how did the Clash change your life?

defining moment: NYE on Y2K and the clock struck midnite. the dj played 'let's go crazy'

i thought it was perfect.

How is an album "often" terrible?

It's all right. Whenever I listen to it, though, I think about sitting in my high school parking lot.
As for Sandinista, I like a handful of songs(The Leader is snappy). It would have been much better at around 12 tracks. Why there is that interminable period of dub is beyond me.

ditto, and I bought it long after I first heard London CAlling.

Sandinista! is kind of enh by percentages but there's like 20 good-to-amazing songs on it, so there's that.

New wave was then where the interest was for the next couple of years.

There's a really good Clash LP hidden among the unlistenable stuff on Sandinista.

I did discover the Damned before the clash (Neat Neat Neat etc), but only had money for singles back then. I got DDD much later as a pic disc, but only played it the once.

Sorry, is this not the "How did the Damned change your life" thread?

The Clash didn't change my life, the Sex Pistols did. The Clash were always good in 76/77 but they didn't become *that* important to me until 'White Man In Hammersmith Palais' - I think I finally GOT them then.

It is - as indeed are The Black Album and Strawberries.

Ummmmm..... The Clash, The Clash, The Clash.... ah yes: The Clash were actually in the next studio recording London Calling while The Damned were recording MGE - and consequently sundry members of each band make brief cameo appearances on the other band's album.

(You'll have to get one now...)

Quick check: post entirely about The Clash - doesn't even mention The Damned!

-- A homunculus of Darby Crash, .... created for the purposes of *EVIL* (showroo...), May 5th, 2005.

OTFM

i agree with dr. c, the sex pistols were a thousand times more life-changing for me than the clash - yet i'd probably rather listen to the latter now, just because there's only like 15 or 16 sex pistols songs and there's dozens of clash songs i haven't listened to all that closely yet. they were a good band.

Bullshit.

"Bullshit."

If you subscribe to the view that I think most 'Pistols fans would share i.e. that anything recorded after John left the band does n't count; and excluding 3 or 4 cover versions; then I make it 15 songs that were properly and officially recorded and released, plus (Don't You Give Me) No Lip; Belsen Was A Gas and Flowers Of Romance.

Or The Damned.

There are lots in Ipswich, at least when we played. They were all old and thought we were puffs. Talking of OLD - I saw Charlie Harper in the Dublin Castle a week ago. He's about 65 and still a punk, so yes there are still punks.

Alright maybe I'm not taking the question seriously! I'll read the thread you linked to.

When I saw the Pistols on the Anarchy tour, The Clash were the main support. They were good, but in comparison to the sizzling fury of J.Rotten they were pretty tame. When I saw the Clash for the last time (1982 on the Combat Rock tour) they were unbelievably great.

Ha! The first time I heard the Clash was hearing "Rock the Casbah" on American Top 40!

The Germs sucked. So did the Pistols. I'm with you on Flipper, though.

Words like "punk," "indie," "New Wave," and the like were not in my vocabulary yet. Knew nothing of the politics, fashion, historical context, etc., or the aesthetic posturing of Jones/Strummer.

It was only much later, after detours through synthypop, new wave, "classic rock," "college rock," classical, and jazz that I thought again about the Clash.

I will say this: London Calling is, to my ear, a fucking great rock and roll album, context or no context. I don't think the same can be said of the entire Sandinista project, or a lot of the debut. There is a little bit of "had to have been there" about, say, "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" and even "White Riot." "Guns of Brixton" and "Magnificent Seven" seem a little embarrassingly overblown.

I still think that "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go" were darn catchy rock tunes, a cut above the rest of what was on the radio at the time. "London Calling" and "Train In Vain," despite overexposure, still stand up well.

Germs, Flipper, DKs were all yet to come. The Clash was as far from RS-endorsed as you could get. Establish one chronology.

I was pretty much solidly into Kiss, Pink Floyd, the Beatles and starting to get into metal in grade school when one particularly enlightened schoolmate of mine -- Zach Tobin, probably the first Punk Rocker at St.David's (largely due to his art-collecting boho parents) --- starting frothing at the mouth about this new sound called Punk Rock. I remember listening to some of the noise his cruddy little tape recorder was spewing out, but I was still hung up on crap like the first Boston record (not a bad album, I still defend). My father was working in the UK at the time for FORBES magazine and befriended someone at CBS/Epic records, who very nicely packed together a box of promo LPs to be sent home for myself and my sister. Inside were various articles of garbage by Evelyn Champagne King and pre-fame REO Speedwagon, but two records that caught my eye (that my sister clearly had no interest in, mercifully) were the first album by The Clash (the cover shot of three thugs in an alley immediately captured my imagination) and Pure Mania by the Vibrators. We played them a lot at first solely for comedic value ("heh heh heh, they can't even play!"), but I gradually started to get into them (as they made the lumpen strains of Pink Floyd, Kiss and Boston sound positively neolithic). Sometime shortly before this, I remember seeing Devo on Saturday Night Live and being completely capitivated (though I initially thouht they were just another conceptual sketch). Once the older brother of a friend of mine gave me a poorly recorded cassette of It's Alive by the Ramones, I was hooked. While I never totally renounced Kiss and Pink Floyd and those other bands, my true alleigance was to all this Punk stuff (though I stubbornly pursued my love for slackjawed, idiotic metal -- which was tougher back then, as the two camps did not happily co-exist at the time). The real point of departure came when I was packing up my crap to goto college. I couldn't take on my vinyl, so certain records had to stay home. With the exceptions of a few choice LPs by Motorhead, Metallica, Accept, Venom and `Maiden, I left most of my heavy metal at home....and never really went back.

-- Alex in NYC (vassife...), April 9th, 2005.

I think the typical narrative is "I was into shlocky bubblegum dreck and the Clash saved me from it."

For me, the Clash didn't change my life when I first heard them as a preteen. It was later, when I was trying to attain indie cred as a near-adult and as a young adult that they changed my life. Just by reassuring me that I'd always liked some good music. I saw that cool punky people thought them cool and punky, and for me it was like I was recognizing an old friend in a crowd I thought was hostile.

"Ah, yes," I could honestly say, "I've liked the Clash since way back in the day." Nice distraction from the fact that way back in the day, I also liked Duran Duran and had a Members Only jacket.

there's no one moment I could cite where my life changed course b/c of The Clash, but they were definitely a lifeboat in later years as far as getting to be friends with a lot of people I probably wouldn't have been able to talk to had it not been for a mutual love of The Clash.

they didn't change my life, they just assured me that I was on the right path.

I gotta second the Flipper love though.

then your point was pretty badly expressed.

The Raincoats are the sonic equivalent of plain yogurt mixed with sour cream and egg whites.

never tried it, but if it tastes the way the raincoats sound it's got to be pretty fucking great. (hey alex, aren't there any female punks you like? keeping your well-known patti smith disdain in mind...)

Female Punks I like: Siouxsie Sioux, Pauline Murray, Wendy Orlean Williams (I'll let others debate whether or not she was the real deal or not), Exene Cervenka, Lydia Lunch, Debbie Harry.

Never enjoyed the Slits much.

Mmmmmmm. Plain yogurt mixed with sour cream and egg whites.

-- A homunculus of Darby Crash, .... created for the purposes of *EVIL* (showroo...), May 6th, 2005.

No.

whoa. you misread me duder. i meant the CLASH were politically lukewarm, not DK or Germs.

Nowadays I rarely listen to them, I don't know if it's boredom bred of familiarity or if the albums themselves are just as blah as they make me feel. I'd much rather listen to the Buzzcocks, Pistols, Damned or Stiff Little Fingers from that era - the albums/songs feel much more alive.

I mostly remember the really great B-side "If I Were John Carpenter" circa Megatop Phoenix that was this 9-minute acid house excursion that, alongside FYC/Two Men A Drum Machine, rivalled the "authentic" stuff.

But outside that, Blaaaaah! NOT AGED WELL. Which is why I think every hipster instrumental band is going to cop their discography within the next year... they're the last vestage of the used 80s vinyl bins yet to be re-appropriated.

And the Schoolly D story where he opened for B.A.D. and got shit thrown at him is classic (more for Schoolly D and not for B.A.D. fans certainly)

"Rush" was TERRIBLE! It had a nice verse, and chorus, and then... DERAIL! WTF? but it was a very bad WTF.

Jesus Christ, man.