The first nine tracks may not make any great advancements or innovations (as lots of people like to bring up, even high quality punk was basically 60's pop or garage rock updated with stronger guitar sounds and faster tempos), but they do make a statement, and a bold one at that. I have only passing interest in actually internalizing the lyrics and the topics related to them (like about how "Janie Jones" was about a famous London madam), but I find myself wanting to sing along to the parts I actually do know, and that's no small thing. Moreover, I really like (a) the melodies (each of the songs presents limited development of the main ideas, but the ideas are good, dang it) and (b) the interaction of Joe and Mick's voices in singing. Somehow, the contrast between when one of them is singing part of a song alone, and when the other comes back to join them, often functions as an attention-grabber in and of itself. Without going into detail about every track in this stretch (which would be impossible given that they're not songs designed for lots of detailed elaboration unless it's about the lyrics, which I don't know especially well), I'd have to say "Janie Jones" (with a great introductory drum beat), "I'm So Bored With the USA" (the way the chorus is sung is a great hook), "White Riot" (Power! Unlimited POWER!), "What's My Name"(that is a GREAT introductory guitar part, simple as it may be) and ESPECIALLY "Career Opportunities" (almost the best verses and almost the best chorus of the album) have to be considered career standouts, and among the better rock songs of the late 70's. Oh, and "Remote Control" is fairly charming, if only because of how strongly it betrays the band's British roots.

Past "Career Opportunities," the punk songs lose steam, and the album falls a bit in my eyes. "Cheat" seems to try a little too hard to show the power the first nine tracks showed so effortlessly, "Protex Blue" wastes a weirdly almost metallic guitar introduction to do a half-hearted song about condoms, and the hook in "48 Hours" ("48 Hours means 48 ...") oddly loses steam when it's completed ("...thrills"). Fortunately, "Garageland" is a decent closer, with a nice introduction would reappear elsewhere in the song, and Strummer sounds quite nice in the verses.

The sore thumb of the album (only in standing out; it's actually pretty awesome), suggesting from the beginning that there was something slightly off about these new heralds of punk rock, is of course the 6-minute punk/reggae cover of "Police and Thieves." Strummer sounds great, the silly "oh yeah!" Jones backing vocals sound perfectly at home, there's a nice guitar solo in the middle, and it becomes more and more clear as the song goes on that the band is alarmingly comfortable with interpreting reggae. With the benefit of hindsight, this track doesn't seem especially strange for The Clash, but when starting here and going chronologically, it sounds incredibly odd. And you know what, I'm a fan of ideas that are both enjoyable and odd, especially when in such stark contrast to the rest of the album it's found on.

In summary, I don't think this album is an immortal classic, and I don't think it's as good as London Calling or Sandinista! (or the US version of the same album, for that matter), but if it doesn't deserve all of its usual praise, it deserves (much like I said about the band as a whole) most of it. If you're a punk fan, you probably own the US version already, but it's worth it to have both. If you're not a serious punk fan, I can understand the perspective of enjoying rock music while not enjoying this album, but that's a perspective I could never agree with.

And yet, there are a few undeniable classics here. "Safe European Home" is a magnificent opener; it always takes me a little bit of time to get used to how much lower the vocals are mixed here than was typical on the debut, but the main riffs are terrific, and the way the reggae-ish rhythm gets slowly moved to the forefront and then pulled back near the end fascinates me every time. "Tommy Gun" features an incessant drum line in imitation of its title, and for various reasons seems to me like, with some small changes either way, it could have fit in well on either The Clash or London Calling. The next two songs bring the band into the land of boogie rock, and it actually works in both cases: "Julie's in the Drug Squad" is full of tasty barroom piano that would have made it fit in perfectly on London Calling, and "Last Gang in Town" sounds as close you'll ever get to The Clash trying to do a "typical" Rolling Stones rocker. Of course, as happens with most "typical" Stones rockers, it ends up with fascinating contrasts and tempo changes and all sorts of good things. Plus, I can't be the only person who cracks up every time he hears, "Kentucky Fried Chicken!!!" in the middle, can I?

That's only four great songs, though. "English Civil War" is a nice enough reworking of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," but if I had to pick between this and pretty much anything in the first half of the debut, I'd pick from the debut. And the second half doesn't have a single song that comes close to a classic; "Stay Free" is the best of the lot, featuring Mick on lead vocals, but it's not in the top half of Mick-sung tracks for me (maybe it would help if his vocals were mixed better). "All the Young Punks" is a mildly nice closer, I guess, but the other three leave me with little impression except for, "Wow, the "I Can't Explain" riff should NOT be played that slowly and sluggishly" (it didn't work on Pin Ups, and it doesn't work here).

This review actually came out crankier than I planned; I had somehow managed to forget that all of my favorite songs on the album happen on side one. Still, when you get around the general messiness of the sound, there are a good handful of songs that are either great as is or potentially very good, and that has to be given its due. Plus, Headon is clearly an upgrade on drums, even if he's mixed weirdly at times. Regardless, I would never take this over either version of the debut. The songs might be given more room for development in a traditional way here than there, and the better songs certainly have enough ideas to justify their length, but if I put the albums side by side, it's clear to me that (a) there are more hooks in aggregate there than here, (b) the best hooks are as strong there or better than the ones here, and (c) there's a hell of a lot more energy there. Even if that album doesn't have "Kentucky Fried Chicken!!!" or fun barroom piano. Get this, but don't rush into it.

"Janie Jones" was a fine opener on the UK version (it's moved to starting side 2 here), but it could never have quite the same impact as an opener as could "Clash City Rockers." Yes, the riff bears a strong resemblance to "I Can't Explain" (used to worse effect in "Guns on the Roof"), but it's a nice rip off, and the guitars sound SO GOOD. Between the riff, and Strummer's howling, and the great "Bring it on, world" lyrics, it would be tempting to call this the band's punk peak ... but what kind of punk song lasts four minutes and has these majestic chimes? What a great song. "Complete Control" is another great one, coming as it does after "Remote Control." See, the band didn't really like "Remote Control" very much, but CBS apparently decided it had some potential as a single, and the song was released without the band's permission. Hearing, "They said release 'Remote Control'/but we didn't want it on the radio" as the first lyric following that song is a total hoot, regardless of whether the overall message of the song is a moving statement about artistic freedom or an amusing bit of naivety. Lyrics aside, "Complete Control" is just a freaking great rock song, with great guitar lines (especially the minimalistic soloing), pulsating bass, nice drumming (this was Headon's first released track with the band) and, more than anything, incredible drive.

A few tracks later comes "(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais," a fascinating bit of punk-reggae with some bluesy harmonica. The lyrics are amusingly unfocused, starting as a rant about a disappointing evening of reggae concerts Strummer went to, and ending as a rambling rant against pretty much everything wrong with Britain at the time. My theory is that the lyrics are a depiction of Strummer showing up for the concert, feeling disappointed, getting really high while there (to ease the disappointment, I suppose) and then just ranting to everybody around him about whatever was on his mind, but I could never prove it. What's most important to me is that it demonstrates once again that the band had little intention of fitting into the mold expected for it, especially given that this was originally released as a single only three months after the more discernably punkish "Clash City Rockers" (though, again, that had signs of the breakaway going on too). And finally, there's the big triumphant return/farewell to obvious punk music, the band's cover of the classic "I Fought the Law." What I don't understand is why this song has such better production than the bulk of Rope when it was recorded around the same time; I mean, the absence of Pearlman explains everything, but why again were they wasting time with him when they sounded like this without him? Maybe this somewhat defiles the original, and maybe this version has become a cliche through the years, and maybe it doesn't deserve to have completely overshadowed almost every other version, but a list of the band's classics that omits this is a silly list.

Combine these new great tracks with all the great stuff from the original ("Janie Jones!" "Career Opportunities!" "I'm So Bored With the USA!"), and you have a marvelous listening experience. If it's not a D, it's really close, and it's essential either way. Maybe it's not the one punk album to own if you only wish to own one (that would probably be All the Stuff and More Vol. 1, containing the first two Ramones albums), but it's definitely on the list of punk albums that should be given a serious listen even by punk haters.

There is a significant distance in quality between the first half (through "Guns of Brixton") and the second half, but that's more of a statement about the first half than the second, I think. I don't think it's unreasonable to make the following statement: had the first ten tracks of this album been released as a standalone single album, that album would be one of my absolute favorite albums of all time. I can't overstate how immaculate I consider this stretch: the individual songs each sound close to perfect in my mind, and the overall shifts in style and mood hit the full spectrum of what I could reasonably expect from just ten songs. The title track, of course, is what everybody knows from the album, and it deserves to be the band's calling card (even if, as George Starostin pointed out, the instrumental track is basically the same as that to "Dead End Street" by The Kinks, just drastically rearranged), but it still doesn't overshadow everything else here. The only succinct way I can describe the following "Brand New Cadillac" is as an attempt to do a dark punk rockabilly cover of the Peter Gunn theme, but that would ignore the terrific bits of guitar soloing in the middle. Just when it seems like the album might be shaping up as a harder edged one, though, in comes "Jimmy Jazz," one of the best laidback jazzy rock songs I've ever heard; I feel like Ray Davies would have punched his brother in the face (more than usual, I mean) to have written this song for Muswell Hillbillies or Everybody's in Showbiz. And then "Hateful," which might have been the title to a punkish song like "Deny" or "Cheat" two years earlier, ends up as a ridiculously enjoyable upbeat pop song with a marvelous two-part chorus (I don't care how many times it gets repeated, I just can't get sick of the "Anything I want, he gives it to me/Anything I want, he gives it but not for free" part). And then "Rudie Can't Fail" breaks out the elements of ska pop the band kept flashing in albums previous but never used in an entire song. I don't even really like ska that much, but I love this song!!!

Kicking off side two, we get "Spanish Bombs," which is every bit as political as the title track (though this is about a specific topic, the Spanish Civil War of the late 30's), but is done in such a warm, poppy manner that it almost (and I'm dead serious here) sounds in parts like The Clash doing a contemporary Moody Blues song. I don't for a second believe this was remotely the intent, but as happens with so many songs on here, this song can't help but spark wonder at how much the band had changed since in just a couple of years since the debut. "The Right Profile" might be the weakest song of the first half, but the horn-based groove is a lot of fun, and the hilarious lyrics about the legendary late-life substance abuse of actor Montgomery Clift (who, I admit, I wouldn't have heard of without this song) crack me up every time. "Nembutal numbs it all/But I prefer alcohol!" "There I go again shaking, but I ain't got the chills/ARRRGHHHGORRA BUH BHUH DO ARRRRGGGGHHHHNNNN!!!!"

"Lost in the Supermarket" is Jones' first lead vocal of the album, and it's his best one yet. I've actually found a few people in various forums that consider this one of the album's low points, but I can only imagine that that's because of how low key, sensitive and un-punk-like it is ... because the rest of the album is so punk-like. The song actually ends up reflecting a lot of the same ideas that get covered in the Rush song, "Subdivisions," a few years later (this song is about forced conformity through consumerism, while that song was about forced conformity through living in cookie-cutter neighborhoods), but while I really like that song's overblown synths and didactic lyrical approach to the topic (odd, given that those same aspects end up irritating me a lot of other times), there's a lot to be said for the more understated approach taken by this song. Besides, who can resist a song that includes a line like, "I wasn't born so much as I fell out" and sings of this fondly? The next song, "Clampdown," might be kinda punkish musically, but if so, the punk aspects are strongly passed through a sort of big arena pop-rock filter, and the combination manages to work (in print, I admit that description is a little gross looking). The lyrics are remarkable, but as with so many Clash songs with great lyrics, knowing them isn't necessary to enjoy how they're used in the song. This song is all about the groove, and the "Working for the clampdown!" backing vocals, and little lyrical snippets like "Let fury have the hour, anger can be power/Do you know that you can use it?" adding fuel to the experience. And finally, the first half of the album closes with "The Guns of Brixton," which was the first of the band's songs to be written and sung by Simonon, so naturally it sucks. Except, um, not. A dark, angry, militaristic reggae rock song? How is that even possible??!! It's one of the band's best songs by any measure, if you had any doubts about my feelings.

As mentioned, the second half doesn't measure up to the first, but I still like it a lot. I could probably do without the sluggish bachelor pad music of "Lover's Rock," and the mid-tempo punk of "Four Horsemen" seems awfully conventional for most of the track (though it shifts into a more intriguing "galloping" mode with nice guitar sounds in the last minute). Side three is pretty solid, though. "Wrong 'Em Boyo" is a hilarious ska-pop song that starts off as a slow, organ-y lounge jazz song, and the awkward combination is splendid. "Death or Glory" returns to the "Spanish Bombs" mold of restrained anthemic pop with extremely intriguing lyrics, and it also features the return of Strummer's "monkey" vocal sounds that get briefly used in the title track. "Koka Kola" is a nice upbeat number about feeling overrun by advertisers (or maybe something else, I never bothered to decode the lyrics), and "The Card Cheat," overblown as it might be, still has another lovely Jones vocal performance, and I enjoy it freely.

After the relative lull of "Lover's Rock" and "Four Horsemen," "I'm Not Down" returns us once more to anthemic upbeat pop sung by Jones, and if it's something less than "Spanish Bombs" or "Death or Glory," it's only by a slight bit. And finally, it's hilarious to me that the album would have ended (and when the album was sent out to pressing, that was the intent) with something like this cover of the reggae song, "Revolution Rock." Sure, it's overlong, but the overlong aspects come in the extended coda; it's here that it becomes clear that the band knows very well what a shocking experience this album would have been to one of its fans hearing it for the first time, and by the end of this track it's clear that they're just trying to rub it in the listener's face. It's practically Zappa-esque, and if anything it reminds me of the silly way Zappa ended Joe's Garage with "Little Green Rosetta."

Well, "Revolution Rock" would have ended the album, but at the last minute, the band decided to record and include one of the greatest rock songs of all time. "Train in Vain," a Jones-sung number that was the band's best seller in the US to that point, is basically a perfect pop song, and it was (a) written and recorded in a day and (b) was intended for release as a giveaway in NME (the British musical rag). If that doesn't show that The Clash were in a spectacular place in 1979, I don't know what does. This may not be one of the best albums of the 1980's as it's so often listed (I don't care if it came out in January 1980 in the US, it came out in December 1979 in the UK! It's a 70's album!), but it is one of the best albums of the 1970's, and definitely a necessity for any respectable rock collection.

Sandinista!, if nothing else, is an experience completely unlike any other album I've ever heard. The standard cliche, of course, is that a 1-LP version of the album would be fantastic, and I agree, but I don't think this goes far enough. A 65-minute (roughly the length of London Calling) version of this album would ABSOLUTELY exceed London Calling, and I say that as a great lover and admirer of that particular slab. The band couldn't have been ignorant of this, and yet they stretched this album out to 144 minutes, and broke all sorts of rules about self-editing and album flow in the process. "Normal" songs are freely interspersed with seemingly throwaway excursions into dub reggae and remixes/remakes of older material (with "older" sometimes meaning "earlier on Sandinista!"). It doesn't help that most of the last LP consists of these types of tracks: the album ends up giving a sense of being dragged out to the finish line, rather than having any sort of final push of adrenaline.

And yet ... there is an awful lot of good material on this album, and even most of the "lesser" stuff doesn't especially bother me. I understand that the presentation of the album doesn't make it especially easy for the listener to keep track of the good stuff on here, and somebody who prefers the more stripped-down version of The Clash to the extreme technophilia and genre-hopping (much more so than even on London Calling) of this album could find this horrifying. Plus, it's extremely easy to go, "Pfft, if you have 36 songs on an album, of course you're going to have some highlights, even by accident," yes, but there are way more than a few accidental highlights on this album. Because I'm sure some of you don't believe me (if you believe me already, or aren't interested in getting convinced, feel free to skip the rest of this review), I'm breaking out the ole track-by-track method, and in this case I'll be assigning one of three grades to each song: check-plus, check and check-minus. Check-plus means it's a definite keeper, check means it's at least an intriguing listen, and check-minus means it should have stayed in the discard pile. Here we go!!

Side one:

The opening "The Magnificent Seven" is the band's first foray into early hip-hop/rap, and while it definitely sounds like WHITE people trying to do funk (which I could see making a lot of people wrinkle their noses right away), it's enjoyable enough to make up for sounding a little stiff. The groove (driven by a nice bassline) is fine, and Strummer's lyrics are as inspired as anything he ever wrote. It's another "drudgery of working life" song at heart, but it spreads out into commentary of other societal aspects as well as "(White Man) at Hammersmith Palais" did, and it's a clear career highlight. Check-plus. The following "Hitsville U.K." switches gears completely, as Jones duets with former flame Ellen Jones in a fun pop song about the music business. The song may not really have a chorus, but it's extremely catchy nonetheless. Check-plus.

The album starts to lose people with the next track, "Junco Partner," a reggae cover of an old blues song, but I kinda like it. It's overlong, sure, and it's nowhere near as intense or classic as the band's previous excursions into reggae, but somehow the mix of the keyboard-driven groove and the little bits of violin that pop in from time to time makes me tolerate the track just fine. Check. "Ivan Meets G.I. Joe" is a bizarre synth-driven disco (!) groove sung by Topper Headon (!!), and the manner in which it reduces the Cold War into a silly video game is rather ingenious. Check-plus. "The Leader," a swing/boogie-rock number with nice politics-tinged lyrics, is only throwaway-ish in its length (1:42). Check. And finally, "Something About England" starts off sounding like it will be a bit clumsy, but it turns into a rather lovely number about England's place in the world, and (I think) against knee-jerk isolationism. Check-plus.

Side one totals: Check-plus (4), Check (2)

Side two:

"Rebel Waltz" is beautiful! Who would have thought that a song with lines like, "A voice that called, 'Stand till we fall/we stand till all the boys fall" could be made so delicate and lovely? Check-plus! "Look Here" is a cover of an old Mose Allison jazz number, and it's fun to hear the band make a brief pit-stop in the world of jazz. Check. "The Crooked Beat" is Simonon's second contribution to the band as a songwriter, and while it's nowhere near the marvel that was "Guns of Brixton," it's still got a good enough bassline to make it an acceptable reggae groove. Check.

"Somebody Got Murdered," then, is very close to being the best Jones-sung track ever (only "Train in Vain" exceeds it). It goes for a HUGE sound, the kind The Who would have been shooting for back in the early 70's, and it results in a song on par with most anything from that period of The Who (kill me for the blasphemy, but it's true). And oh me, oh my, is "I've been very tempted to grab it from the till/I've been very hungry but not enough to kill" an absolutely brilliant, perfect line. Check plus.

The side ends on a bit of controversy, but I basically like both tracks. "One More Time" is the band's attempt at a dark-reggae successor to "Guns of Brixton," and while it's nowhere near as epic as "Brixton," it's got a nice groove and a decent melody. Check. Immediately after it comes the remix, "One More Dub," and while people like to dump loads of symbolic garbage on it, I think it's a fascinating contrast to "One More Time," and if anything I think this is the ideal placement for the track. Another check.

Side two totals: Check-plus (2), Check (4)

Side three:

Side three seems to be designed to emulate a late-night underground radio broadcast, but while it could be distracting, I don't find it too bothersome. "Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)" gets docked only because it's the fraternal twin of "The Magnificent Seven," with almost the exact same beat and groove. Ah well, the chorus is different, and I end up enjoying the hell out of it. Check. "Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)" is another Jones song going for a big anthemic sound, and while it's not quite as majestic as "Somebody Got Murdered" or as energetic as Clash rockers from earlier albums, it hits a happy middle between the two that makes it sound lovely and powerful. Check-plus. "Corner Soul" doesn't really fit any easy genre categorization, but that ambiguity helps the song a lot, and when Strummer sings "Is the music calling for a river of blood?" over female backing vocals, it almost sounds like gospel. Check-plus.

"Let's Go Crazy" is the band's excursion into Calypso music, and it's as enjoyable as any genre exercise the band had done yet. Check-plus. "If Music Could Talk," though, is a definite bore, featuring an uninspired sax-based light-jazz groove that goes nowhere, and it's the album's first check-minus. It's redeemed and then some, fortunately, by the glorious gospel of "The Sound of Sinners." Strummer stretches his vocal chords as far as they can possibly go, and the fascinating juxtaposition between the lyrics (especially about being so high he thinks he might be Jesus, then realizing he's sinned too much for that to be possible) and the music rivals any similar numbers on, say, Exile on Main Street. And dig the funny mock announcement (from Tim Curry no less) at the end! Check-plus.

Side three totals: Check-plus (4), Check (1), Check-minus (1)

Side four:

"Police on My Back" is a worthy successor to "I Fought the Law" (a rock cover of a reggae song about the law) if ever there was one. The band's punk roots make a triumphant return here, but they're filtered once more through Jones' arena-rock instincts, and everything about the song (especially the guitars imitating the sirens and the energetic way they sing the chorus) is just fantastic. Check-plus. "Midnight Log" is 2:10 of boogie-rock, and just like "The Leader" and "Look Here," it's a fun track that's only downgraded for being mildly throwawayish. Check. "The Equaliser," then, almost seems like psychedelic reggae to me, and it's one hell of a trip. I can see where somebody might want to lump it in with all of the weirdness that happens later, but any track that can make reggae so bizarre that it almost loops around in parts into ambient music has to be considered a highlight of any album. Check-plus.

"The Call-Up" is another track that will be hated by somebody sick of the band diddling around with synth loops, but I think it's fantastic. The groove is as hypnotic as can be, and whatever one's feelings on the US military (the song is about the draft), there's something unavoidably harrowing about a song with the simple line, "For he who will die is he who will kill." Check-plus. "Washington Bullets" is another excursion into Carribbean music, this time with extremely explicit lyrics about specific political events and America's tendency to have its fingers in more pots than some people liked (though it does have an anti-China, pro-Tibet verse at the end). Again, whatever one's political leanings, the band could make awfully irresistable political music when it wanted, and some of the lyrics ("For Castro is a color/is a redder than red/those Washington bullets want Castro dead/For Castro is the color/...that will earn you a spray of lead") are just brilliant. Check-plus. The side ends on a check-minus note with the rambling "Broadway" (not horrible, but a bit of a snooze), but it does have a brief snippet of the young daughter of guest-keyboardist Mick Gallagher singing the first parts of "Guns of Brixton," and I seem to like this part more than a lot of people do.

Side four totals: Check-plus (4), Check (1), Check-minus (1)

Side five:

Most people think of side five in the same terms as side six, but this doesn't strike me as quite right. "Lose This Skin" is an interesting case in that it's both written and sung by Tymon Dogg (an old friend of Strummer's who sounds uncannily like Geddy Lee), with The Clash only playing along, but I wouldn't dream of a Sandinista! without it. The song is pure passion, with a marvelous chorus and an amazing, hypnotic violin part driving it forward, and the idea that some people would view this clear check-plus song as a low-point makes no sense to me. "Charlie Don't Surf" is another glorious pop song; it's more laid-back than most Clash pop songs have been in the past, but it sounds lovely to me, and man do I enjoy those sitars (unless those are guitars pretending to be sitars). Check-plus!

The rest of the side, of course, is mixed. One track I'd mark as a check-plus, that I'm not sure anybody else really enjoys, is "Kingston Advice." It's borderline, and it could have been expanded and developed a little more, but the burst from the lower-key verses to the bigger chorus is rather nice, and I like all of the beeps and boops that randomly get shoved in. "Junkie Slip," on the other hand, should probably be considered a check-minus; it sounds awfully close to a demo to me. "The Street Parade" sounds half-baked in the verses, but the chorus is warm and nostalgic, so I like it enough to boost it to a check. And then, of course, there's "Mensforth Hill," coming before "Junkie Slip," which is a backwards remix (!) of "Something About England." Part of me wants to dislike it, but man, it's just so disturbing (especially with that creeping low-pitched synth that's always lingering about) that I never find myself skipping it when it pops up on my iPod. It's a check, dagnabbit.

Side five totals: Check-plus (3), Check (2), Check-minus (1)

Side six:

Am I the only person who thinks side six sounds like it belongs to a Residents album? There's one "normal" song ("Version City," a nice groove that I'd give a check), but even that is bookended by a weird radio announcer voice that's as surreal as can be. Aside from "Living in Fame" (a dub version of "If Music Could Talk," which got a check-minus in its original version, so this has no chance), though, I feel like the side deserves nothing but checks. I'm fine with hearing these silly, gizmo-laced remixes of "Washington Bullets" ("Silicone on Sapphire") and "Junco Partner" ("Version Pardner"), and the transformation of earlier favorites over the last two tracks entertains me to no end. Yes, that's right, I enjoy the living daylights out of the children's version of "Career Opportunities," and the quiet acoustic reggae cover of "Police and Thieves" ("Shepherd's Delight") that closes the album is such a bizarre way to finish that it loops around and becomes kinda awesome. So no, side six isn't an ideal way to end an album, but it doesn't deserve all of the hatred it so often gets.

Side six totals: Check (5), Check-minus (1)

And so, the grand totals are:

Check-plus (17), Check (15), Check-minus (4).

17 check-plus songs!! And a few checks that I almost boosted! The point is, this isn't a perfect album by any stretch of the imagination, but there are so many highs, and so many HIGH highs, that giving this album anything less than a low D seems like it would be insanity. I wouldn't recommend sitting down and listening to it intensely, start to finish, but if you can slot out time for a side at a time, you may find that it grows on you more than you'd have thought it could.

There are very few songs on here that I like without significant reservations. Two of them, of course, are the big hits from side one. "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" is jarringly straightforward mid-tempo stomping stadium rock, but it's a perfectly fine hard rock song, even if it's kinda weird that it became one of the band's calling cards. The other big favorite, "Rock the Casbah," seems much more quintessentially Clash to me, not just because of the overtly political lyrics, but because of the fascinating meshing of genres that goes into the song. Honky-tonk post-disco dance rock? I'll take it! Even if it's hard to figure out why they decided to record a tune from Mick Jones' watch in the middle.

I'm also extremely fond of "Straight to Hell," which apparently puts me in good company with the band, who liked it very much. It's as close as the band ever came to a genuine Strummer-sung ballad, and while it certainly doesn't quite make it to that point (the sound is just busy and strident enough to maintain the typical Clash edge), it's still gorgeous and has one of Strummer's best vocal performances. As with many Clash songs with political leanings, it ends up touching on multiple topics, and all of the topics are treated with great care and surprising subtlety. The song is packed with great lines (my favorite is "Lemme tell ya 'bout your blood bamboo kid/It ain't Coca-Cola, it's rice"), and the combination of these lyrics, Strummer's delivery and that nagging electric violin is enough to make this a rock-solid classic.

Unfortunately, only one other track, the pleasant pop-rock of "Inoculated City," really grabs me (I don't really know why they decided to include a 2000 Flushes commercial audio sample, though), which means there are eight tracks that I have at least some problem with. "Know Your Rights" might have plenty of fans, but it just seems like a big dumb self-parody to me. Why is it based around just one chord? Why are these the three rights chosen? Why does Strummer sound weirdly similar to 80's Bob Dylan? The song becomes a little more interesting in the second half, and I don't really hate it, but I'd take almost any song from the debut (either version) over this. "Car Jamming" is a reasonably decent attempt at making a song with interesting processed guitar noise and a tricky rhythm, but I've never been able to keep my mind from drifting considerably while it's on. And the remaining side one track, "Red Angel Dragnet," full of quotes from Taxi Driver, seems like an awfully stupid attempt at a New Wave rocker to me; the only time I enjoy it is in the silly "Hands up for Hollywood!"/"Hooray!" exchange in the middle.

And side two, ughn. Aside from "Inoculated City," there are two other pop songs, but one of them (the closing "Death is a Star") is a fluffy piece of nothing with some put-you-to-sleep recitation in the middle, and the other ("Atom Tan") sounds disconcertingly like a rejected outtake from Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy). "Overpowered by Funk" is an okayish bit of hyperactive white-boy funk, but the guest rap by Futura 2000 (a graffiti artist who would do his thing on stage while the band played) sounds totally embarrassing to my ears, and it nearly ruins the song. "Sean Flynn" is a raga, and shows that the band's ability to tackle various genres extended only so far. And finally, I just can't begin to get into "Ghetto Defendant," an uninteresting vamp whose main feature is slow recitation of poetry by Alan Ginsberg ... wow, FOUR tracks with spoken word parts on here? Holy mackerel! Anyway, I know it touches on plenty of hot-spot political issues of the day, just as many other Clash songs did, but this just doesn't feel essential like so many other Clash tracks do.

Fact is, I find that I get tired and impatient with this album far more and far quicker than I ever could with London Calling or Sandinista!, despite being so much shorter than those albums. If I took any combination of 12 tracks from Sandinsta!, I'm betting I could make an album I'd enjoy more than this one at least 90 times out of 100, and more so with London Calling. If you've got the other albums, you may as well get this one, but I sure wouldn't recommend rushing out for it.

The collection naturally mirrors the band's career, moving from "pure" punk numbers into the more eccentric material that made up the later years, and I basically enjoy both halves. The best of the "pure" punk numbers is the opening "1977," the "White Riot" b-side that declares war (sort of) on the musical establishment and comes oddly close to foreshadowing the lifespan of the group in the closing verse. By track 4, the band has moved into the 1978 era, where the tracks start to get a little more expansive and varied, though for the most part with better production than what was on Rope. From this group, "The Prisoner" isn't especially notable, but "The City of the Dead" shows the band bringing saxes and organs into its sound to good effect, "Pressure Drop" is a fun retro 60's cover, and "1-2 Crush on You" is such a hilarious 50's throwback that it can't help bring a smile to my face. It probably horrified fans of the political seriousness of the debut, but hey, it's a freaking b-side.

Up next are three songs from the Cost of Living EP (which produced "I Fought the Law"), and while none of these tracks can measure up to that classic, all of them are nice. "Capital Radio Two" is especially amusing because it takes the original punk song (a funny attack on the only licensed music radio station in London, which of course didn't like punk), and adds both a delicate acoustic introduction and a silly extended skit that culminates in an explosion before the band goes back into standard punk mode. "Gates of the West" doesn't quite measure up to its great epic title, but it's a perfectly servicable up-tempo Jones-sung rocker, and "Groovy Times" could have fit in just fine on London Calling as a replacement for one of the weaker second-half tracks.

Starting with "Time is Tight," everything about the album changes. This is a four-minute instrumental, moving through all sorts of melodies while hovering around a set of chords that have vaguely surfish qualities to them, and all of the tasty bits of piano and sax can't help but make me happy. "Justice Tonight/Kick it Over" is NINE minutes of repetitive dub reggae, and while it doesn't necessarily keep my attention all the way through, it keeps my attention for most of it, and I really respect the effort. "Robber Dub" is another nice dub track (this time lasting five minutes), and it would have made a great inclusion to Sandinista! had the band been so inclined. And speaking of Sandinista!, we have two instrumental versions of tracks from that album: "The Call Up" becomes "The Cool Out," and "The Magnificent Seven" becomes "The Magnificent Dance." Call me hopelessly honkified, but I enjoy these immensely.

Past the Sandinista! group (which also includes a throwaway b-side to "The Call Up"), the album ends in a relative lull thanks to a bunch of Combat Rock b-sides. "Mustapha Dance" is a fun dub instrumental remix of "Rock the Casbah," but the other three, while decent, don't do much to dissuade me from the notion that the band just wasn't firing on all cylinders during those sessions. I actually nudged the album down a smidge because of these, though I admit that they would have been good replacements for some of the weakest material on that album.

Overall, while casual fans can probably stay away from this, I'd have to say that pretty much any serious fan of the band should try to get this. Hearing the band's evolution in microcosm is a fascinating process, after all.

The second half features three London Calling tracks, the LC-era b-side "Armagideon Time" (mentioned in the last review), one Sandinista! track ("The Magnificent Seven") and three Combat Rock tracks. The three LC tracks (the title track, "Train in Vain" and "The Guns of Brixton") all tear down the house (especially "Train," which gets an almost metallic feel in the guitars in some spots), "Armagideon Time" is a nice change of pace, "The Magnificent Seven" sounds fantastic (and has a funny riff on the comment made in the original that the song is long), and the three Combat Rock tracks are good enough. "Know Your Rights" benefits some from the live vibe, "Should I Stay or Should I Go" is as good as expected, and "Straight to Hell" works incredibly well in live performance. Strummer's performance is a little less delicate here than in studio, but it's still firmly in control while allowing for some measure of loose spontaneity, and ends the album on a very high note.

There are complaints that could have been raised, like the aforementioned lack of Rope material and the fact that I'd have been thrilled to have another disc, but there's something to be said for leaving people wanting more. This is a must own for Clash fans.

This new version of the band decided to go for a "back to roots" approach to things, with a few anthemic numbers thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, so the stories say, Bernie Rhodes took some creative liberties without consulting with the actual band: the sound is drenched in bad stereotypes of 80's production, even though the production makes absolutely no sense given the actual material (he also ended up with a songwriting credit on all the songs). As an example, take the opening "Dictator," where a rather mundane punk song gets overlaid with out-of-joint synth parts and an avalanche of sound effects. What fascinates me most about the song is that I actually think the song could have somewhat worked in any situation where only two of the three aspects were featured. That is, a track with just the punk song and the synths could have been a bit of mildly trippy, chaotic aggression; a track with just the punk song and the sound effects would have been noisy but somewhat effective; and a track with just the synths and the sound effects could have gone down as a goofy experiment. Put all three together, though, and you get an aggressively unlistenable track, and one that unfortunately sets the tone for the rest of the album. There are various moments in the album (even in tracks I ultimately don't like that much) where I start to feel a little warmth towards the album, but in aggregate, this album is a deeply unpleasant listen.

Ultimately, there are two tracks that can stand up as, if not classics, then acceptable inclusions to the band's catalogue at large. "We Are the Clash" is a fairly silly song written in response to Jones and Headon threatening to tour as "The Real Clash," but it's got some of the anthemic power of old, and it's almost enough to offset the loudly mixed 4/4 electronic drums. And, heck, I kinda like the riffage. "This is England" has even more of the old anthemic power, but it also uses synthesizers in a halfway effective manner, and I like the vocal melody and the lyrics. It could use a much better percussion track (oy, those hand claps), but it would have been a highlight on Combat Rock in a different arrangement.

Otherwise ... ehn, "North and South" is a ballad that would have made a decent close to the album (and the band's career) had the album not ended on a really cheesy note with "Life is Wild." And ... uh ... "Cool Under Heat" has some acoustic rhythm work that reminds me of Pete Townshend, and "Three Card Trick" is an okayish callback to the ska-pop numbers of London Calling. Shame about the production, though. Anyway, pretty much the only person of note to like this album was Robert Christgau, and that should tell you something. Strummer spent the rest of his life apologizing for this album, and he was right to do so. Just look for the decent tracks in another context.