The Only Tape That Really Matters

Album: The Clash, The Story of the Clash, Volume 1 (Sides 1&2), 1988

Acquired: I got this from a record store in Pembroke Mall during the summer of 1989, which was my only summer at home during my, ahem, lengthy college career. Like all great summers home from college, mine was spent working as a lot attendant/carwasher at a friend of the family's rental car lot. I should have been forced to wear a "Stay in School" T-shirt on that job.

Best Tracks: "Train in Vain" and "The Guns of Brixton"

Lasting Memory: Two here, too. The first is buying this double album on cassette and pulling a double-long security bracket out of the tapes rack at the record store. These tunes were encased in so much plastic that, somewhere, a young Al Gore was shedding an Iron Eyes Cody-esque tear. The second is hanging a London Calling poster in every college dorm and apartment I ever lived in. That's rock 'n' roll with a capital F-U.

The song "London Calling" was the title track to The Clash's 1979 double album that broke them through in the United States (somewhat), and it serves as a nice overview of what the band was about sonically and politically. Listen here and dig that punning but pained chorus of ""The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in/ Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin/ Engines stop running, but I have no fear/ 'Cause London is drowning and I, live by the river."

It was songs like this that led The Clash's record label, Epic, to promote them as "The Only Band That Matters." Now I love me some Clash, but a marketing line that like begs the questions of "matters to whom, and matters for what?" The answers to those questions are, of course, to the band member's family members who could be proud of their boys and for fans of punk rock that tended toward early ska. The latter group is smaller than one would imagine, as London Calling didn't go gold -- that is, sell 500,000 units -- in the United States until the late 1990s, according to a factoid I saw on the digital music cable channel Retroactive. The poster has probably sold better than the album.

Billy Bragg was correct in singing in "Waiting for the Great Leap Forward" that kids should "Join the struggle while you may/ The revolution is just a T-shirt away." And that's fine. Because revolutions generally just make a bigger mess than existed in the first place.

A case in point is "Guns of Brixton," which tells the story of the Jamaican immigrant riots in London during the late 1970s:

When they kick out your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun

When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting in death row

You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, Guns of Brixton

The money feels good
And your life you like it well
But surely your time will come
As in heaven, as in hell

You see, he feels like Ivan
Born under the Brixton sun
His game is called survivin'
At the end of the harder they come

You know it means no mercy
They caught him with a gun
No need for the Black Maria
Goodbye to the Brixton sun

You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh-the guns of Brixton

When they kick out your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun

You can crush us
You can bruise us
And even shoot us
But oh- the guns of Brixton

Shot down on the pavement
Waiting in death row
His game was survivin'
As in heaven as in hell

You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, the guns of Brixton

As white guys, the members of The Clash's only dog in the Jamaicans' fight were Scotland Yard's police dogs. But it is ever the case that revolutionaries revolting for the sake of revolting tend to wander away from their causes when they start, you know, noticing girls and stuff. As evidence, I submit "Train in Vain::

Say you stand by your man
Tell me something I don't understand
You said you loved me and that's a fact
And then you left me, said you felt trapped

Well some things you can't explain away
But the heartache's in me till this day

[Chorus]
You didn't you stand by me
No, not at all
You didn't stand by me
No way

All the times
When we were close
I'll remember these things the most
I see all my dreams come tumbling down
I can't be happy without you round

So alone I keep the wolves at bay
and there is only one thing that I can say

[Repeat chorus]

You must explain why this must be
Did you lie when you spoke to me

Did you stand by me
No, not at all

Now I got a job
But it don't pay
I need new clothes
I need somewhere to stay
But without all of these things I can do
But without your love I won't make it through

But you don't understand my point of view
I suppose there's nothing I can do

[Repeat chorus twice]

You must explain why this must be
Did you lie when you spoke to me

Did you stand by me
Did you stand by me
No, not at all
Did you stand by me
No way

The Clash are lionized for songs like "Guns of Brixton," but "Train in Vain" is what gets played on the radio, along with their other confused lover song "Should I Stay or Should I Go." I'm with the radio programmers for once. I say that when push comes to Clash, you should listen to the music and leave the politics on the side.

Watch a video for "Guns of Brixton"

Watch a live performance of "Train in Vain"

Up Next: The Clash, The Story of the Clash, Volume 1 (Sides 3&4)