at a glance...

Hometown: London, England
Formed: 1975

Members:
Joe Strummer -vocals, guitar
Mick Jones -vocals, guitar
Paul Simonon -bass, vocals
Nicky "Topper" Headon -drums, piano
Allen Ginsberg: collaborative poetic vocals
Joe Ely -backing vocals
Futura 2000 -rap, graffiti
Ellen Foley -backing vocals

Bands in the family :
Mikey Dread, Big Audio Dynamite, Big Audio Dynamite II, Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Allen Ginsberg, Ellen Foley

This review is dedicated to my brothers Tim and Jeff, with whom I wore out two tapes of this album on several long road trips.

This is the album where The Clash just didn't give a damn what anybody thought. The recording sessions with Glyn Johns dragged on and on; the band had just reinstated Bernie Rhodes as their manager, which pissed off Mick Jones, whose girlfriend had been their manager for a couple of years; Jones was doing too much cocaine; Topper Headon was deeply into heroin addiction; and Rhodes was complaining that the new songs were too long and that they all sounded like ragas. In response, Joe Strummer went home and typed "Now the king told the boogie men/You have to let that raga drop," Topper came up with an ace piano hook, and "Rock the Casbah" was born. The Clash became a huge-selling pop band in America and all over the world, making them truly huge and sowing the seeds for their own destruction.

And that's as far as most people get. They might remember the extremely sloppy rocker "Should I Stay or Should I Go" - remember when they were on Fridays and the boom box messed up? That was a great performance - but that's about it, and that's the peril of pop: you get a lot of money, but you get a lot of people who like your singles and never listen to the rest of the album. If you're one of the people who hates this album because you think of it as The Clash's sell-out record, try listening to the really OUT shit on this disc. "Sean Flynn" is its own musical genre, a tribal jazz ode to Errol Flynn's son, lost in a Cambodian jungle. "Ghetto Defendant," with Allen Ginsberg's spectral growls, is like Howard Zinn toasting over a Roy Rogers reggae beat. And "Red Angel Dragnet" is just about the most bizarre thing ever played at any of my high school parties; very weird to see Gayle Falardeau and Kathy Ilg dancing to Kosmo Vinyl muttering lines from "Taxi Driver." And what is going on in "Death Is a Star"? For a careericide pop album, this is about 15 years ahead of its time.

But don't listen to it thinking it's an Ornette Coleman free jazz thing, either. It's a fun record; dig Strummer insisting (in "Car Jamming"): "I thought I saw Lauren Bacall.../Hey fellas!/Fellas!/Lauren Bacall!" Dance around punkily to "Know Your Rights." Memorize Futura 2000's rudimentary rap from "Overpowered by Funk" - don't worry, it's not very hard to do. Combat Rock is fun and it's weird, it's every album in one, it's a strange legacy of a great band falling apart, but it still rocks.

If you like The Clash, check out:
The Clash Live: From Here To Eternity
The Clash Give 'Em Enough Rope
The Clash London Calling
The Clash The Clash
The Clash ¡Sandinista!
The Clash Super Black Market Clash
The Boo Radleys Wake Up!
Allen Ginsberg Holy Soul Jelly Roll
Parliament Free Your Mind...and Your Ass Will Follow

-- Matt Cibula