When London Calls, You Gotta Accept the Charges
Best. Band. Ever. However, this article strikes me as a load of shite. First off, the indefensible position is put forth that the Clash were not a punk band. Uh oh, somebody get Rancid on the phone. The heresy idea here is that the Clash didn’t sound like the Ramones or the Sex Pistols, and prior to joining the Clash the band members played other types of music. Wha??? Forget the whole punk movement, its tenets, its ethos - you know, the stuff that punk was about. What it all comes down to is that the Clash could actually play their instruments and were interested in other kinds of music. This keeps them out of the punk pantheon, apparently.
It is not a new idea that punk arose, in England at least, from class tensions and unrest amongst disenfranchised youth, blah, blah, blah. However, I couldn’t sort through the author’s new wrinkle on class conflict within seminal British bands, but then I didn’t have a blackboard handy.
March 4th, 2005 at 1:21 pm
Well, let me toss this at ya, while The Clash was obviously a punk band, “London Calling” was not, in the traditional sense, a punk album. Punk influenced, but really more a celebration of all things 1955-1980 rock and roll, with rockabilly, reggae, a few Stones-style rockers, pop, even a bit of disco.
Joe Strummer’s dad was a diplomat, though, which isn’t very punk.
And, as always, if you like the Clash, you have to check out Ireland’s version, the fantastic, unheralded Stiff Little Fingers, who produced what I consider to be the best punk album ever made, “Inflammable Material.”
Listen, if you think the working-class English were having trouble in the 1970s, the Irish had it 10 times worse. If you want to get a real sense of how little fun it was to live in a bombed-out war zone with no jobs, no future and no hope where you spend your days being beaten senseless and thrown in jail for no reason by the British, listen to this disc.