The Clash: soundtrack to eternity (of rebellion)

The Clash are about to be inaugurated in the Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame and it is bound to feel shallow… Joe Strummer (nè John Mellor) expired in December and the band’s hoped-for reunion, for that ceremony at least, is not to be. It is a tragedy that reinforces the legend as much as this collection compiled by the original three members, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Strummer.

Epithets are usually hyperbolic in music-cum-hype industry but ‘The Essential…’ is deserved of each and every one. The band’s reputation and its hard-core stance of being themselves meant passion, energy and creativity that introduced punk audience to reggae, their ‘London Calling’ LP is regularly voted one of the all-time best Rock albums, the band constant refusal to play Top Of The Pops and, in spite of multi-zero’d offers, never re-grouped, they scored the only Number One (in the UK) seven years after unplugging the amps marked with the band’s name. No sell-out… generally!

Although there were a lot of shouts of “betrayal of punk ideals” at the time the band inked their deal with CBS (before being bought up by Sony), they made everybody shut up because The Clash were subversive within which was more than pure punk-idealists like The Crass could have ever hoped to achieve from the outskirt of the industry. This album simply although overwhelmingly proves, via songs in a chronological order (for easy following of the band’s development), that some nostalgia is gloriously unsurpassable and untouchable.

Collections like this makes everything recorded by Green Day, Blink 182, Good Charlotte sound like Will & Gareth covering The Buzzcocks. None of the current ‘corpo-punk’ pop will ever cause the record company employees to go on strike like EMI’s did in 1976 when packers refused packaging The Sex Pistols’ single ‘Anarchy In The UK’. Rotten’s lot lasted but one album, The Clash ran a certain credible distance…

Although the band’s standard dropped considerably after two members left, drummer Hedder Topper (to a solo album and rehab) and Jones (to Big Audio Dynamite), leaving Strummer and Simonon to carry the load that was spectacularly mishandled on ‘Cut The Crap’ (1985). It should have been, in a title, called ‘Clap The Crap’ that was, fortunately, followed by a disbandment within a month of its release. Five years earlier the band tested patience with an overambitious (3-discs) ‘Sandinista!’ although containing enough quality songs to balance the shortcomings; ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’ reached Number One on the back of being a soundtrack to a Levi’s jeans ad.

Having never reached album’s lofty spot – ‘Give ‘Em Enough Rope’ (1978) stalled at No. 2 as well the 1982’s ‘Combat Rock’ – we hope this does the trick. The only reason it gets no Top mark here is that a pure tenner would mean perfection, a God’s province (as far as we are concerned) that not even the Almighty has managed.

Still, The Clash can seriously make you day, punk!

9.75/10