What's the worst song on London Calling?

Yay!

I love this album. I hate you guys.

I like this album way more viscerally than cerebrally. All the lyrics could be about shoving kittens into pint glasses for all I care, I just heart the way the geetars and drums and voices sound.

Have you Realised that Rock Stars
Always seem to lie so much?
John Lydon once said he cared
But he never really gave a fuck
Said he'd use the money he made
So that people would have somewhere to go
But now he lives in the USA
and Snorts Coke after the Show.

Why is it that Rock Stars
Always seem to lie so much?
Joe Strummer once said he cared,
but he never really gave a fuck
Said he'd use the money he made
To set up a radio station to make the
Airwaves full of something more than Shit
Have you noticed we're still Waiting?

You must realise that Rock Stars
Always seem to lie so much
Some will always tell you that they care,
But they don't really give a fuck,
Still you suckers don't ever learn
That rock stars deal in money not truth
It's good Buisiness to exploit you
Just look at Lydon or Strummer for Proof.

They said that we were trash,
Well the name is Crass, not Clash.
They can stuff their punk credentials
Cause it's them that take the cash.
They won't change nothing with their fashionable talk,
All their RAR badges and their protest walk,
Thousands of white men standing in a park,
Objecting to racism's like a candle in the dark.
Black man's got his problems and his way to deal with it,
So don't fool yourself you're helping with your white liberal shit.
If you care to take a closer look at the way things really stand,
You'd see we're all just niggers to the rulers of this land.

Punk was once an answer to years of crap,
A way of saying no where we'd always said yep.
But the moment we saw a way to be free,
They invented a dividing line, street credibility.
The qualifying factors are politics and class,
Left wing macho street fighters willing to kick arse.
They said because of racism they'd come out on the street.
It was just a form of fascism for the socialist elite.
Bigotry and blindness, a marxist con,
Another clever trick to keep us all in line.
Neat little labels to keep us all apart,
To keep us all divided when the troubles start.

Pogo on a nazi, spit upon a jew,
Vicious mindless violence that offers nothing new.
Left wing violence, right wing violence, all seems much the same,
Bully boys out fighting, it's just the same old game.
Boring fucking politics that'll get us all shot,
Left wing, right wing, you can stuff the lot.
Keep your petty prejudice, I don't see the point,
ANARCHY AND FREEDOM IS WHAT I WANT.

I like their first album better, it is teh album for all seasons

I really love this album, and I really love the Clash. I love the early stuff, I love Combat Rock, it's all part of the story for me. And I think that I'm right to do so, and I can defend it if called upon to do so, and I am not sure how much I can trust anyone who just shits all over them and dismisses them out of hand. I just wanted to say that.

Oh and "Guns of Brixton" is easily the worst song on London Calling.

"with your snakeskin suit/and your alligator boots
you don't need a laundress/just take it to the vet!"

It ain't T.S. Eliot and it won't change the world but it's a great song off a great album. Sorry if it's not your thing, but even apart from whatever posturing Strummer did, the Clash are a damn good band.

I am sadly unable to appreciate The Clash as a punk band, but only as a rock band, and (at my most disgustingly honest) as a pop band. I'm sadly with whoever said that he couldn't give a fat turd about the lyrics. I couldn't either, unless I'm indulging myself in some opressed-class fantasy, which really is no way to listen to music.

Great album, though. Real fucking catchy.

-- Ian c=====8

Not the worst track, but probably the favorite track of people who wish they were listening to a different album.

I GET GOOD ADVICE FROM THE ADVERTISING WORLD
TREAT ME NICE, PARTY GIRL

1/ I really really can't stand their music at all. It just sounds tinny and feeble and weak and the singing just sounds horrible to me.

plus

2/media coverage over the years kind ogf magnifies this into haterd a bit. oh, I know it shouldn't and stuff, but you know, here we go round again, "from the westway to the best rock n roll band in the world", "oh of course I like the clash", pr*g r*ck was so terribly middle class, that's why the clash were so necessary" (nb I'm not making the last one up, I heard it on radio 4 [oh, irony piled upon irony there, eh?] a few years ago) get this thrown at you frequently and regularly over a 10-15yr period and see how long it takes you to bristle at the very mention of the group's name!!

My second runner up would be "Death or Glory".

But I like "Koka Kola" and "lover's Rock"

Worst song on the album is EASILY "Lost in the Supermarket" (I fully expect to catch a huge stack of abuse for this comment). It's crappy, whingey milksoppery that makes Robert Smith and Morrissey sound like Lemmy and Jaz Coleman by comparison.

There's a handful of good tracks on the album: "Supermarket," "London Calling," "Spanish Bombs," another one maybe (I forget). The rest sounds like a fucking BAR BAND.

Rudie Can't Fail
Wrong'em boyo
Brand new cadillac
Koka Kola
Lovers rock

cut the crap, make an ep, pleeeeease

Stewart O. right around the money all thru this thread.

worst rock-n-roll mucho-macho-songs on london calling
Rudie Can't Fail
Wrong'em boyo
Brand new cadillac
Koka Kola
Lovers rock

How are any of these songs macho? "Wrongem Boyo" and "Brand New Cadillac" (covers, by the way, one ska, one rockabilly) are about as anti-macho as it gets.

1. Everything about the intro on "The Guns of Brixton"

2. The funky, speeded up part on "Death or Glory" ("playing the blues of kings sure looks better now")

3. Joe Strummer's wordless gurgling on "The Right Profile" (after "There I go again shaking, but I ain't got the chills")

4. The weird, harmonics-using rhythm guitar playing on "Lost in the Supermarket" ("I empty a bottle, I feel a bit free")

5. The transition from the last guitar strum on "Brand New Cadillac" to the first one on "Jimmy Jazz"

6. The transition from the end of "Hateful" to the beginning of "Rudie Can't Fail" (the only Bo Diddley New Orleans ska song every recorded)

7. Joe Strummer saying "The Ice Age is coming" right after that scary, backward-recorded guitar solo on "London Calling," at which point you might believe him...

8. The part where the bass casually cuts out and then comes back on "Revolution Rock." (Also: "Weddings, parties, anything...")

9. "It's the best years of your life they want to steal" (on "Clampdown")

10. The fact that I still can't figure out if "Spanish Bombs" is pro- or anti-terrorist 25 years later. (See "Tommy Gun.")

Hey guess what? The newest Bachelor series features a bachelor from the UK and is called The Bachelor: London Calling!! Hilarious? Yes! (And to answer to original thread question: ALL OF THEM, of course.)

Scott wins for quoting Rudimentary Peni upthread.

Also; all of them.

jimmy jazz

What latebloomer said.

"Revolution Rock."

i love 'jimmy jazz'

i might say 'wrong em boyo'. it's pretty good though

Lovers Rock

Only two tracks remaining untouched:

"The Right Profile"
"Clampdown"

There are no bad songs on "London Calling", but "Cadillac" is kind of pointless.

"London Calling"

And don't you realize how fucking right wing that Crass lyric actually is?

geir otm

those are the perfect two tracks to remain untouched

"Spanish Bombs"

Jimmy Jazz

Why don't people like this album? I think it's great!

because it always makes the usual lists and this is ilm

Guns of Brixton is the only killer song on it.

Lovers Rock

Guns of Brixton is the only killer song on it.

― Conan The Asshander (Doran)

Nonsense. Guns in Brixton is a highlight but Lost in the Supermarket and Spanish Bombs are also killer (even tho the later has some of the worst spanish mispronunciations I've heard in a song).

mispronounciations*

Horses for courses. I'm not really a Clash fan. I spent ages trying to like them when I was younger and felt that I should but I think those two songs a pretty poor really. I could make myself a better mini album out of Sandinista! than I could out of London Calling.

"Sing, Michael, Sing!"

title track is all time zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

For me it's what's not to like? It's not a very 'punk' rock album, but it's a great pop record with lots of fun and variety and catchy tunes, so for those reasons it's pretty classic. Guns Of Brixton has that bassline, Wrong Em Boyo is just the right side of goofy fun, and lost in the supermarket has a peculiar pathos that kind of takes me offguard halfway through the record.

Yeah NV the title track is boring.

No it isn't, not with that Ride of the Valkyries bassline

Only dud here is "Lover's Rock", which isn't so much terrible as it is filler.

It's not a bad album, but it's not the go-to album for any of the essential aspects of the band, so I haven't listened to it in probably 15 years. (Listened to Sandinista! twice straight through on the drive from Atlanta last Monday though.)

went and youtube'd the original version (i think) of revolution rock. where previously i thought they added to every cover they chose, this one not so much so i agree w/it being the only not essential tune on LC. wrong 'em boyo is a fantastic original and a great cover to boot; while, imo, cadillac is off the charts a ferocious cover version so i don't understand Geir's upthread comment. except that it's Herr Geir. Lover's Rock might be a throwaway but it's still FUN.
"not the go-to for essential aspects of the band" except to hear how quickly they grew from 1978-1979 and became a perfect band with great songwriting and musicianship by their third album i guess