It's Been 30 Years Since The Release Of The Only Album That Matters
The Clash's London Calling came out thirty years ago today. It still stands as punk rock's crowning achievement. In fact, it's probably as responsible as any other work for the fact that the term "punk rock" seems kind of silly now. The Clash were a punk band, coming out of England with the Sex Pistols in the late '70s. But the music on London Calling ranges from reggae to rockabilly to snazzy pop tunes. It's thoughtful and refined, even gentle at times, and delivered with as much subtlety as spit. It rages and sneers, too, to be sure, but even in that, it proves the futility of thin definition and sub-categorization. It's all just rock n' roll, really, right? London Calling is just some of the very best of the stuff ever recorded. (Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go do a tango about the use of flying buttresses in gothic cathedrals.) Oh, and for perspective, 30 years before London Calling's release, it was December 14th, 1949, Elvis Presley hadn't recorded any songs and no one knew what "rock n' roll" was. So now rock has been dead and reborn for longer than it was alive in the first place. Or something.
Death or Glory had me at:
I believe in this and it's been tested by research. He who fucks nuns will later join the church
The perfect subversion and poetry for a struggling post adolescent.
a Top 20 album of mine. So much influence in those 19 songs.
also: "I went to the market to realize my soul 'cause what I need, I just don't have" yesyes
Ugh. I knew it would be something like this when I saw the headline. Exaggerated, overblown rock-critic fetishism, as usual. It's a good album, but by no means "the only album that matters." It's particularly good if you were a 17-year-old boy in 1979, but really not so maverick if you consider that it's basically a testament to how late the British got their shit together, when it came to rock and roll. Albums like this get most of their totemic status because they came out at roughly the time that most contemporary rock critics learned to beat off.
Wanker.
Onanist.
Should have put "I have to go beat off about the use of flying buttresses in gothic cathedrals."
(By which I mean, I kind of agree!)
I think we do agree, actually! Reviews don't kill people, hyperbole kills people. I totally would have been with you on this: "London Calling is just some of the very best of the stuff ever recorded."
Mind if I dissent?
When London Calling came out, I thought it was OK; they were never my favorites.
And then I saw them live on the London Calling tour and they could barely play the songs, they were so terrible. That's when I realized that the producer had to be responsible for most of their sound on the record.
Of course, it didn't help the Clash that their warm-up act was the newish Gang of Four, who were so good they'd make anybody following them sound like crap.
I remember that they both struck me as kind of humorless at the time. Especially that posh twat Strummer. And later, when they dropped "Rock the Casbah," the whiff of hypocrisy hit me like mustard gas.
But as I go all old and soft, & no longer base my identity on the music I listen to, I've grown to love this album (and also G4's Entertainment!).
I'll defer to the rankings, as all such criticism seems so purely subjective, past a certain level of consensus. [The Clash is better. Maybe even Sandanista!)].
What gets me so much is how those glaciers of time just melted. I mean, it seemed like forever between Elvis and the Beatles, or between the Brits and the Psychs–hell, between Woodstock and Altamont. You drummed your fingers and waited for records to come out.
And then, like, eons later, punk finally happened; and then NW, Rap, World, Hip Hop blah blah blah–until 30 years passed, and it seems just like "Yesterday."
In between Altamont and Punk there was Glam Rock, Reggae, Disco — quite a lot happened in the 70s.
Honey, the Dolls are this little tutu's alltime fave. . .till S-k, at least.
How much too much can we say about The Stooges? But I have to admit London Calling still gives me chills. Saw them at the Palladium and it practically bust my eardrums. Yay.
Another Awl contributer, let's call him Meth Molter Malls, said that this NOT a Punk Album and point to Train n Vain as a way to highlight his argument.
Thoughts?
Wikipedia would agree.
"The album represented a change in The Clash's musical style, and featured elements of ska, pop, soul, rockabilly and reggae more prominently than in their previously released music."
You can have a non-punk album by a punk band, and that appears to be what happened here.
Absolutely true–it's a pop move. You might even argue Give 'Em Enough Rope was a step back.
Or, you could really not care a crap, and that would be valid, too.
I agree. It's a mosaic of just about everything in rock that came before. It's a blend of solid rock 'n roll mixed with 'world music'. Calling London Calling Punk is like saying that Sgt. Peppers was just Rock or Psychedelia.
Unless Bry is touting that very thing by arguing that "London Calling" is responsible for KILLING punk rock?
"In fact, it's probably as responsible as any other work for the fact that the term "punk rock" seems kind of silly now."
In which case it's all a weird circular strange kind of snake-eating-its-own-tail kind of argument. The best punk album killed punk, or something. Which is a very punk-rock thing to do.
People can argue about whether this album has the punk spirit, but it definitely lacks the punk aesthetic as heard on The Clash's eponymous outing.
Re-registered under this moniker just for NVC. I think I like it.
For everyone else's benefit(?), I'll say that I wasn't running this album down when I had this convo with NVC a couple months back. Bry is right: the album is brillz–if not the ONLY album that matters.
I just said that stuff to NVC in order to explain why nothing from Calling is on this weirdly indefensible mix cd-r I made earlier this year for someone who asked what punk means to me.
/EssplainingTooMuch
Right. Thanks, Meth. It's not the only album that matters. As Pareene pointed out so welcomely, "Tusk" came out that year, too.
I will make you defend your punk rock purity all of these damn internets, METH!
Don't say that you love me!
Just tell me that you want me!
Tusk! Tusk! Tusk! Tusk!
Tusk! Tusk! Tusk! Tusk!
Tusk! Tusk! Tusk! Tusk!
Tusk! Tusk! Tusk! Tusk!
Tusk
Here I was all prepared to be contrarian and say that London Calling isn't a punk album (no matter what Americans keep saying) and that the first Clash album (UK version of course) is still their best – but everyone else beat me to it.
Punk died after the summer of 1977, The Clash were smart enough to move on.
I saw them on the London Calling tour too (London Lyceum Ballroom) and they were fantastic, Peteykins must have caught them on a bad night.
Whee, another music discussion hinged on arbitrary genre categorizations! What a fabulous use of time.
Punk shmunk. London Calling was a really good album. Just call it rock and roll which, an expression that isn't limited to stuff like Eddie Cochran, young 'uns.
In fact, Janie Jones was in love with rock and roll.
Woah.
Or something.
Of course I fucked the italic thing up. What's the symbol for close ital?
Jesus, can I get a life? Soon?
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I bought it when I was in high school. Damn I'm old. Of all the crap I listened to as a kid, this is the album that has stood the test of time and is as relevant know as it was then, if not more so.
For example, Gaslight Anthem is the bastard son of Joe Strummer and Bruce Springsteen. And Broooce has been known to cover a Clash son or two.
Regardless of the genre you place the album, it represents a time in my life when I most had a fuck them all attitude. I was 18, a punk and having the time of my life. The Clash came on the radio this morning and I blasted it!! A great remember when.
Better punk albums from 1979: Fear of Music, Singles Going Steady (cheating — but TRUE), Rust Never Sleeps (THIS IS THE STORY OF JOHNNY ROTTEN), and, obviously, the REAL only album that matters, and the most punk fucking album ever, Tusk.
Yes! Fleetwood Mac is punk is one of my favorite things ever.
I always thought of 'Tusk' as their 'Exile On Main Street' – messy and a bit fucked up.
It's not that funny, is it?
WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU'RE THE ONE?
I'm glad Shakey decided to start playing that song again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSCUC-wElkM
Siouxsie and the Banshees' The Scream (1978) is better than any Clash album. But it's a moot point, punk reached its apex in the second wave (i.e., hardcore).
The Slits' Cut came out in '79. that is an awesome album.
Well, if you're gonna go there–and you want to capture some fer reals punk spirit, the early Kleenex/LiLiPUT stuff is tough to beat.
That's so weird, I was going to say earlier that the Slits & Kleenex were both more punk than anything the Clash ever did. Not better, just more punk.
Best described as a MUSICAL (trying to stay aways from the genres) TRIUMPH. The Clash was SO BEYOND punk for the simple reason they could all play their instruments and were politically relevant too.
And speaking of spit, Joe's blathering of lyrics while on stage was like a showering diatribe – one that I was subject too on a few occasions.
The Mekons were more politically astute (if not "relevant") and in 1979 they COULDN'T play their instruments, which is way more punk rock
And here I thought I would be the only one talking about how humorless and overblown this album is! You guys really are the best.
So, yeah, as to my original point: it's the best "punk rock record" if your idea of punk rock is making political points of the 2-AM-stoned-dorm-room-conversation variety over musical backing stolen from black people and drained of any energy or urgency, all the while being just so fucking self-satisfied that everyone around you wants to punch you in the face.
paul simon: godfather of punk
Natalie Merchant?
Edie Brickell!
But coming from a commenter named "davidwatts" I am suspicious of the motive!
Seriously, my only point is not so much that London Calling is or isn't punk–but that the Clash was not by any means the first punk band to switch gears and pick up–let's be direct here!–some of the styles being mastered by black musicians in London at the time.
The genre stuff is annoy! It's a fucking great album. It's just not quite as breathtakingly original or brave as it looks thirty years later, when the Clash remains popular but so many important acts of 1979 (and what they actually sounded like) are forgotten.
One more thing: Cheers for Liliput Kleenex–but I think Bry was pretty straightforward that London Calling isn't punk; I was never sure what Kleenex was but it's certainly not R and B.
I've always thought it was hokey as hell.
I'm not even going to touch the matter of how what we consider punk, or even what we consider to have been punk, changes over the decades. Leave that for media studies grad students of the future.
This makes me excited for 2k14, when we can celebrate (if that's the right word) the 30th anniversary of Zen Arcade, an album that in some respects is the Schopenhauer-infused answer to London Calling's Hegelian dialectic. Like London Calling, ZA mixes genres but unlike London Calling is rooted in a bleak and dire pessimism that to this day keeps it safely out of the mnstrm (relatively speaking), both conceptually and sonically, and arguably (or at least if I'm making the argument) more relevant to the shitshow that is our world today (and for the next __ years). Zen Arcade is the true Malevichian 'White on White' of punk/hardcore: there was no point in going any further in that direction once it was released; London Calling (as much as I love it) feels a bit like 'Tiptoe Through the Tulips' in comparison.
Yes. I thought a lot about "Zen Arcade" when I was writing that "London Calling" was punk's crowning achievement. And the Replacements' "Let It Be," too. (Has there ever been a better music scene than mid-80s Minneapolis? This wanking, time-wasting rock-crit dork says no.) I guess next would be a long semantics parsing of the meaning of "crowning achievement." But I'll spare everybody.
Agree on all counts!
Heartily disgree.
Vancouver circa 1988 when you could see D.O.A, Frontline Assembly, Skinny Puppy and Sarah McLachlan, all in one night.
Heartily agree with Mindpowered. But maybe that's because I moved to Vancouver in 86 and still have pals in some of those bands (also, my stepsis lived in a squat with SP's Nevik Ogre above the infamous Save-On Meats around the same time.) And let's not forget the brilliance that is SNFU, NoMeansNo and The Hanson Bros. (Believe me, I could go on…)
Husker Du and The Replacements: two more bands that Are Not Punk. The heavy stuff just ain't at its heaviest, by the time it gets out of central Minneapolis.
I think too that lots of towns had great scenes in the mid-late 80s (We had some great bands in London Ont., even!), but maybe Washington DC was the place that really kept the flame of punk, at least, burning.
Also I must add that I type this as I do so many afternoons, sitting in a bar across the table from Mr. Chi Pig of SNFU. (That's for you, Krucoff.)
PS: One of SNFU's songs, Drunk on a Bike, just played on the jukebox, and Chi laughed "they used to kick me out of here, and now there's 5 of my CDs on there."
I have this on cassette still. That is all.
I came of age in the mid-70's and should have been a punk but I had older siblings who came of age in the late 60's and taught me that Let It Be was the apotheosis of rock. To this day, I'm confused and out of sync with my times.
Never loved the Clash. Oh, I can be entertained by them, but there are times when I listen to the first album and I think the snottiness is so recieved that I feel like I'm being hectored by an internet troll secretly sponsored by McDonald's.
I should also mention that, to our discredit, some of us forgot the 30th anniversary of "Hot Stuff."
Also also: let the "dancing about architecture" thing DIE ALREADY.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTtfWl-B_nc
And, anyway, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGjk1Y_j8QE
But, I'm just being a bit of an asshole. I love the Clash.
Who started this nonsense about The Only Band That Matters anyway? Was it because they kept up the punky rebel pose of not going on Top of The Pops long after the rest of the class of '76 did so.
CBS Records marketing department. So, yes: ridiculous from the beginning. Still, a catchy slogan. And one that speaks to how great the band was at the time. And the way their fans felt about them. (Their self-satisfied, stoned-at-2 a.m., practically-asking-to-be-punched-in-the-face fans.)
Raw Power!!! I am an Anglophile through and through, but still.
Also not much mentioned in this thread: the Pistols. I mean!
For English punk bands I LOVED the Clash but I loved the Pistols more. And the Buzzcocks maybe most of all.
It's been thirty years and fifteen days…