Ladies and Gentleman, The Clash!

Hey there, K-101.7 Faithful, it's Dave In The Cave from the K-101.7 Poor Excuse For A Morning Show, kicking off a new feature I just came up with while I was typing this called Music Matters. A look at albums, songs and maybe the odd music-related bit of fun that really truly DEEPLY has had an impact on me. 

(So, you know, basically it's the same as everything else I do, but now with an all new, kicky title.)

I was driving around my little town, doing the dad thing, dropping off kids hither and yon, and had grabbed this to play along the ride. And once the kids were gone, and the windows were down, this album started morphing right in front of me from "that cd I grabbed off the rack" into "this is one of the best albums I have ever heard." Clicking around through the tracks, turning up the volume a little louder with each cut. It sounded so good, so NOT what I hear passing as pop music these days, that I felt compelled to write this article.

I always start at the very end of the record, with the single that was added so late to the original album that it didn't appear in the track listening. The one I remember blasting from our local pop station in between "Fool In The Rain" by Led Zeppelin and "Romeo's Tune" by that one guy. December 1979. And, yet, because of the Clash's secret pop smarts and non-trend chasing, we cut our own $%$#@ path sensibility, this song steps up and above it's time of origin into that special zone of "the song that will always sound like it was recorded last Tuesday." That's a thing I just made up.

A thing The Clash had in spades was that they could write incredibly great pop songs, in great quantity, a thing lot of other Brit bands of the "Punk" variety struggled with.

From there, we move to the title track, and the world of the seventies is being torn down right in front of our eyes. This was the album's first single and it's an angry, slamming calling card, Joe Strummer as always sounds slurry with the raspy 3am pissed off English Drunk Guy voice, the guitar chopping chopping away at your ears while the bass swings around like it's drunkenly looking for the next place to lob a Molotov Cocktail. "Phony Beatle Mania Has Bitten the Dust." Preach on.

You don't dare skip out of the order now, cos immediately on the heels of "London Calling" is this tune, a souped up, snarling bit of swanky ass Peter Gunn thievery called "Brand New Cadillac."  The Clash were incredible at taking musical influences and swirling them and spinning them around into something raw and new and...brother, the louder you play this, the harder it kicks...

From there I would move over to track 8, "Lost In The Supermarket." Written by Joe Strummer, sung by Mick Jones, the lyrics shoving aside sloganeering and tough guy bomb tossing and delving into actual personal details drawn from Strummer's childhood. I am particularly fond of the lines, "I wasn't born so much as I fell out/Nobody seemed to notice me/We had a hedge back home in the suburbs/Over which I never could see..."

Okay, we've barely scratched the surface of the record's 19 tracks. This a rich treasure chest of meat and taters blood and sweat rock and roll, written and recorded in a "real intensity of effort" and if you have the means, I highly recommend picking up a copy immediately. It is so choice.

And that's today's K-101.7 Music Matters

(oh, and the back cover has a photo from a show In Austin. And The Clash shot a video in Austin. So, as far as I'm concerned, that makes them an important local band. I don't care if that doesn't actually make sense. Shut up.)