Right now I am sitting here at 4:00am after seeing the midnight showing of the new Harry Potter film which flat out gargled my balls, so I'm tired, angry, and bloated from all the greasy popcorn I just gobbled for two hours and forty minutes. In other words I need something really nice and simple to write about right now and that something will have to be The Clash's Combat Rock.Obviously it's a well known album, it has the songs most closely associated with the band on it, and it was the last album the band recorded with the original lineup intact. So yeah it was important for all those reasons and it is a solid record, but it pales in comparison to the self-titled debut and to London Calling and to Sandinista! but it's still better then a lot of the other crap out there! Truth be told I just reached for a record in my CD collection and this is what I came up with, pretty good but not the greatest.
In fact listening to this record I have to say the single most important moment on it is the opening riff to "Straight to Hell", a brilliant song in it's own right, that was the backbone to one of the best songs of this decade! Okay that's not fair, this is The Clash after all and most people only know The Clash thanks to "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" which are both here on this record. But this wouldn't be The Clash album I'd be taking to my desert island.
Okay it's fucking bedtime, enjoy the mp3's below, don't go see the new Harry Potter unless you're a completist, and I'll try to do better the next time!
The Clash - "Know Your Rights"
The Clash - "Straight To Hell"
The Clash - "Atom Tan"
The Clash - "Inoculated City"
2 comments:
I like this album. desert island Clash album? London Calling, no question.
You're right about The Clash delivering an uneven album. In fact, i prefer Cut the Crap over it, seriously. Desert island Clash a tough one, unless you can cheat and take the Clash on Broadway box set! I do have a bootleg of their '76 sessions, so I may take that, since it has their version of Pressure Drop, perhaps my favorite punk song period, since it's the one that got me into punk rock in the first place. Good post.
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