"London Calling" (CD review)

...by The Clash, released 1979.

Forget The Pistols.
Forget The Damned.
Forget The Stranglers.

For THIS is the band that truly epitomised the Punk ethos of the late 1970s.
Musically charged, wearing their hearts on their sleeves, lyrically direct and politically sincere (though possibly naive), The Clash poured forth a phenomenal body of work in the late 70s/early 80s, ranging in style from straight-out 3-chord power punk through dub reggae (Sandanista was the first Clash album I bought, a sprawling triple album of dub at a socialistically reduced price to the band's consumers).
And surely the peak/zenith of their career, if not the early punk movement itself (if we don't count The Who in the 60s because they were really Mods), is this album - London Calling.

I picked up a second-hand copy of the '99 remaster today (30th anniversary copy, at $45, too much for my budget!), and have just been pogo-ing down memory lane - the title track, Rudie Can't Fail (great white ska - a foretaste of Specials, The Beat etc.), Spanish Bombs, Train in Vain, Lost in the Supermarket (the line "I Can No Longer Shop Happily" was scrawled on the fence of the Epsom Showgrounds for much of the early 80s - just up the road from where Lois and I first lived - I used to ponder its significance, and it wasn't until about 15 years later I discovered it was quoting The Clash)...this is a wonderfully eclectic album, which is musically on a different planet from their first, but continues to celebrate the recklessness of punk, while tipping its hat to the ancestral reggae roots.
What's not to love?
The vocals, the choppy guitars, the driving Simenon bass, the crisp and punchy drums, and the add-on instrumentations - keyboards, saxes, mouth organ...
Every home should have one - and I bet every member of Green Day listens to it on a regular basis!

10/10