Post by Fuggle on Sept 19, 2004 21:40:17 GMT -5
The Clash's punk masterpiece
Sunday, September 19, 2004
BY BRADLEY BAMBARGER
Star-Ledger Staff
The burning sense of higher purpose that possessed the Clash seems almost quaint, depressingly enough, at the distance of 25 years. That a rock band could be so idealistic -- that the members, as well as their audience, actually believed they could make a difference in the culture at large -- summons feelings of nostalgia and rue.
This punk rock-fueled brand of romanticism isn't the only aspect of the Clash that can seem so intoxicatingly foreign to contemporary American ears. There is the "psychogeography" of the Clash's late-'70s London, evoked in dizzying fashion by Tom Vague's essay included in the deluxe reissue of the band's watershed album, "London Calling."
The Clash's polyglot urban milieu informs its music not only by virtue of London slang and Left-wing politics but in the far-flung genres the band explores so intuitively on "London Calling." Vocalist/guitarist Joe Strummer, guitarist/vocalist Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon and drummer Topper Headon cast their songs as reggae/ska, lounge jazz and vintage R&B as readily as classic rock' n' roll and anthemic calls to arms. It was hardly the narrow sonic remit that punk has come to symbolize.
"London Calling" also encapsulates, more persuasively than any other Clash album, the band's idiosyncratic, rebel with a cause mystique -- a mix of '50s movie-star iconography, Wild West Americana and J.G. Ballard futurism with Orwellian wariness and liberal, multicultural optimism.
The lavishly produced double-CD-plus-DVD Legacy Edition reissue of "London Calling" only starts with the original 1979 album as remastered in 2000. The second CD debuts 22 tracks from the long-lost "Vanilla Tapes" -- lo-fi demo recordings so rare that they've never even been bootlegged. The DVD includes the 45-minute "Last Testament: The Making of 'London Calling'," as well as impromptu studio footage and a trio of video clips.
Directed by Clash intimate Don Letts, the documentary features evocative contributions by each member of the band (including Strummer, who died of heart failure at age 50 in 2002). It's the video clips, though, that convey the Clash's potency undimmed through the haze of a rock's past quarter-century.
Filmed on a Thames River barge in the night mist, the video for the ever-enthralling apocalyptic march of the "London Calling" title track sees the charisma virtually vibrate off Strummer and company. The sweat-drenched footage for "Train in Vain" (the band in catchy, classicist mode) and "Clampdown" (an archetypal anti-establishment rocker) are ideally indicative of the band in its live-wire prime.
The "Vanilla Tapes" are a boon to hard-core fans, as they not only include grease-pit versions of "London Calling" (tense, claustrophobic), "I'm Not Down" (more rugged) and other album tracks, but also include a re-take on the early single "Remote Control" and four otherwise unrecorded Clash songs.
That "London Calling" so acutely addresses the Clash's environment could have been a double-edged blade. Yet even a song so rooted in Margaret Thatcher's Britain as "The Guns of Brixton" boasts enduring atmosphere. The lyrical pop vignette "Lost in the Supermarket" conjures a modern consumer world in which over-stuffed option anxiety has only grown.
As for the Clash's vaunted politics, Summer puts it in a way nearly unthinkable for a major-label rock band these days: "We were searching in a socialist way toward a future when the world would be a less miserable place. We were groping in the dark ... but we were trying."
Sunday, September 19, 2004
BY BRADLEY BAMBARGER
Star-Ledger Staff
The burning sense of higher purpose that possessed the Clash seems almost quaint, depressingly enough, at the distance of 25 years. That a rock band could be so idealistic -- that the members, as well as their audience, actually believed they could make a difference in the culture at large -- summons feelings of nostalgia and rue.
This punk rock-fueled brand of romanticism isn't the only aspect of the Clash that can seem so intoxicatingly foreign to contemporary American ears. There is the "psychogeography" of the Clash's late-'70s London, evoked in dizzying fashion by Tom Vague's essay included in the deluxe reissue of the band's watershed album, "London Calling."
The Clash's polyglot urban milieu informs its music not only by virtue of London slang and Left-wing politics but in the far-flung genres the band explores so intuitively on "London Calling." Vocalist/guitarist Joe Strummer, guitarist/vocalist Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon and drummer Topper Headon cast their songs as reggae/ska, lounge jazz and vintage R&B as readily as classic rock' n' roll and anthemic calls to arms. It was hardly the narrow sonic remit that punk has come to symbolize.
"London Calling" also encapsulates, more persuasively than any other Clash album, the band's idiosyncratic, rebel with a cause mystique -- a mix of '50s movie-star iconography, Wild West Americana and J.G. Ballard futurism with Orwellian wariness and liberal, multicultural optimism.
The lavishly produced double-CD-plus-DVD Legacy Edition reissue of "London Calling" only starts with the original 1979 album as remastered in 2000. The second CD debuts 22 tracks from the long-lost "Vanilla Tapes" -- lo-fi demo recordings so rare that they've never even been bootlegged. The DVD includes the 45-minute "Last Testament: The Making of 'London Calling'," as well as impromptu studio footage and a trio of video clips.
Directed by Clash intimate Don Letts, the documentary features evocative contributions by each member of the band (including Strummer, who died of heart failure at age 50 in 2002). It's the video clips, though, that convey the Clash's potency undimmed through the haze of a rock's past quarter-century.
Filmed on a Thames River barge in the night mist, the video for the ever-enthralling apocalyptic march of the "London Calling" title track sees the charisma virtually vibrate off Strummer and company. The sweat-drenched footage for "Train in Vain" (the band in catchy, classicist mode) and "Clampdown" (an archetypal anti-establishment rocker) are ideally indicative of the band in its live-wire prime.
The "Vanilla Tapes" are a boon to hard-core fans, as they not only include grease-pit versions of "London Calling" (tense, claustrophobic), "I'm Not Down" (more rugged) and other album tracks, but also include a re-take on the early single "Remote Control" and four otherwise unrecorded Clash songs.
That "London Calling" so acutely addresses the Clash's environment could have been a double-edged blade. Yet even a song so rooted in Margaret Thatcher's Britain as "The Guns of Brixton" boasts enduring atmosphere. The lyrical pop vignette "Lost in the Supermarket" conjures a modern consumer world in which over-stuffed option anxiety has only grown.
As for the Clash's vaunted politics, Summer puts it in a way nearly unthinkable for a major-label rock band these days: "We were searching in a socialist way toward a future when the world would be a less miserable place. We were groping in the dark ... but we were trying."