the same as the record that has been out on C.D. for the past five years.

But the extras are a bit of a sham. The widely bootlegged "Vanilla Tapes" were actually better in their bootleg quality. Here the sound is muddled, which wouldn't be a bad thing if you could actually hear it all, but since there has been absolutley no effort made to fix the sound, it just reeks of laziness, like someone at Epic Records decided to drain more cash from Clash fans since the only surefire way to sell records anymore is re-releasing classic albums to people who all ready own them.

The DVD is made up of things that are all ready availble on the far superior "Westway to the World", except this time again it feels like a patchwork. The editing is choppy, and it looks, feels, and probably is just a way to jack the price up another five to ten bucks.

The reason for the re-releasing, and most of this type of stuff(you hear me Weezer) is to make money. There is something wrong about this that I can't even explain it in words. This package feels like something Joe Strummer would have been against.

If you are a Clash fan then you no doubt disagree with me, and that's cool. All of this is subjective. And if you don't own "London Calling", then by all means get it as quickly as you can. But not this version. Get the single C.D. version.