The Clash | Sandinista!Empty Bottle Evenings

Feb152016February 15, 2016February 15, 2016No Commentby Bake

The Clash | Sandinista!

Posted in Music

I was having dinner at a restaurant a few weeks ago and The Clash’s “Spanish Bombs” started playing. This got me thinking (shocking I know) so I went home and listened to London Calling for the first time in ages. Then that got me thinking more about The Clash. Their 3rd album is their masterpiece, not necessarily my favorite (but maybe), or even their best work as masterpiece would probably imply, but in the way that a band’s third record is often their most lasting offering: the one that gets the most acclaim and often is the most ambitious without going too far off script. I think of their first two albums as their punk albums and London Calling as their rock opus, while Combat Rock is their new wave/pop-rock/sellout album and their last album was just all Joe Strummer could muster in their final days and is just pure garbage to be listened to once and forgotten.

Which is of course is all bullshit. Even their early stuff wasn’t straight punk rock (at least musically) which is weird with the whole The Clash sort of being synonymous with punk thing. But musically they have always had more elements of different genres and lyrically they remained political even when they sounded more Talking Heads than Sex Pistols. But as they say punk rock is an attitude so the Clash can be punk all they want to be, whether they are releasing “Career Opportunities” or “Rock the Casbah”. Punk is a lie, listen to what you want. Anyway while I’m rambling, I didn’t mean to dis Combat Rock, that’s a great album. And judging by the amount of t-shirts and posters with its album cover that I still see around over three decades later some people out there agree with me. Back to whatever the hell I’m talking about. Without trying to I established a timeline in my head for The Clash: debut, another punk album, masterpiece, commercially friendly 80s album, sad death. The only problem, other than all the others I just mentioned, is that I missed an album.

Now I will fully admit that I’m a casual Clash fan at best, and I know my memory is pure dogshit, but I seriously don’t remember ever listening to Sandinista! Recorded and released between London Calling and Combat Rock, I can understand how it’s a forgotten album for a lot of people, but for me this is really forgotten. The kind of forgotten that you never listened to it or selectively blacked out. I only recognize two songs “Look Here” which, while an enjoyable mix of blues and jazz, is not even their song, and “Police on My Back” where I can’t be certain I know it and it’s not just that I’m familiar with how a calendar works. Also, they didn’t write that song either. What the hell? There’s over 30 fucking songs on this album, how did I miss them? Also, who releases this many songs at one damn time?

I guess the bigger question for me is: was I really missing anything here? There are some good songs of course but there’s a lot of dub and reggae stuff that I’m just not into. Also present: one of those weird 80s tracks (“Lightning Strikes”) that sound like an awkward take on early hip hop a la Blondie’s “Rapture”. And then there are songs like “Somebody Got Murdered” that has less grit & energy than The (fucking) Smiths. I understand that this is from 1980 but I could leave those songs in the past forever. I guess this was released a triple album and it seems to suffer from the filler and over-indulgence problem that double discs fall into. There just too much crap here. I think there could be a good 10 track record in here musically, and lyrically there are some pretty interesting political musings that were probably ignored then and are the parts of our history that are still ignored today. But that doesn’t make them less true! Personally I’m glad that I’ve actually listened to Sandinista! a few times now so I can better understand the history of The Clash. But listening to it just confirms for me why so many people like the symbol of The Clash but could take or leave a lot of their music as a whole.