Day 0439 - London Calling

The Clash "London Calling" (1979) - got it

From a ho-hum punk album on day 438 to one of the greats.  To be fair, the Clash were barely 'punk' by this stage.  The attitude remained, and some of the more direct, raw 'rock' tracks still reflect that side of their sound, but the band were pulling influences from all corners: rockabilly, northern soul, post-punk, ska, reggae... even hints of new-wave.

 With a run of 19 tracks, I do tend to get a feeling of 'track fatigue' with it.  Most of these tracks are good and I can pick out pretty much any one track and enjoy it, but it just seems as though 65 uninterrupted minutes of Clash is probably slightly too much in one sitting for me.

Day 0377 - The Clash

The Clash "The Clash" (1977) - got it

The Clash mostly eschewed the self-destructive ideology of many of their peers, digging more into the political anger and cynicism. According to the book (and a Joe Strummer doco I saw a while back) they were accused of sloganeering and bandwagon jumping in some corners, but they made good music, so who really cares what their motivations were. As best as I can tell, the lyrics of songs like "Career opportunities" and "I'm so bored with the USA" seem authentic enough.

The band soaked up the multiple cultural influences of living in West London at the time, with sounds including reggae, ska and rocksteady fusing into their punk with a bit more musicality than some of their contemporaries could/wanted to included.