"Give 'Em Enough Rope" by the Clash-why is it so unlovable?

whats next ?
London Calling could have been even greater if edited to a single LP ?
come on you Clash fans, get a grip !!

 

To each their own. Sandinista does have some good songs, but there's way, WAY too much stuff on there that doesn't work. When the bad outweighs the good, I can't possibly call it a good album.

 

Oh please, are you actually trying to compare Sandinista to London Calling? Talk about getting a grip.

 

i did not

 

There is a one disc version of Sandinista http://www.discogs.com/Clash-Sandinista-Now/release/3422469 I have a copy.

 

I could do without any track after "Version City" but for the price at the time you could consider the 3rd LP a bonus disc.

 

I have two words which to me, mean that nothing on this album is "weak": Joe Strummer.

What I mean is this: Joe's performance on this album (just like every Clash/solo album, yes including Cut The Crap) has enough great moments that it lifts the less than great material.

I don't know how extemporaneous Joe was in the studio but it sure sounds like it - right out of the gate, the latter section of Safe European Home (which I think we all agree is the high water mark) Joe just rolls out this basically unintelligible tangent almost under his breath while Mick is belting out the refrain. Very cool.

As an aside, the seemingly off the cuff outros/codas that The Clash did (sometimes just vocally) are one of my favorite things about the band - so many great, surprising moments in already great songs. It's like finding an extra gift under the tree xmas morning.

Julie's in the Drug Squad - not as great as the greatest Clash but imo it's a damn fun and catchy tune. Great work from Topper. I love Joe's delivery on "you got the time to cut all of your hair."

Guns on the Roof - this tune is rife with great Joe Strummer line readings, starting with Joe with matter of factly testifying "I swear by almighty god to the tell the whole Truth and Nothing But... the TRUTH"

But he quickly escalates and by the time he gets to "guns guns shatter the lands" - He's barking and spitting out bile and venom. electrifying. Classic, imo.

Maybe it's just me but everytime I hear it, I am all ears as he squeaks out the "like" in "I like to be in Af-e-rica" as as the emphasis on "usA".

Perhaps not a great song but I submit it's a great Joe Strummer performance.

All You Young Punks - another one I quite like - always made me a little sad when I was growing up, this one. Melancholy tune. I dig how Joe starts the verse with a brief shout immediately before he utters a word.

The last verse has a lot of great Joe inflections.... how he emphasizes and elongates "FUTure" but, in comparison, spits out "coal." Great pause between "week" and "once" and he lets the "once" just drop down, driving home the ill fated factory stint. Again, the coda here is classic Joe ad libbing, riffing all the way out.

Just some random thoughts from a guy who also prefers the debut and London Calling and Sandinista but finds plenty of rewards in Joe's performance.

 

I've always heard that as "... count all of your hair", which would of course take a very long time.

 

that's probably right. funny. I heard it as "cut" when I was 13 or something and then never thought about it again.

 

Helpfully, there is a lyric book in the Clash on Broadway box that will clear this up:

They put him in a cell, they said you wait here
You've got the time to count all of your hair
You've got fifteen years
A mighty long time

 

that is helpful, since I was never sure if it was 15 or 50 (and I've got that CoB book, but I'm fully immersed in the vinyl trend and my mind didn't even go there )

 

I just happened to have it sitting on my desk next to me this morning...

 

Amen, brother — it's all true.

Joe Strummer keeps getting bigger and bigger with every year since he's been gone. Bob Marley-scale, almost.

 

It's not just you! That section of the song is my favorite of the whole album. Not only am I all ears too, I'm usually singing along with him.

 

Yes, even if some of the writing is a little under par compared to some of their classic cuts, there are some wonderful Strummer moments peppered all across the album.

 

Gene Grief of Epic Records did, presumably because epic didn't want the band to be put in the 'Asian music' bin. Remember, this was their first release inthe USA, and there were no band photos on the jacket.

By the way, the MOV reissue incorrectly deleted the cover art credit for Hugh Brown, who came up with the 'Mao on horseback encounters dead cowboy'.

 

So, if 'Give 'em Enough Rope' was their first release in the US, this means that album was great enough to break through in the US with it. In that case I would not call that album so unlovable...

 

Was a pretty impressive 'debut', at least among critics and those of us who got it up to no. 122 in the Billboard LP charts. Was a little strange getting my U.K. import of their real 1st album a month later, from a sonic standpoint. It sounded a lot more primative in comparison--at first listen, that is. Plus, Terry Chimes has a totally different drumming style.

 

You're perceiving this from the American point of view, don't you? I ask this because I see you're living now in Germany.

 

Yep! InKnoxville, Tennessee, I bought it at Music Jungle, which was usually cheaper than Record Bar.

Come to think of it, I've never run across any German pressings of Clash albums, only Dutch ones.

 

Sandinista is a great album all on it's own, all three albums of sprawl of it. It sounds more like it's time and place than any other album of the era I can thing of. And it has all the idiosyncracies of theband and its aesthetic and sensibility on full display. I don't get the urge to reduced it to just another rock album. That's such a yawn. Like trying to turn Sandinista into Combat Rock. One of the things that makes Sandinista great is its breadth and peculiarity.

 

It was my gateway too, but nevertheless I've always thought its the Clash's least interesting and exciting album. It's the Clash album I've least wanted to listen to from the beginning, just because I've never thought the writing on the album was very strong. After "Safe European Home" and "Stay Free," the songs are forgettable to me. A collection of the singles between the first and third albums would have made a better album.

 

I have no problem with the band experimenting. London Calling wasn't just a bunch of rock songs, it too tried out different genres. The difference is it had great songs and was a much more focused album. Sandinista is definitely a sprawl... a great big sprawling mess. Too many of the songs are half-baked. It could've been a single album (and a good one at that) and still have had enough variety to not be just another rock album.

And who would want to turn Sandinista into Combat Rock? Combat Rock is even worse. The Clash had forgotten how to write interesting songs at this point.

 

Me too. It's fun to put on once in a great while, but it's no replacement for the real thing.

 

I think the album has some of the band's best and most sophisticated songs like "Broadway" -- which is almost like The Clash's "Wharf Rat" -- their best political songs like "Washington Bullets, songs like "Street Parade" really capture the way the band sounded in that era, and the very dubby, spacey, stretched out nature of the songs, the odd addition of outside voices like Timon Dogg's, the clip of Strummer calling into the radio station to request music -- all of it together gives the album its heft, scope, and sense of time and place. I wouldn't change a thing about it. I think its, well, er, magnificent.