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All the Rage, the band’s first LP, went to #26 in the US, propelled by their hit single “Tenderness” (#27 US, #95 UK); I loved this song back in ’84. It appeared in two iconic 80’s films: Sixteen Candles and Weird Science, giving it broad exposure though I do remember it getting heavy rotation on MTV. Mick Jones plays guitar on that track. General Public released three other singles from All the Rage: “General Public,” “Never You Done That” and “Hot You’re Cool.”

We saw Dave Wakeling play live most recently this past April at Turner Hall in Milwaukee as part of The (English) Beat (totally revamped of course, I’m pretty Wakeling was the only original member of the band playing). Besides Beat songs, they performed two songs from All The Rage, “Tenderness,” of course, and “Never You Done That.”

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The B-side to “London Calling” is a cover of the 1978 song by Willie Williams “Armagdieon Time,” a reggae tune that also appears on The Clash’s Black Market Clash (1980), a collection of “b-sides and rarities”).

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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, the lyrics still depressingly relevant in 2018 – probably even more now than in ‘82. “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. The third is the   world beat staccatoed 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) (I also love M.I.A.’s sampling of “Straight To Hell” on her 2008 song “Paper Planes”). And of course I love “Rock the Casbah,” the video, directed by legendary Don Letts, I watched endlessly on MTV during the summer of ‘83 as the song hit #8 in the US, their only American top 10 single. I also really love the other Side A track not already listed, “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, not that overpowering though. 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?

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“Should I Stay Or Should I Go?” from Combat Rock is probably one of the best-known Clash singles and certainly their biggest hit, making it to #1 in the UK (albeit 10 years later; upon its initial release it reached #17 in the UK and #45 in the US). Though Mick Jones’ Clash songs are usually not my favorite – I’m much more partial to Joe Strummer or the rare Paul Simonon – it’s difficult not to love “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?” with the instantly recognizable intro and irresistible guitar hook. It’s been listed on a few greatest songs of all-time lists and recently regained well-deserved popularity with its feature in Stranger Things. The B-side “Cool Confusion,” sung by Joe Strummer, is reggae-relaxed with experimental beep-boop electronic pops. “Cool Confusion” only appears on posthumously released comps like Super Black Market Clash (1994) and box sets (Sound System, 2013).

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Sandinista! hit #19 on the UK charts at the end of 1980 and in 1981 made it to #24 on the US charts. The Clash released four singles from the Sandinista! sessions: “The Call Up,” (not on the album), “Police On My Back,” “Hitsville U.K.” and “The Magnificent Seven.” The original release, which this is, includes a tri-fold newspaper style lyric sheet The Armagideon Times no.3 with cartoons drawn by Steve Bell.

My favorite tracks are “The Crooked Beat” (mostly because it is one of the rare Clash songs where Paul Simonon sings lead), the reggae-meets-theCure-style-goth “One More Dub,” “Let’s Go Crazy” with its madcap calypso, the punk anthem “Police on My Back,” reggae-mellow “The Equaliser” and the violin-heavy “Lose This Skin” which was written and sung by Tymon Dogg (who later joined Joe Strummer’s band the Mescaleros). Though all the songs are credited to The Clash, it’s fairly easy to tell which ones were primarily composed by Joe Strummer versus the ones by Mick Jones (political-punk vs. pop sensibility) and the Strummer ones are what I lean toward (i.e. on disc 2 I’m not crazy about “Somebody Got Murdered” – the title belying the upbeat, boppy music and obviously written by Jones – but the next track, “One More Time” is rich, raw and angry: Strummer!). I’m also not crazy about the version of “Career Opportunities” (originally on their debut album); Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ keyboard player Mickey Gallagher’s sons sing, backed by a harpsicordy piano and it just kind of ruins it for me.

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This LP is the band’s first release and it reached #27 on the charts in the UK but did not crack the top 100 in the US.  Allmusic reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine describes BAD as “a modernist audio-terrorist outfit” which retained the punk ethos of The Clash but took the musical influences of dance, electronica, reggae and rap to new, “avant-rock” levels. “The Bottom Line” is  my favorite track on the record: its guitar hook and Jones’ vocals are the most reminiscent of The Clash sound (and interestingly it is the LP’s only track credited solely to Jones rather than to both Mick Jones and Don Letts).

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