The Clash

Propelled by the hits "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go," this became the Clash's biggest seller -- yet it's just as eccentric as Sandinista!. "Ghetto Defendant" contains a rap by poet Alan Ginsberg, "Death is a Star" mixes old British music hall with movie mythology, and "Straight to Hell" is as beautiful as it is heartfelt.

For rock's last angry band, life at the top has not exactly been a left-wing luau. In Britain,
where their only real crime has been falling out of fashion, the Clash is scorned by a
cynical press drunk on funk and futurism, and by their own punk progeny, the Oi! bands,
for selling out to Yankee commercial interests. At least that is how the group's foes
perceive the panmusical daring, global political concerns and mature thrash of t... More >

Those who (claim to) expect them to improve on Gramsci maintain that this is where they turn bozo once and for all. I counter that they're well ahead of a lot of respectable competition--the babble surrounding Robert De Niro on "Red Angel Dragnet," for instance, may well be the first evidence ever that Taxi Driver has something real to say about urban oppression. Neither their funk nor their tone-poem dub has gained much pizzazz since Sandinista!, where both were easier to avoid. But I guarantee that they're not sinking into the pop slime--they're evolving, and here's hoping that someday they write songs as terse and clear as "Janie Jones" at this higher level of verbal, musical, and political density. (Grade - B+)