The Clash
"London Calling"
(Epic, 1979)
The Clash
"London Calling"
(Epic, 1979)
|
The fall of 1979 had been a winding-down time for punk, which for college freshmen like me was the only music worth thinking about. But the complex mix of corrosive sociology and sheer force of albums like "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols" and "The Clash" -- or even a bit of blithe timelessness like the Ramones' "Rocket to Russia" -- were by then a bit distant, a bit married to their place and time. This was just a year or two on from 1977, of course, but an age emotionally, particularly for 18-year-olds. I'd worked in a Telegraph Avenue record store in Berkeley until the end of the year, when the chain collapsed. I came back from Christmas vacation on a cold day in early January and wandered into Tower. With a retail pro's eye I immediately spotted stacks of a new Clash album. Never had I been so shocked at the very sight of a record: On the cover was surely one of the most visceral rock photographs ever taken -- Paul Simenon doubled over, legs planted wide apart, ready to smash his bass down on the stage of New York's Palladium. The design and type style was a marvelous spoof of a classic Elvis album and in a startling, dizzying burst of record-company hyperbole, a sticker on the front declared, "20 new songs from the only band that matters." The title track began with a comically animated guitar-and-bass introduction that quickly lost its sense of humor; it was followed by a dizzying song cycle that remains giddy and fractious to this day. "London Calling" was personal and political, loud and soft; it was made up of rockabilly and pop, reggae and ballads, indignation and romance. There was a song about a drug dealer that sounded like "I Want To Hold Your Hand," a macaroni verse that remembered the Spanish Civil War, a heartless gag on Montgomery Clift, essays on the Ten Commandments and the seven deadly sins, ballads about life in the suburbs and a card cheat, and a series of utterly unromantic tales from the unpretty demimonde the Clash was both part of and appalled by. "London Calling" was the first sprawling, extravagant, unquestionably great punk record. It ended with a secret song, "Train in Vain," a shapeless and whining but somehow uplifting tune whose title reference to Robert Johnson only made its intentions murkier. I remember (though perhaps I dreamed it) Casey Kasem talking about the song when it became the most unlikely of presences on "American Top 40": "Next up," Kasem said in his chirpy voice, "a song by a band that some people think"--and here his voice changed as he registered the meaning of the words on the cue card he was reading --"is the best rock 'n' roll band in the world." "That's right, Casey," I said to the radio. "And who else?" ![[Sound file]](ear960617.gif){kind=small} |
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