THE CLASH
Sandinista!
[Epic]

After practically defining the term "punk rock," and raising its banner post-Sex Pistols, The Clash were in a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't situation: Obscurity vs. accessibility, sell-out vs. integrity.

"Cults are well and good," said guitarist Joe Strummer in the New York Rocker, "but they stitch them-selves up in the end. They are breeding grounds for a lot of ideas and talents, but ... that's not what we're interested in, being a chic minority. I don't think it's worth doing a damn thing unless people are going to hear what you're doing."

And hear, people did, with the release of London Calling. LC was a giant step for The Clash, breaking the mold of punk rock which they helped create. They embraced a new world of musical forms (Detroit, Memphis and New Orleans R&B, Jamaican reggae, rockabilly), which drew on the roots of early rock and roll. Though the lyrics were more rebellious than ever, "Train in Vain" was a hit single, and the album cracked the top-20. The well-worn "charted" path was all laid out: Jump into the mainstream, get swallowed up and watered down and become the punk Rolling Stones.

Then along comes Sandinista!, and as John Picarella wrote in Rolling Stone, "While London Calling was a flexing of muscle that claimed Clash style could pull off anything, Sandinista! says the hell with Clash style, there's a world out there."

Ring! Ring! It's seven a.m.!

Move y'self to go again

Cold water in the face

Brings you back to this awful place*

-"The Magnificent Seven "

Dealing with the "world out there" is the key to The Clash's music, and what makes it so great and passionate is that it's true. "If you really feel for something," said Strummer, "then you don't write slogans, you write truths."

Of course, it doesn't always come off like that -The Clash have never claimed to have it all figured out-and while I don't agree with all of the conclusions on Sandinista!, they make music that gives us hope, courage and more than a little determination to grapple with all the problems (social, political, economic) that will not go away, even if we close our eyes.

As the floods of God

Wash away Sin City

They say it was written

In the page of the Lord

But I was looking

For the great jazz note

That destroyed

The walls of Jericho*

-"The Sound of the Sinners"

The new Clash album is eclectic in form, lyrics and musical styles. In fact, "internationalist" might be a better word, as they "step in and out of' six sides of rapping funk, jazz (Mose Allison's "Look Here"), punk funk, disco (!), dub, calypso, punk gospel, rockabilly, folk, reggae, hard rockers, blues, and some cuts one has a hard time putting a label on. It's not exactly like early Clash, but as Strummer says, "It's music, y'know? ... The music's gotta change. I wish people would understand that more, and allow for it."

The Clash demand as much of us as they do of themselves, and if the time is taken to really get into this music, most of it is as good as it gets.

They experiment with some new sounds and explore forbidden territories with their lyrics. They also have friends such as Ellen Foley, Irish folk singer Timon Dogg, reggae producer and performer Micky Dread, lan Drury, and Mickey Gallagher (and his kids) helping them out. And finally, they have Strummer's tortured, cracked vocals - the dilemmas and frustrations of the Eighties summed up in one man's voice.

The Clash are about hard realities, but that's not all. If they just moaned and groaned about how bad it all is, their music wouldn't matter so much. They are also about possibilities, even in what appear to be defeats along the way:

As the smoke of our hopes rose high from the field

My eyes played tricks through the moon and the trees

I slept as I dreamt I saw the army rise

A voice began to call stand till you fall

The tune was an old rebel one.*

-"Rebel Waltz"

What's real now and what's necessary and possible in the future are linked together in life, and it's dealing with both that gives the music of The Clash its quality of hopefulness, or if you will, its romanticism.

Another rock and roll romantic who deals in realities wrote a song called "Jungleland", in which he spoke to a question also close to The Clash: the responsibility of artists in this age. "The poets down here," wrote Springsteen, "don't write anything at all/They just stand back and let it all be."

It is easier to "check with Rome", let it be and give people the moon in June. And it's not easy doing what The Clash are trying to do; lots of artists have fallen on the rocks trying to scale those heights.

"In these days," they sing on "Kingston Advice", "I don't know what to sing/The more I know the less my tune can swing." The Clash are their own worst critics. Sandinista! Proves that the more they see and know, the more they do know what to sing, and their tune swings all the better for it.

There is a train at Version City

Waiting for the rhythm mail

If you can jump jump right now

She can pull you through to better days.*

-"Version City"

-Miller Francis

*All lyrics copyright 1980 Mireden Ltd.

[Francis has written for The Great Speckled Bird and Rolling Stone, and is one of the 17 Mao Tse-tung defendants.]