You know, listening to this with the benefit of several decades of hindsight, you almost have to wonder how these guys ever got mistaken for a punk band, especially given the scope of their influences. In any case, this is an absolutely perfect rock 'n' roll record, as fresh and powerful as the day it was committed to magnetic tape.
13 comments:
Mistaken for punk?
Punk doesn't equate with 'bad musicians'.
One of the all time great tunes.
I was talking stylistically. To me, The Clash are a rock band, period.
In 1979 terms, punk meant something else.
Semantics. Whatever.
With that line of thinking, neither the Pistols, Elvis C, or The Clash are punks. I don't disagree.
The Pistols are a perfect example.
There's absolutely nothing about "God Save the Queen" that couldn't have been done by a conventional hard rock band at the time.
By the time it was all said and done 'punk' was an extremely broad term, almost meaningless. I remember seeing the Blasters and Motels opening for Fear and Black Flag.
New Wave...
New Wave meant eighth notes. Period.:-)
I know you remember mid-70's rock n roll. Bands like (nudge) The Hounds. Survivor. Huey Lewis. Those were the rock bands of the day. remember the over-production, the studio musician tweaks, Michael McDonald, disco? Anything that was stripped-down, did not deal with conventional subject matter and veered into the political was punk, pub or new wave. thank god. we can all agree it's just rock now, but it was the critics of the day that decided what the categories were.
Hell, I can remember Blondie being referred to as punk simply due to the CBGB connection. That shit was disco.
Er, Blondie was disco just because they made a couple of disco records? Really?! They were first and foremost pop - never pretended to be anything else - although they dabbled in rap, reggae-lite and most certainly even punk...whatever the hell that is. Check out, for instance, Victor off Eat to the Beat.
As for The Clash, saw them on the London Calling tour in 1980. Absolutely amazing. They just oozed ENERGY. I doubt if any of the old guard delivered live shows like that in the late '70s/early '80s.
And I sincerely don't think any of the so-called conventional rock bands at the time could've come up with something as urgent, angry and - yes - original as God Save the Queen. But if so, why the hell didn't they? I can vividly recall being literally blown away by the Pistols in 1977. It's not just a cliche, it changed my life. I'd heard nothing like the Pistols prior to that. But perhaps I just hadn't listened hard enough to the likes of Bad Company or Fogath.
A lot of us, fed up with the dinosaurs, were already onto pub rock, so punk wasn't much of a stretch.
Punk to me is more about attitude and fashion than it is about the music itself.
From that point of view, there is NOTHING disco about Debbie Harry.
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