Customer Reviews

The Clash (1st LP/U.K. Version)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I can't believe this finally came out on CD! I've been looking here and in the UK for 10 or so years. The American release version is great and all, but this blows it away. The original less-poppy version of White Riot is on this, plus Cheat, Deny, Protex Blue. Yowza! Expensive, but it's worth it.

We just don't make them like this anymore. This first album from the group that called themselves the Clash is a work of outstanding craftsmenship masquerading as amateurism. Look, these ain't no punks, buddy. Mick Jones could craft a song (he LOVED the Beatles), and Joe Strummer was elegant and eloquent (he read lots of important books), and Paul Simonon added that essential factor to a rock-and-roll group: he had funkability (he smoked and listened to reggae). Add it up, and you have a fantastic formula. Package it up with lots of street-aware, no-nonsense, here-it-is, get it down on the tape and let's get out of here...and you have one brilliant album delivered with tons of personality and character. Know music. Know the Clash.

Untouchable. This album is the perfect example of why the Clash are still hailed today as one of the truly great bands in the history of Rock & Roll. They have so many great albums, especially the first four, but this one stands head and shoulders above the rest of thir discography. If you are unfirmiliar with their less famous work I definately recommend this one or The Singles. The latter has Rock the Casbah, Train in Vain, and Magnificent 7 among almost every other great song they produced, though Police & Thieves and a few others are conspicuous by their absence.

This is probably the greatest punk album ever made. The U.K. version is clearly superior to the one released in the U.S. Noisy, relentless, and fiercely intelligent, this legendary album makes modern-day "punkers" like Green Day and Offspring sound like the Archies.

"Monday is coming like a jail on wheels"

The Sex Pistols may have entered the collective sub-conscious as THE punk icons , perhaps because their evil banality summed up the apparent nihilism of the 'movement', if punk can be called such.Perhaps it is doing the Clash a disservice to call them 'punks' - because there is nothing banal about this album. Raw it may be , but I challenge anyone to find a recording that more starkly conveys the dislocation and disaffection of the "sod the Jubilee" generation .