Anyway, give it a listen at let me know what you think.
Download the latest The Unblinking Ear Podcast
Showing posts with label The Clash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Clash. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
The Unblinking Ear Podcast: Aaaaaand, we're back
Yes, after a short hiatus, the Unblinking Ear Podcast is back. Aside from a much needed facelift on the blog itself (hey's it's 2011!), there are a few minor changes to the podcast as well. First and foremost, I won't be doing the podcast weekly anymore. I'm going aim for twice a month. To make up up for the decreased frequency, the podcasts are going to be a bit longer as well. I think it's going to work out well. I already have a bunch of songs picked for the next podcast. More time and more care are probably a good thing.
Anyway, give it a listen at let me know what you think.
Anyway, give it a listen at let me know what you think.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Sandinista! Scrutinized
A few weeks ago, I caught Julien Temple's posthumous Joe Strummer documentary, The Future Is Unwritten. While it did little to discourage the Clash's status as one of the most deified bands in rock history, the film commendably contained a lot less sycophantic hero worship than you might assume. Strummer actually comes off like a bit of a jerk at times. Most shockingly, it also brought to light an unreleased post-Mick Jones Clash track that isn't completely awful. Maybe the pre-Bernie Rhoades mix of Cut the Crap isn't all that bad. In any case, seeing the doc sent me into one of my periodic immersions into listening to a hell of a lot of the Clash. While The Clash and London Calling are universally (and justifiably) lauded as the band's finest moments, the album that I continually return to, perhaps only to try and make some sense of it, is Sandinista!A two and a half hour long triple album, Sandinista! is a fascinating mess of a record. Recorded in fits and starts throughout 1980 when the band was riding high due to the critical and (moderate) commercial success of London Calling, the songs of Sandinista! are the product of a period when the Clash were both extremely prolific in their songwriting and seemed to be content with making any idea that came to them into a track for their forthcoming album. Genres were hopped and blended. Some songs, including lyrics, were made up on the spot. An unencumbered muse isn't a misguided or invalid approach to making records but instead of jettisoning any ideas that weren't working they simply decided to include everything they had recorded. And then some. If you believe the accounts of Marcus Grey's Last Gang in Town, the band made Sandinista! a triple LP in order to aggravate their record label.
In 1979, the Clash's self-titled debut was released in the US with a reshuffled track order and a bonus 7 inch single of two songs from the recent Cost of Living EP. When finishing up London Calling, the band asked their label if they could include another bonus record with their forthcoming album, to which the label agreed. The band didn't tell their label that the bonus disk would be a 12 inch, play at 33 1/3 and contain 9 songs, which is how the Clash managed to sell London Calling for the cost of a single LP. CBS Records was not pleased. A year later, the band had more than enough material for a double album, but rather than edit it down they had decided to pad it out to a triple, an act that seemed designed to further irritate their label and see how far they could push their contract's "artistic freedom" clause.
Suffice to say, they probably would have been better off editing than expanding. The desire to have enough material for a triple LP resulted in the inclusion of throwaways like the backwards "Mensforth Hill," Timon Dogg's "Lose This Skin," the kiddie remake of "Career Opportunities" and a whole bunch of dub versions on Side 6. Even without the intentional padding, a number of the Clash's original songs were sub par and sometimes redundant of some of the album's stronger tracks. After "The Magnificent Seven," how could "Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice) seem anything but inferior? The result was a collection that's about 1/3 terrific, 1/3 decent to good and 1/3 disposable.
Riding the good will of London Calling, US critics gave Sandinista! overwhelming positive notices including a 5 star review in Rolling Stone and the top spot in the year end Pazz and Jop poll. It's also very likely that many of these stateside reviewers still considered grand, ambitious, artistic statements ala Sgt Pepper to be the vanguard. In the UK, where the short sharp shock of punk was still relatively fresh, the reviews were much chillier.
It admittedly takes a while to fully absorb the entire set but it's ultimately rewarding. There are not only many worthwhile individual moments but as whole Sandinista! is a compelling document of a single year of unfiltered creative output from an excellent band. It's almost like a reissue of "sessions" from a classic record with all the bonus tracks folded into the main body.
Nearly 30 years later, the ease of using the skip button and the playlist programming ability afforded by MP3s has made Sandinista! a much more digestible experience. Personally, I've reprogrammed the album into dozens of 20-or-so song configurations. What really perplexes me is how haphazardly the album has been anthologized. An album as uneven as this is ripe to have its best moments plucked for mass consumption but often selections from Sandinista! that end up on various Clash collections seem as random and peculiar as the album itself. Maybe that's the point. How else to explain the inclusion of the disco pisstake "Ivan Meets G.I. Joe" and the "The Call Up" b-side "Stop the World" on The Essential Clash? Meanwhile, some of the album's finest moments remain buried as deep cuts: the weird folk-funk hybrid "Version City," the seething, passionate "Corner Soul," the soaring, majestic "Up in Heaven (Not Only Here), the nearly psychedelic "Charlie Don't Surf," and "One More Time" probably the best example of the heavy dub influence that permeates the entire album
Those tracks are included in the playlist below. There are many other fine tunes on Sandinista! but I'd encourage you to pick up the record and listen to it for yourself. If you already own it, maybe this will inspire you to give it a spin and post your own "best of" in the comments.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Top 5 Side 1, Track 1s
The good folks at Big Apple Music Scene were nice enough to link me a few days ago so, of course, I'm going to make fun of them now.
Well, not exactly but I do have some issue with their Top 5 Album Openers. My main issue is that I am not them thus I have my own opinion ergo I am not in total agreement and therefore I felt the somewhat compulsive need to compile my own list. I've also changed the title from "album opener" to "Side 1, Track 1" because a) I want to acknowledge that this concept is completely stolen from "High Fidelity" and b) I'm old school like that. Feel free to make your own list and post in the comments section. I won't make fun of you, I promise. It's not as though this is meant to be the ultimate argument settler.
5 The Wipers "Over the Edge" from Over the Edge
I often hear "Smells Like Teen Spirit" cited as the ideal album opener but anybody who knows anything about anything knows Nirvana swiped a large portion of their schtick from Portland's Wipers. And while this track didn't set the world on fire like "Teen Spirit" did 8 years later it does serve to show that Greg Sage was THE indie guitar hero back when J Mascis was still pounding skins for Deep Wound. The song's sections of pummeling power chords, screeching solos and elegant leads ebb and flow with Sage bellowing "It's not the truth I see!/It's just a mockery!" to begin each (identical) verse. Sage has probably never made a more explicit statement about his place in the world: the idealist outsider. It's no wonder that a generation of alienated Pacific Northwest youth used his sound and vision as a template. Yeah, you can pretty blame Greg Sage for grunge and thus its vomitous, insipid offspring, post-grunge. But Sage's despair was never commercial or contrived; it was raw and glorious which is evident to anyone who hears this song, the rest of this album or anything else with Sage's name on it.
4 Love "Alone Again Or" from Forever Changes
The story goes that Love's mainman Arthur Lee had a vision of his death just prior the recording of "Forever Changes" and he decided to make his next album his farewell gift to the world. Of course, Lee didn't croak until nearly 40 years later but "Forever Changes" remains as perfect an encapsulation of all that is precious, tragic and beautiful about the living universe as any rock album could hope to be. It is perhaps ironic then that the track that introduced "Forever Changes" to the world was written by Love's second in command Bryan MacLean though Lee and producer Bruce Botnick thoroughly renovated the track adding horns and strings to MacLean's flamenco flavored folk rock tune. While many examples of ornate instrumentation in 60s pop often come off as fussy and full of pretense not to mention extraneous (see the Doors' "Touch Me") here it perfectly compliments the song's melancholy qualities. While the line "You know I could be in love with almost everyone" might seem like a groovy summer of love sentiment it's actually a "funny thing" someone said to the song's protagonist and thus should be viewed with a certain amount of derision. The flower children were growing up and contemplating their mortality and it sounded great. Much better than the Youngbloods, at least.
3 The Gun Club "Sex Beat" from Fire of Love
A classic cut to open a classic album. It begins with a single guitar playing the tune's basic chord pattern for one measure. Then the rest of the band crashes in, playing along for another measure when Jeffery Lee Pierce begins his vocal and off we go. Pierce spins his tale of lust in a style's that simultaneously seductive and menacing with the verse climaxing (no pun intended) in a slide guitar run, a brief pressure drop and a chorus of Pierce cooing "Ooooooooh sex beat... go!" Then the process repeats with the band digging in harder each time, upping the intensity on every go round and exposing every raw nerve until Pierce concludes his paean to the devil with the blue dress on: "We can fuck forever/but you will never get my soul." With this cut and the remainder of Fire of Love that immediately followed, Ol' Jeffery Lee came as close as any white boy ever could to Robert Johnson's crossroads. Eat your heart out, Eric Clapton.
2 The Rolling Stones "Gimmie Shelter" from Let It Bleed
What could I possibly say about about "Gimmie Shelter" that hasn't already been said? I mean, really. I'm not Greil Marcus, ok? Suffice to say, that if you don't like this song or it's parent album, you probably don't like rock n roll. Or you're resentful that your parents had better music than you when they were young which basically translates into... you probably don't like rock n roll.
1 The Clash "London Calling" from London Calling
A bit of a cliché, I suppose. ("Janie Jones" is nearly as great and might be less cliché mainly because you've got to own the UK, or "proper," version of the the band's debut for it to qualify as an opener.) Look, I know there's a lot of criticism leveled at the Clash. They were a band assembled by a manager, not truly from "Garageland." They were self-aggrandizing rock stars i.e. "The Only Band That Matters" and their tired rebel rock pose has not aged well. They were culture vultures who were better at co-opting the sounds of others than creating anything original. We can more or less blame them for the existence of Social Distortion. Yeah, yeah. I'm picking up what you're putting down. On the other hand, they made some pretty fantastic records that were certainly among the best of their era and just because you don't want to buy into Rolling Stone's version of punk history (and rightly so) doesn't make them sound any worse. The "London Calling" album is usually cited as the band's definitive statement which is debatable but there's no debate that its title track kicked the album off in grand style. I've always felt that "London Calling" was the Clash saying "This is our last punk song. This is THE last punk song." Certainly those slashing chords and apocalyptic lyrics were very punk indeed. The song has been called an anthem but that couldn't be more wrong. How many anthems are about inescapable, impending doom? It's almost certainly the most bleak and nihilistic cut in the Clash's discography. It offers no solutions, just Strummer's fading echo of "I never felt so much a like... a like.... a like." Like what, Joe? The solution, as it turns out, was the remainder of the album that followed, none of which, if we're being honest, was very punk at all. The Clash began their album with doomsday, which seemed like a very real possibility at the dawn of the 80s, and then offered hope. Hope in the form of new directions, celebration of the past and the prospect of a future. It was a brilliant move that gave the album much of it's power. It didn't hurt that the rest of the album was terrific, of course, but if the band has chosen to open the record with "Rudie Can't Fail" or "Clampdown" we'd probably think of the album in a completely different way. And that's why it's the number 1 album opener ever.
Honorable mentions:
The Zombies "Care of Cell 44" from Odessey and Oracle
The Lyres "Don't Give It Up Now" from On Fyre
The Sex Pistols "Holidays in the Sun" from Nevermind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
Spoon "Small Stakes" from Kill the Moonlight
The Beach Boys "Wouldn't it Be Nice" from Pet Sounds
Sonic Youth "Teenage Riot" from Daydream Nation
The Dead Boys "Sonic Reducer" from Young, Loud and Snotty
Dinosaur Jr "Little Furry Things" from You're Living All Over Me
Barbara Manning "Scissors" from Lately I Keep Scissors
Mission of Burma "Secrets" from Vs.
The Pixies "Debaser" from Doolittle
The Saints "Know Your Product" from Eternally Yours
Belle and Sebastian "Stars of Track and Field" from If You're Feeling Sinister
Vulgar Boatmen "Don't Mention It" from Please Panic
Superchunk "Precision Auto" from On the Mouth
Silkworm "Give Me Some Skin" from Developer
The Damned "Love Song" from Machine Gun Etiquette
Sleater-Kinney "Dig Me Out" from Dig Me Out
The Girls "Jeffery, I Hear You" from Girls Reunion (okay, so it's technically a posthumous compilation and not an album. You didn't know that anyway, did you?)
Well, not exactly but I do have some issue with their Top 5 Album Openers. My main issue is that I am not them thus I have my own opinion ergo I am not in total agreement and therefore I felt the somewhat compulsive need to compile my own list. I've also changed the title from "album opener" to "Side 1, Track 1" because a) I want to acknowledge that this concept is completely stolen from "High Fidelity" and b) I'm old school like that. Feel free to make your own list and post in the comments section. I won't make fun of you, I promise. It's not as though this is meant to be the ultimate argument settler.
5 The Wipers "Over the Edge" from Over the Edge
I often hear "Smells Like Teen Spirit" cited as the ideal album opener but anybody who knows anything about anything knows Nirvana swiped a large portion of their schtick from Portland's Wipers. And while this track didn't set the world on fire like "Teen Spirit" did 8 years later it does serve to show that Greg Sage was THE indie guitar hero back when J Mascis was still pounding skins for Deep Wound. The song's sections of pummeling power chords, screeching solos and elegant leads ebb and flow with Sage bellowing "It's not the truth I see!/It's just a mockery!" to begin each (identical) verse. Sage has probably never made a more explicit statement about his place in the world: the idealist outsider. It's no wonder that a generation of alienated Pacific Northwest youth used his sound and vision as a template. Yeah, you can pretty blame Greg Sage for grunge and thus its vomitous, insipid offspring, post-grunge. But Sage's despair was never commercial or contrived; it was raw and glorious which is evident to anyone who hears this song, the rest of this album or anything else with Sage's name on it.
4 Love "Alone Again Or" from Forever Changes
The story goes that Love's mainman Arthur Lee had a vision of his death just prior the recording of "Forever Changes" and he decided to make his next album his farewell gift to the world. Of course, Lee didn't croak until nearly 40 years later but "Forever Changes" remains as perfect an encapsulation of all that is precious, tragic and beautiful about the living universe as any rock album could hope to be. It is perhaps ironic then that the track that introduced "Forever Changes" to the world was written by Love's second in command Bryan MacLean though Lee and producer Bruce Botnick thoroughly renovated the track adding horns and strings to MacLean's flamenco flavored folk rock tune. While many examples of ornate instrumentation in 60s pop often come off as fussy and full of pretense not to mention extraneous (see the Doors' "Touch Me") here it perfectly compliments the song's melancholy qualities. While the line "You know I could be in love with almost everyone" might seem like a groovy summer of love sentiment it's actually a "funny thing" someone said to the song's protagonist and thus should be viewed with a certain amount of derision. The flower children were growing up and contemplating their mortality and it sounded great. Much better than the Youngbloods, at least.
3 The Gun Club "Sex Beat" from Fire of Love
A classic cut to open a classic album. It begins with a single guitar playing the tune's basic chord pattern for one measure. Then the rest of the band crashes in, playing along for another measure when Jeffery Lee Pierce begins his vocal and off we go. Pierce spins his tale of lust in a style's that simultaneously seductive and menacing with the verse climaxing (no pun intended) in a slide guitar run, a brief pressure drop and a chorus of Pierce cooing "Ooooooooh sex beat... go!" Then the process repeats with the band digging in harder each time, upping the intensity on every go round and exposing every raw nerve until Pierce concludes his paean to the devil with the blue dress on: "We can fuck forever/but you will never get my soul." With this cut and the remainder of Fire of Love that immediately followed, Ol' Jeffery Lee came as close as any white boy ever could to Robert Johnson's crossroads. Eat your heart out, Eric Clapton.
2 The Rolling Stones "Gimmie Shelter" from Let It Bleed
What could I possibly say about about "Gimmie Shelter" that hasn't already been said? I mean, really. I'm not Greil Marcus, ok? Suffice to say, that if you don't like this song or it's parent album, you probably don't like rock n roll. Or you're resentful that your parents had better music than you when they were young which basically translates into... you probably don't like rock n roll.
1 The Clash "London Calling" from London Calling
A bit of a cliché, I suppose. ("Janie Jones" is nearly as great and might be less cliché mainly because you've got to own the UK, or "proper," version of the the band's debut for it to qualify as an opener.) Look, I know there's a lot of criticism leveled at the Clash. They were a band assembled by a manager, not truly from "Garageland." They were self-aggrandizing rock stars i.e. "The Only Band That Matters" and their tired rebel rock pose has not aged well. They were culture vultures who were better at co-opting the sounds of others than creating anything original. We can more or less blame them for the existence of Social Distortion. Yeah, yeah. I'm picking up what you're putting down. On the other hand, they made some pretty fantastic records that were certainly among the best of their era and just because you don't want to buy into Rolling Stone's version of punk history (and rightly so) doesn't make them sound any worse. The "London Calling" album is usually cited as the band's definitive statement which is debatable but there's no debate that its title track kicked the album off in grand style. I've always felt that "London Calling" was the Clash saying "This is our last punk song. This is THE last punk song." Certainly those slashing chords and apocalyptic lyrics were very punk indeed. The song has been called an anthem but that couldn't be more wrong. How many anthems are about inescapable, impending doom? It's almost certainly the most bleak and nihilistic cut in the Clash's discography. It offers no solutions, just Strummer's fading echo of "I never felt so much a like... a like.... a like." Like what, Joe? The solution, as it turns out, was the remainder of the album that followed, none of which, if we're being honest, was very punk at all. The Clash began their album with doomsday, which seemed like a very real possibility at the dawn of the 80s, and then offered hope. Hope in the form of new directions, celebration of the past and the prospect of a future. It was a brilliant move that gave the album much of it's power. It didn't hurt that the rest of the album was terrific, of course, but if the band has chosen to open the record with "Rudie Can't Fail" or "Clampdown" we'd probably think of the album in a completely different way. And that's why it's the number 1 album opener ever.
Honorable mentions:
The Zombies "Care of Cell 44" from Odessey and Oracle
The Lyres "Don't Give It Up Now" from On Fyre
The Sex Pistols "Holidays in the Sun" from Nevermind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
Spoon "Small Stakes" from Kill the Moonlight
The Beach Boys "Wouldn't it Be Nice" from Pet Sounds
Sonic Youth "Teenage Riot" from Daydream Nation
The Dead Boys "Sonic Reducer" from Young, Loud and Snotty
Dinosaur Jr "Little Furry Things" from You're Living All Over Me
Barbara Manning "Scissors" from Lately I Keep Scissors
Mission of Burma "Secrets" from Vs.
The Pixies "Debaser" from Doolittle
The Saints "Know Your Product" from Eternally Yours
Belle and Sebastian "Stars of Track and Field" from If You're Feeling Sinister
Vulgar Boatmen "Don't Mention It" from Please Panic
Superchunk "Precision Auto" from On the Mouth
Silkworm "Give Me Some Skin" from Developer
The Damned "Love Song" from Machine Gun Etiquette
Sleater-Kinney "Dig Me Out" from Dig Me Out
The Girls "Jeffery, I Hear You" from Girls Reunion (okay, so it's technically a posthumous compilation and not an album. You didn't know that anyway, did you?)
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