The Only Band That Matters
Aug 17
With Originals Week down and out, I figured I’d spend some time for the next few posts detailing some of my favorite bands that you all don’t know about. Breathe easy though; I’ll skip over Frusciante & Red Hot Chili Peppers since it’s just obvious. I’ll be covering my all-time favorites as well as some new favorite bands too. I will say, however, that I will be skipping out on Little Richard who is utterly fantastic. I covered Ready Teddy by him earlier so I won’t go back to him again, but still – utterly fantastic. So who to pick to start off? There are so many to choose from. Well, seeing as how I had this band down for a couple songs on Original Week possibilities, I guess we can go ahead with really the only band that matters…The Clash!
God, how I love The Clash. For starter’s, I enjoy my share of punk rock music as we have already covered here in this blog. Other than the big four of Clash, Ramones, Sex Pistols, and The Stooges, I also enjoy The Germs, The Stranglers, The Jam, and others. However, The Clash reign supreme over all of these. Like any good band of any genre, they ultimately became the best by exploring other genres and bringing the same sense of style to that genre. Much like Little Richard & Ray Charles took gospel singing into a boogie-woogie setting, The Clash took the punk rock feeling, lyrically & musically, and placed it into all sorts of genres, most notably reggae, ska, and rockabilly. The Clash crossed genres while still maintaining punk, which is something I don’t think any other band could say with a straight face (say Green Day, I’ll stick you like a pig). Don’t forget they released “Rock The Casbah” in pure disco fashion while maintaining the basic punk feeling lyrically (come on, the banning of rock music) & musically (the harsh chords in the chorus). Looking elsewhere, Songs like “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais” & “Brand New Cadillac” barely even scratch the surface of the musical depth the band had. Hell, The Clash are one of the only punk bands I can use the phrase “musical depth” in and not laugh inside. Even more, when just sticking to the punk genre which was known for its absence of musical depth, the band still shone brighter than their contempories as they moved away from just power chords and transferred them into power riffs with killer licks in between like “I’m So Bored With The U.S.A.”
Just look at London Calling. A fan of The Clash or not, this is one of the top ten albums that everyone needs to hear in their lifetime and it is certainly one of the best ever, if not the best punk album by far. The album is completely brilliant as the theme in every track is basically “punk rock does old rock one better.” Hell, they copied the Elvis Presley album cover except replaced a serenading guitar player with an out-of-control guitar-smashing punk. In the first three songs along, you go from reggae punk to rockabilly punk to I guess R&B punk. That’s just the first three songs of eighteen. It’s no wonder why the album was the only punk to crack Rolling Stone’s top 10 albums of all time and by far out-rank any other punk album as well as millions of others! I cannot stress the greatness of The Clash enough. Their musical talent that pushed the envelope as to not only how far punk rock could go but how far The Clash could go; their lyrics that covered everything from the betrayal of record companies to the utter destruction of London itself; and of course, they’re overall legacy in the music world as they proved that the term “genre” is ultimately a five-letter word made by record companies just to easily classify the music. Why couldn’t a punk rock band record a pop hit – it certainly would be better than most other pop hits and “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” certainly was.
With all this said, it’s hard to bring it all down to one Clash song. Pretty much everyone has heard “Rock The Casbah, London Calling, Should I Stay Or Should I Go,” & most of their other famous hits and I’m not even sure I could pinpoint my favorite song of theirs. However, there is one song that always stands out to me from London Calling even from the first listen. “The Card Cheat” is just a simple lyrical story of just that: a story of a card cheat and his misadventures, but the music behind it is so powerful (they recorded everything twice over to give it a grand-ballroom kind of sound) & Joe Strummer’s singing is oversaturated with the raw emotion that punk was known for. It might be a stretch to say it’s my favorite on the album, nay of their career, but “The Card Cheat” is definitely a song that I’ll always pick out to listen by them and one you probably wouldn’t have heard otherwise.
Song: The Card Cheat
Artist: The Clash
Album: London Calling
Year: 1979
To download, right-click here and select “Save Target As.”
Or watch this:
Loading ...
{Comments}