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We saw Psychedelic Furs play at the end of this past July at The Riverside here in Milwaukee. X opened and honestly that’s really who we were really there to see (X, still in their original lineup, are still very much on top of their game and put on amazing show). Psychedelic Furs were…OK. Just two members of the Furs who were in the band in ’82 remain: Richard Butler, who peacocked around the stage so all eyes on him, and his brother Tim Butler on bass (who I honestly can’t envision right now even though the show was just under two months ago: Richard took up all of my mental bandwidth). The only song from Forever Now that they played that we saw was “President Gas” (which has an overblown 80’s sound on the LP). We left after “Pretty in Pink” which was about 2/3 of the way through the show. They played “Love My Way” second-to-last and finished the set with “Heaven” before the encore.

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I love Combat Rock so much – it was the first Clash album I bought; I played the living shit out of Side A and still know every single word (embarrassingly I’m still relatively ignorant of Side B because my brain stopped retaining lyrics sometime around 1989). “Know Your Rights” is one of the best album openers ever (“This is a public service announcement…with guitars!”) and is tied for my top 3 tracks on the LP. “Know Your Rights” was the first single released from Combat Rock and hit #43 in the UK. Tied with “Know Your Rights” for album favorite is “Car Jamming,” the funky reggae-ish traffic tune that name checks Lauren Bacall and the combat chemical Agent Orange. My third is the world beat staccato’d protest song “Straight To Hell” which was the flip to the double-A-side single for the second release of “Should I Stay or Should I Go” (which is another fabulous track, so accessibly pop, and the only Clash song to hit #1 in the UK). And of course I love “Rock the Casbah;” I watched the video – directed by legendary Don Letts – endlessly on MTV during the summer of ‘83 as the song hit #8 in the US, The Clash’s only American top 10 single. I also really love “Red Angel Dragnet.” It’s super-weird with mostly Joe Strummer doing his take on sprechgesang.

It’s strange listening to Side B since my past habit was to simply start Side A over, but here I go anyway. “Overpowered By Funk” is, um, funky, though not that overpowering. It definitely foreshadows the direction that Mick Jones’ Big Audio Dynamite would take. “Atom Tan” is more traditional Clash but with a lot of 80′s echoey production effects. “Sean Flynn” has saxophone, flute and world beats (making me no longer surprised that 1980′s punk me didn’t listen to it). “Ghetto Defendant” is pretty cool with the inclusion of Allen Ginsberg speaking lines of poetry. “Inoculated City” has those pop whispers that seep into many Clash tracks (like “Train in Vain” and “Lost in the Supermarket”). “Death Is a Star” is art-punk, mixing spoken poetry, vaguely off-tune crooning Beatle-esque harmonies, and harpsichord?

*This is an almost direct cut and copy from my post on May 14th, 2018. I have to work most of today so zero time to compose any new material.

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“Melt With You” is, of course, amazing and I danced my ass off to it countless times in the 80’s, but the rest of After the Snow is great and highly danceable as well. My other top tracks are the album opener “Someone’s Calling” (released as the third and final single from the album in ’83), “Face of Wood,” the LP’s first single “Life in the Gladhouse” and the title track “After the Snow.”

We have had the chance to see Modern English perform a couple of times in the past few years, first in 2017 as part of the Retro Futura tour of 80’s new wave/pop bands and then again in 2019 along with The Alarm and Gene Loves Jezebel. It’s always startling when you’re in the first row and one of the band members makes direct eye contact with you during a solo:

Modern English at Turner Hall, 2019

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