Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Sandinista! often gets short shrift in discussions of The Clash's output. Critics and fans discuss it in dismissive tones, often viewing it as a failed experiment that should have been released as a single LP, not a triple. To be fair, there are quite a few people that view it as an underrated masterpiece that shows how effective the band was at disparate musical styles and gives more credence to the growth of their songwriting. The conventional approach in the punk rock community these days is to entirely dismiss the Clash and treat them as a punchline, except for their first record, which will always remain the classic for punk fans because it includes straightforward angry, punk numbers. However, these are not often punk enough.  London Calling remains their acclaimed classic rock masterpiece, while Combat Rock is their breakthrough. Fortuitously, the only radio track off London Calling is continuously played on classic rock radio alongside Combat Rock's "Rock th...

239. Law of the Border (1966), Omar Lutfi Akad, Dadas 240. Laura (1944), Otto Preminger, 20th Century Fox 241. Yellow (2013), Ryan Haysom, Saboteur 242. The Rise and Fall of the Clash (2012), Danny Garcia, Icon 243. The Weather Underground (2002), Sam Green and Bill Siegel, Shadow 244. On the Bowery (1956), Lionel Rogosin, Milestone 245. Gil Scott-Heron: Black Wax (1983), Robert Mugge, Mug-Shot  246. Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966), Harold P. Warren, Emerson 247. Moonlight (2016), Barry Jenkins, A24 248. Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten (2007), Julien Temple, Vertigo/IFC

Combat Rock , released on May 14, 1982, was the record that monetarily put the Clash on the top of the punk heap. Even so, it has never been seen as a particularly good album, especially compared to their first self-titled album (both British and American versions) and London Calling . Even Give 'Em Enough Rope has more proponents. After the Clash released the double album London Calling, they released Sandinista to little fanfare. The triple LP felt bloated. Its predecessor had included experimentation and attempts to expand the band's repertoire, mostly as homage to the American roots forms that the band had consciously (or not) avoided on their first two albums. Sandinista was another beast entirely -- the band took an everything but the kitchen sink approach, experimenting with dub, hip hop, children choirs, and even took a hit on royalties so they could release it in this fashion. Combat Rock continued some of this experimentation, also flirting with world music and ...

The first 8-track I ever purchased was The Clash's underrated Give 'Em Enough Rope from a dusty shelf at my hometown thrift store in the mid 1990s. It was quite a musical find, and has, perhaps, led to a lifetime of scanning such shelves for musical esoterica. The Give 'Em Enough Rope 8-track is an unassuming wonder; it does not even have the iconic font of other early issues. The band's name is in the block capital print of the early U.S. pressings; I'm not sure how many of these were even manufactured. The later U.S. pressings had a fake oriental font that was later replaced by the UK design. The iconic cover adds another level to the Clash's cowboy/rebel mythology. Indeed, the final mastering was done in the United States under the eye of Sandy Pearlman, best known for his work with Blue Oyster Cult. A great account of these sessions and others is found in Pat Gilbert's superlative biography, Passion is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash. Th...

In issues of the old "Lookout Records! catalog," Larry Livermore, or some earnest shitworker, referred to Pot Valiant's eponymous EP as "what your cough syrup daydreams sound like." With an awful cold, while fighting through my own cough syrup haze, I listened to the new Green Day album for the umpteenth time, wondering just how far the boys from Rodeo had come from their early days on the aforementioned (and sadly gone) pop punk label. Green Day's new record, Uno! , is much better than expected. Gone is much of the rock star posturing and  topical songwriting that plagued or strengthened their last two rock operas: 2004's American Idiot and 2009's 21st Century Breakdown . Nor is there an overarching conceptual theme, except perhaps an attempt to write fun songs in the tradition of their Lookout! records. Yet, if you are looking for the ubiquitous return to form record, you may need to imbibe in similar large amounts of cough syrup. Perhaps a r...