THE CLASH - LONDON CALLING

When I was 12, I had heard of the Clash. Mainly it was due to me reading 3 books on the Ramones, and they were always mentioned. I knew the songs "London Calling" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go?", but they never sounded "punk". To me, "punk" was just...well, to be honest, I don't really remember what I thought "punk" was, except that I listened to it and everything else musically sucked. So on one fateful day, I was talking to a kid who had some Clash CDs that he got from his older brother - "Combat Rock" and "London Calling" and he said he'd burn one for me. I asked for "London Calling" because it had more songs and by that time, I'd heard a few more songs and I liked "Train in Vain". That day, I came home and excitedly put it on my SONY CFD-Z110 boombox (which I still own) and was faced with one of the biggest disappointments in my musical life.

I mean, where were the drums? It's a slow! They don't sound angry! What the hell?!

Then, I never listened to it again. Seriously.

Flash forward to today, June 20, 2010. I was having a conversation about bands that used to mean A LOT to me when I was 10-14 or so and I wondered "what happened"? Was it me or the music? I mean, those Anti-Flag albums from 1996 still sound the same - the Bouncing Souls still are producing anthems for people to cling to - Against Me!'s "Reinventing Axl Rose" still has "Walking Is Still Honest", a song that I would listen to every single day when I was a youngin' - but nowadays, these bands mean little to me other than a footnote in my musical pass (around this time, Garret Kriston posted on his blog that he was burning me CDs and described me as "some mall punk kid who likes Rush" in his Henry Cow review. Thanks Gary.) But now, I'm a little older, wiser and I have more gray hair and my hatred for "London Calling" never got better. Whenever I thought of it, I thought of some hour long album that was full of these songs I didn't like.

Tonite, I put it on and realized "Oh hey, this is pretty decent."

To be honest, I was planning to review this album and tear it a new throat hole with mah teeth. But here I am, totally wrong. I mean, it has it's flaws I bet...like the trumpets in "The Card Cheat", actually to be honest, the last few tracks all just seem kind of "OK" in comparison to the great beginning 40 min of the album, but I still like "Train in Vain". But other than that, there's all kinds of styles (rock, roll, reggae, white-guy reggae, some other crap) and it is fairly satisfying. Ohh, and I sure like "Rudy Can't Fail".

So, I'm a changed man. I can say that I enjoyed "London Calling" for the first time 3 weeks before I turned 19. Time for me to whip out my Sex Pistols CD for the Pilch guys to educate them in playing New York Dolls covers...

OVERALL RATING - Six by Seuss
KEY TRACKS - Train in Vain, Rudy Can't Fail, Lost in the Supermarket