London Calling

[Guest Ohdistortedsmile1789]

Of all the so-called masterpieces in Rock music, the ones that make all the top albums lists, this is one that certainly deserves to be there. From the populist tragedy inherent in "Lost in the Supermarket", to the just plain bad-ass "Guns of Brixton", to the galvanizing "I'm Not Down", the teary-eyed dance of "Train In Vain (Stand By Me)", and many more, it's as diverse and gripping a set of songs as had been released since Exile On Main St.. In many ways it is similar to that album, with a great breadth of material covered, all spun together by musical smarts and pure emotion. I've bought many albums just because of their reputations, and this is one that really proves to be worthwhile to this day. Talk about a talented group of men in their primes.

[frankwhite]

i dont agree at all. i think its an awful album, almost an insulting album. it seems to me like a band dying to express a kind of diversity but with no honesty to it. it lacks passion and is chock full of...a kind of student-phoneyness. theres a big lie to that album that...i dunno, maybe its only me who sees it. i mean...it looks like a buncha london boys who are basically your intellectual student types posing as the working classes and DESPERATELY trying to express some kind of diversity and suceeding only in creating a kind of tedium. this is one of the most overrated albums in the world and a great students name drop to show that you have a varied taste (not directed at u OD, u know i love u). i think this album is pathetic to be honest. see diversity is best expressed in...not trying to recreate a kind of sound, rather taking elements and rearranging and most importantly, bringing something fresh and vital of your own (which the clash consistently failed to do) to the table and then...presenting your creation and more oft than not the end product ends up sounding like nothing you could imagine. im gonna use the example OD that i must come across like im pushin down everyones throat but i think its pertinent, of Public Image Limited. listen to those bass lines....thats pure dub reggae, then listen to the electronica work, reminiscent of Kraftwerk and like...totally entrenched in what rave house hardcore etc all ending up becoming. but my point is it is all thrown in the boiling pot with that X factor of PiL's own personality thrown in there to produce this..alein product that sounds unlike anything else and makes your (or maybe just my?) jaw drop open and go "what the fuck is this?!?!". the clash are like ok this is our reggae song, this is our punk song, this is our working class plight song, this is our history lesson song (spanish bombs much?) and they just come off REALLY phoney. just my opinion, i dont mean to rank anyones taste, just sayin what i see. i mean, i totally dont know as much as music as u and im CONSTANTLY askin what you meant by stuffs to...to understand y'know so really dont mean to offend you cuz you're totally like...like you know TONS more than me so you've got a lot more clarity to how you think so...take this for what its worth.

Edited May 7, 2007 by frankwhite

[pain cake]

Couldn't agree more, when I first bought this album about 2 years ago I didn't really get it at first, but after a few weeks I fell in love with it. The combination of Strummer/Jones is one of the most phenominal vocal and lyrical presence on an album since the Beatles. It's my #2 album behind Appetite

Honourable mentions are also Combat Rock and The Clash (US)

[Guest Ohdistortedsmile1789]

i dont agree at all. i think its an awful album, almost an insulting album. it seems to me like a band dying to express a kind of diversity but with no honesty to it. it lacks passion and is chock full of...a kind of student-phoneyness. theres a big lie to that album that...i dunno, maybe its only me who sees it. i mean...it looks like a buncha london boys who are basically your intellectual student types posing as the working classes and DESPERATELY trying to express some kind of diversity and suceeding only in creating a kind of tedium. this is one of the most overrated albums in the world and a great students name drop to show that you have a varied taste (not directed at u OD, u know i love u). i think this album is pathetic to be honest. see diversity is best expressed in...not trying to recreate a kind of sound, rather taking elements and rearranging and most importantly, bringing something fresh and vital of your own (which the clash consistently failed to do) to the table and then...presenting your creation and more oft than not the end product ends up sounding like nothing you could imagine. im gonna use the example OD that i must come across like im pushin down everyones throat but i think its pertinent, of Public Image Limited. listen to those bass lines....thats pure dub reggae, then listen to the electronica work, reminiscent of Kraftwerk and like...totally entrenched in what rave house hardcore etc all ending up becoming. but my point is it is all thrown in the boiling pot with that X factor of PiL's own personality thrown in there to produce this..alein product that sounds unlike anything else and makes your (or maybe just my?) jaw drop open and go "what the fuck is this?!?!". the clash are like ok this is our reggae song, this is our punk song, this is our working class plight song, this is our history lesson song (spanish bombs much?) and they just come off REALLY phoney. just my opinion, i dont mean to rank anyones taste, just sayin what i see.

Well, I think it coalesces better than you grant it to. I think most of the songs are about in the same mode. It's melodic Punk Rock for the most part. I love to talk about "Lost in the Supermarket", but bear with me; there's a real poignancy to that song, it really captures the pathetic nature of some people's lives in a modernizing world. That kind of song holds it's own anywhere. I might have pointed this out before as well, but most of the arguments you make should apply to Exile On Main St., but I don't think you would be pointing these things out in that case. I wouldn't say that these guys were all that inauthentic, Paul Simonon was at least from a very diverse part of London, and that's where the Reggae influences come from. I guess these types of albums get a sort of stigma about them that not everyone can get over, but I love it.

[pain cake]

the clash are like ok this is our reggae song, this is our punk song, this is our working class plight song, this is our history lesson song (spanish bombs much?) and they just come off REALLY phoney

I respect the rest of your post as oppinion, but that part I've heard you said before and I think it's utter garbage. If you've ever wrote a song you'd know that's not at all what they were trying to achieve, using your logic you could say that GN'R were trying to be like"This is my song about how much we drink, this is my song about my friends drug addiction, this is my song about my girlfriend" which is a completely ignorant way of looking at it. I think that after Give 'Em Enough Rope (Clash's 2nd album) the whole Riff rock thing obviously wasn't working so they started experimenting with the kinds of music that they grew up with and loved (raggae, funk etc.) It was just a coincidence that this album turned out to be something that your twisted logic doesn't appreciate.

[carsonskitz]

from what ive heard of this album, it sounds fucking great

[frankwhite]

i dont agree at all. i think its an awful album, almost an insulting album. it seems to me like a band dying to express a kind of diversity but with no honesty to it. it lacks passion and is chock full of...a kind of student-phoneyness. theres a big lie to that album that...i dunno, maybe its only me who sees it. i mean...it looks like a buncha london boys who are basically your intellectual student types posing as the working classes and DESPERATELY trying to express some kind of diversity and suceeding only in creating a kind of tedium. this is one of the most overrated albums in the world and a great students name drop to show that you have a varied taste (not directed at u OD, u know i love u). i think this album is pathetic to be honest. see diversity is best expressed in...not trying to recreate a kind of sound, rather taking elements and rearranging and most importantly, bringing something fresh and vital of your own (which the clash consistently failed to do) to the table and then...presenting your creation and more oft than not the end product ends up sounding like nothing you could imagine. im gonna use the example OD that i must come across like im pushin down everyones throat but i think its pertinent, of Public Image Limited. listen to those bass lines....thats pure dub reggae, then listen to the electronica work, reminiscent of Kraftwerk and like...totally entrenched in what rave house hardcore etc all ending up becoming. but my point is it is all thrown in the boiling pot with that X factor of PiL's own personality thrown in there to produce this..alein product that sounds unlike anything else and makes your (or maybe just my?) jaw drop open and go "what the fuck is this?!?!". the clash are like ok this is our reggae song, this is our punk song, this is our working class plight song, this is our history lesson song (spanish bombs much?) and they just come off REALLY phoney. just my opinion, i dont mean to rank anyones taste, just sayin what i see.

Well, I think it coalesces better than you grant it to. I think most of the songs are about in the same mode. It's melodic Punk Rock for the most part. I love to talk about "Lost in the Supermarket", but bear with me; there's a real poignancy to that song, it really captures the pathetic nature of some people's lives in a modernizing world. That kind of song holds it's own anywhere. I might have pointed this out before as well, but most of the arguments you make should apply to Exile On Main St., but I don't think you would be pointing these things out in that case. I wouldn't say that these guys were all that inauthentic, Paul Simonon was at least from a very diverse part of London, and that's where the Reggae influences come from. I guess these types of albums get a sort of stigma about them that not everyone can get over, but I love it.

y'know what? the exile on main street parrallel never occured to me until u just pointed it out now. but dammit that was like...i dunno am i just a pistols fan thats predudiced against the clash? i dont think so cuz i love their first album and a lotta the others, including cut the crap but...yeah i guess the parrallel you pointed out makes a dumpload of sense...why do i love Ex On Main Street??? u got me thinkin...

[frankwhite]

the clash are like ok this is our reggae song, this is our punk song, this is our working class plight song, this is our history lesson song (spanish bombs much?) and they just come off REALLY phoney

I respect the rest of your post as oppinion, but that part I've heard you said before and I think it's utter garbage. If you've ever wrote a song you'd know that's not at all what they were trying to achieve, using your logic you could say that GN'R were trying to be like"This is my song about how much we drink, this is my song about my friends drug addiction, this is my song about my girlfriend" which is a completely ignorant way of looking at it. I think that after Give 'Em Enough Rope (Clash's 2nd album) the whole Riff rock thing obviously wasn't working so they started experimenting with the kinds of music that they grew up with and loved (raggae, funk etc.) It was just a coincidence that this album turned out to be something that your twisted logic doesn't appreciate.

maybe you're right man because...im just like talkin about 'as far as i can see' and i think everyones scope has great limitations but...the guns parrallel is different because you're not talkin about genres, these are not intellectual masturbation points. and im sorry but...they did not grow up loving reggae like u say, funny how they never mentioned their 'love' for reggae until Johnny Rotten went on London Radio and playing his favorite tracks and putting Dr Alimentado and King Tubby and the like on there...funny how it took so long after to point out how they "loved" reggae. funny how the slits and a lotta other london scene bands released their reggae/dub influenced music before the clash decided to make these painfully blatant immitative songs to magnify their diversity. where were they before? i mean its not like they were the least vocal punk band. btw white man in the hammersmith palais is one of my favorite songs of all time.

[Shuffle]

I haven't really seen the greatness of this album (I've only listened to it a couple of times). I definetely prefer Give 'Em Enough Rope over this one, but I don't know, it might change in time. But the song London Calling is amazing.

[pain cake]

I haven't really seen the greatness of this album (I've only listened to it a couple of times). I definetely prefer Give 'Em Enough Rope over this one, but I don't know, it might change in time. But the song London Calling is amazing.

If you prefer Give 'Em Enough Rope then you probably won't grow to appreciate it, I consider Give 'Em Enough Rope to be their worst. You're probably into a lot more hard riffy rock which the album is all about.

[Lithium]

Greatest double-album after Exile and Mellon Collie.

[Shuffle]

I haven't really seen the greatness of this album (I've only listened to it a couple of times). I definetely prefer Give 'Em Enough Rope over this one, but I don't know, it might change in time. But the song London Calling is amazing.

If you prefer Give 'Em Enough Rope then you probably won't grow to appreciate it, I consider Give 'Em Enough Rope to be their worst. You're probably into a lot more hard riffy rock which the album is all about.

It's possible I suppose, but it's not like I only like hard rock with lots of riffs, I listen to a lot of other stuff too - but yeah I like it . It wouldn't be the first time I've grown to like a "complicated" (or whatever) album.

[bax]

Of all the so-called masterpieces in Rock music, the ones that make all the top albums lists, this is one that certainly deserves to be there. From the populist tragedy inherent in "Lost in the Supermarket", to the just plain bad-ass "Guns of Brixton", to the galvanizing "I'm Not Down", the teary-eyed dance of "Train In Vain (Stand By Me)", and many more, it's as diverse and gripping a set of songs as had been released since Exile On Main St.. In many ways it is similar to that album, with a great breadth of material covered, all spun together by musical smarts and pure emotion. I've bought many albums just because of their reputations, and this is one that really proves to be worthwhile to this day. Talk about a talented group of men in their primes.

For some reason I just never bought this album but you sold me on it. I'll give it a chance for sure.

[Guest Ohdistortedsmile1789]

Of all the so-called masterpieces in Rock music, the ones that make all the top albums lists, this is one that certainly deserves to be there. From the populist tragedy inherent in "Lost in the Supermarket", to the just plain bad-ass "Guns of Brixton", to the galvanizing "I'm Not Down", the teary-eyed dance of "Train In Vain (Stand By Me)", and many more, it's as diverse and gripping a set of songs as had been released since Exile On Main St.. In many ways it is similar to that album, with a great breadth of material covered, all spun together by musical smarts and pure emotion. I've bought many albums just because of their reputations, and this is one that really proves to be worthwhile to this day. Talk about a talented group of men in their primes.

For some reason I just never bought this album but you sold me on it. I'll give it a chance for sure.

I'm very glad!

[Wando]

Amazing album. I love every song on it. Just too great to describe.