Correction: Original Clash band members Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon, along with other musicians, recorded the group’s final album Cut the Crap. This article incorrectly named the final album and who worked on it.
An earlier version of this story had a long list of bands and singer/ songwriters that were influenced by The Clash. But I deleted it and started over.
The truth is, if you’ve picked up a guitar in the past 25 years or so and tried to sing about something other than how somebody broke your poor heart, then you’ve felt the sway of Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon (and, off and on, Terry Chimes), the scruffy English punks who were in “The Only Band That Matters.”
From the barbed-wire rage of their first two albums, The Clash and Give ’Em Enough Rope, through the breakout genius of London Calling and the sprawling musical explorations on Sandinista!, not to mention the ubiquitous radio hits from Combat Rock, The Clash were one of the most important bands to come from the London underground of the late ’70s.
They were rhythm rebels in leather and a Mohawk who mixed punk, pop, reggae, rockabilly, dub, world music and politics into an ambitious strain of rock ’n’ roll that to this day sounds vital.
And it’s all here on Sound System (Sony Legacy, 12 CDs), a new boxed-set retrospective of the band’s career (with the exception of the dismal swan song Give ’Em Enough Rope, which Strummer recorded without the other founding members).
But wait! There’s more. Along with the first five studio albums - The Clash (the original version, not the U.S.-issued iteration), Give ’Em Enough Rope, London Calling, Sandinista! and Combat Rock,all newly remastered by the surviving band members (Strummer died in 2002) and engineer Tim Young - the set also includes three CDs of rare tracks, demos, non-album singles and B sides, along with a DVD of early footage of the band, interviews, part of a 1977 concert at Sussex University, all of the group’s videos and footage from the groundbreaking and raucous 17-show residence in May and June 1981 at Bond’s International Casino in New York.
And if the music weren’t enough, the packaging is also pretty unique. The whole thing comes in a cardboard boom box and includes copies of the Armagideon Times fanzine, posters, poster booklets, stickers, an “owner’s manual,” badges, a box to hold your badges, dog tags and more.
I’m relaying this from press materials, by the way. Sony didn’t send us the whole package. In fact, all we got were the bonus discs and the DVD, since Sony figured we already had the original albums (we did).
It’s priced at a whopping $249.99 at full retail (The Clash Hits Back, a two-CD greatest hits package, is also available for those just seeking a primer on the band and don’t already own The Essential Clash, for, oh, $11.99), which is kinda ironic when you recall that The Clash were often at war with their record company over what the band thought were overpriced albums (there is a story that the group took a cut in royalties to keep the price down on 1981’s three-LP set Sandinista!).
One thing is certain, though: The band and Sony Legacy haven’t skimped on the quality and quantity of the music. You probably know how great the albums are - with the exception of Combat Rock, which has three tremendous songs (“Straight to Hell,” “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” “Rock the Casbah”) and a lot of filler. And hearing the remastered versions should please audiophiles, but the bonus stuff, stretched across three CDs, is also top-notch.
Discs One and Two are loaded with singles, B-sides, alternate mixes, most of the Cost of Living EP (except for “Cost of Living Advert”), an early interview, the original version of “Capital Radio” and outtakes. It’s all highly listenable, especially that Cost of Living EP on Disc One, with its blistering version of “I Fought the Law,” along with “Gates of The West” and “Capital Radio Two.”
Disc Three, which includes four tracks from the band’s first recording session, is suitably raw, with its buzz saw guitars and Strummer screaming himself hoarse, but also shows how tight and driven The Clash was, even in its infancy. This version of “Janie Jones,” included from the group’s second recording session, has supplanted the official version on The Clash as my favorite.
The disc closes with a hyper, furious live set from 1979 in London that includes “City of the Dead,” “Jail Guitar Doors,” “English Civil War,” “Stay Free,” “Cheapskates” and “I Fought the Law.”
Yes, there have been other Clash boxes (The Clash on Broadway, for one), and you can probably track down lots of the DVD footage on You-Tube, but Sound System has brought together in one collection just about everything that seems worth gathering concerning this ridiculously influential foursome who proclaimed the end of Beatlemania and started a revolution of their own.
Style, Pages 51 on 09/29/2013