The Clash - Sandanista!

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Due to its reputation, I avoided this for the longest time. No longer.

 

The production is really awful, so flat and muddy. At first I thought maybe it needed a new remaster, but the cd I'm listening to is from '99, when Epic remastered/reissued the Clash's back catalogue. My copy of London Calling I'm so familiar with—also a '99 remaster—sounds light years better than this.

 

An aside: I misspelled the Sandinista! in the thread title.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Disc one. "Hitsville U.K." is a good song; the female singer, Ellen Foley, later appeared as a regular character on Night Court. Dan Fielding made lecherous comments, I'm sure. Anyway, totally faux Motown sound here, which is cool. The Jam's "A Town Called Malice," Elvis Costello and the Attractions' Get Happy!!, etc. have long been favorites.

 

"Ivan Meets G.I. Joe" is not good. Or maybe it is, but who could tell when the song is drenched in ridiculous sound effects that were likely taken from some random Midway game from the arcade around the corner from the studio.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

"One More Time" is such a paper thin thing; it only made sense to take this slight notion and double its length with a dub breakdown. Yawn.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Songs from earlier in the disc I feel I should mention: "The Magnificient Seven" is the most anthologized song on this album, a cursory glance of their discography shows. I don't know why. Maybe due to it being the very first song and so few people can be arsed to sit through Sandinista!'s nearly 2.5 hour running time. It's a totally dated appropriation of hip hop, which, at the time of this album's release (1980), was still very much in its infancy. Later on in this disc (or, the song that opened the second LP of the original three LP set), "Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)" also takes a stab at hip hop, with equally underwhelming results. The Clash actually whip up a nice groove on these songs, but Joe Strummer's rapping is hilariously misguided, mostly due to his speech impediment. No one would spray the mic with so much spittle until 23 years later, when Kanye went "Through the Wire."

 

Mick Jones' "Somebody Got Murdered" and "Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)" are both good songs, hampered only by the weak production and the fact that both are basically rewrites of "Lost in the Supermarket."

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

The first cd/first side of the second LP ends with "The Sound of Sinners" and oboy oboy! it's a gospel song. Regular readers of mine know just how much I love choirs and I'll be damned if this song doesn't have one. Sarcasm aside, this track isn't terribly offensive even if it sounded like it was recorded in a very large bathroom. But then that's par for the course.

 

As for late-in-the-first-disc songs like "Corner Soul" and "If Music Could Talk," I have no recollection of what they were like, in spite of being less than 20 minutes removed from hearing them. I think "Corner Soul" was decent, but, again, production. "Let's Go Crazy"—no relation to the Prince song that would surface four years later—was quaint (so very, very quaint) tropicalia. Right now, I'm in no mood to sit through the 70+ minutes it would require to listen to disc two, though it does contain one of the Clash's very best songs.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

By the by, I expect little-to-no response to this thread. This is mostly for my own amusement.

 

Also, I've gone back and edited some of the posts—cleaning up a few sentences, adding a couple more. And I'll probably do the second disc tonight.

[Special K 0]

I'm interested, but I don't think that many people will respond, because not that many people are going to sit through Sandanista!

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I can't emphasize enough just how startled I am at how poor the album as a whole sounds. I understand it was written and recorded fairly quickly, but, given just how much sonic detail the Clash were going for here, attempting something so complex meant they should've given at least the very same consideration that went into the writing and recording of London Calling. Sure, their s/t debut was also muddy, but that was punk rock; Sandinista! was not. I'm not saying better production would've saved this album—that would require some generous track deletion (and less white powder for Strummer, dude was heavily dreaming Colombian around this time)—but it would've helped quite a bit in making this album more listenable.

[AboveAverage484 0]

"Bankrobber" is easily my favorite Sandinista song, and one of my top 10 favorite Clash songs.

 

EDIT: Whoops, "Bankrobber's" not on here. Yeah, this CD isn't very good. "Police on My Back" is great, too bad it's a cover song.

[The Decemberists 0]

Police On My Back isn't too horrible, is it? Shame it's a cover.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Interesting. I got History of the Clash Vol. I and liked it, and I have been curious to hear what Sandanista sounded like. Keep the reviews coming.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

I don't mind London Calling, but they're a band I have no use for outside of that.

[5_moves_of_doom 0]

I'm a pretty huge Clash fan and see Sandinista! as an underrated album. Of course, that's not to say that it doesn't suck -- it does, a lot of the time, but there is a large cult of Clash followers who will swear by the fact that a ***** single-album can be condensed from the 2 and a half hour running time. And while I have no track list of my own, I'm pretty sure that I would agree with this statement, as there definitely are quite a few worthwhile songs on the album.

 

All in all though, I would only truly recommend the album for historical purposes. I think that every true Clash fan should buy it at some point, just to have an idea of the band's evolution, but as for sitting through the whole thing from start to finish more than once in a lifetime... that just doesn't work out.

 

"Police On My Back" is fucking awesome. And, as a fan of lame rapping (Blondie's "The Rapture" is a classic) I fully support "The Magnificent Seven."

 

Jones' contributions to the album are pretty solid, but -- as Inc said -- all of them are either rehashed ideas or slightly-altered melodies of the past.

 

Finally, I will agree that the production is Shitcore Deluxe. EDIT: Which is indeed a term that I made up specifically to describe the production of this album.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Disc two. Yes, "Police on My Back" is massive. And so what it's a cover? They took a relatively obscure reggae song and turned it into this first class rave up, which showed that, given just how much of Sandinista! was sloppy and incoherent, they could still turn in an outstanding rocker. I love this song, those siren-like guitars. One of Mick Jones' finest vocal performances, if not his best. It's the only track on the album where the shoddy production doesn't hinder it in the slightest. Fucking rock.

 

The song that follows it, "Midnight Log" is nice, too; unfortunately, any goodwill built up by having two good songs in a row (a rarity here, to be sure) is flushed away by "The Equaliser," yet another interminable dub experiment.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

The first third of the second CD provides the album's best stretch of music, "The Equaliser" aside. "The Call Up" is a good midtempo disco tune which only requires you to ignore the Velveeta opening; "Washington Bullets" delves once again into tropicalia, but with an actual song, as opposed to the tentative sketch that was the first disc's "Let's Go Crazy." "Broadway" is an effective, jazzy ballad, one I didn't like the first time I heard it, but went down well just now.

 

Then there's "Lose This Skin." Musically, it's a Celtic rocker I like just fine. Too bad they let a one Terry Doggs—who wrote the song and plays violin here—screech his way through the vocals. I bet the Pogues would've done a lovely cover of this; I'll take Shane Macgowan's drunken snarl over this shit anyday.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

After "Charlie Don't Surf"—which wasn't bad while listening to it, but all's I can recall now are the clunky lyrics—absolutely nothing of interest happens for the next eight songs (and I can't even call half of these "songs"). Which, while incredibly boring to listen to, saved me the effort of having to think of anything to say here.

 

Then comes "Career Opportunities," finding the Clash revisit this classic tune from their debut. They got rid of the nasty punk guitars from the original, replaced them with warm, sprightly keyboards and—predating the Kidz Bop craze by two decades—a chorus of children on vocals. The allmusic review of this song, covering both the original recording from the s/t as well as the redo here, put it best:

 

One of those great "take this job and shove it" punk-style protests, "Career Opportunities" was the perfect, "I don't wanna" song (in this case, a straight job) in the Ramones' tradition; it even substitutes a well-placed "Oi" for the more American, Ramonesy "Hey." Compared to the Clash's later, more solution-orientated offerings, "Career Opportunities" was a naïve diatribe, but it's effective like other Clash songs simply because of the purity and ferocity of spirit — in execution and in the onomatopoeic quality of the music (the guitar accompanying "the one that never knocks" brings to mind a rap on the door, etc.). Strummer is at his sneering best, even though the lines behind it aren't all that sneer-worthy. Perhaps it's the kind of incongruity that the Clash's harshest critics picked up on; as if to underscore in hindsight the song was kind of...stupid, they reprised it on their triple-threat genre-blender album, Sandinista, with a chorus of children singing the verses, accompanied by what sounds like toy instruments.

 

I honestly liked this song. More so than the original, even, since, frankly, the lyrics are pretty stupid. And, given how so much of Sandinista! is the Clash trying to prove that they're Serious Artists, it's good to see them with a sense of humour (note the British 'u') intact.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

And that's Sandinista!. There's one more track after "Career Opportunities"—another dub excursion, this one called "Sheperds Delight"—but it's only noteworthy for being such an unexceptional way to end a so bewildering, frustrating and not very rewarding recording.

 

Don't bother with this unless you can get it for very cheap or free. At the very least, download "Police on My Back." Dismissing this song just because it's a cover is clueless.

[The Czech Republic 0]

Inc, have you done any actual record reviews on the Internet or in print? You'd be really good.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Regrettably.

[The Decemberists 0]

Don't bother with this unless you can get it for very cheap or free. At the very least, download "Police on My Back." Dismissing this song just because it's a cover is clueless.

 

I don't think I actually went as far as to dimiss it, did I? I was trying to say that It's a shame that Stummer/Jones weren't writing songs like that anymore. I'd easilly put Police on a best of the Clash comp.

[5_moves_of_doom 0]

Don't bother with this unless you can get it for very cheap or free. At the very least, download "Police on My Back." Dismissing this song just because it's a cover is clueless.

 

I don't think I actually went as far as to dimiss it, did I? I was trying to say that It's a shame that Stummer/Jones weren't writing songs like that anymore. I'd easilly put Police on a best of the Clash comp.

 

I can understand how Inc misunderstood you. But nonetheless, have you heard the original version of the song? The Clash did for this song what Jimi Hendrix did for "All Along the Watch Tower."

[AboveAverage484 0]

There was a Clash piece done in a magazine not too long ago that listed the greatest Clash songs of all time. It'd be cool if anybody had that and could post the list.

[Ravenbomb 0]

I liked Police On My Back, too.

Wasn't "Stay Free" on Sandanista?

[Dobbs 3K 0]

"Stay Free" was on "Give 'Em Enough Rope."

 

I like Sandinista. I can't sit through the whole thing, but there are enough songs I like that I will put it in the CD player fairly often.

 

Joe Strummer once said in an interview that it really should have just been a single album or even an EP, so it's not like the Clash themselves thought the whole thing was great. It's a very experimental album.

 

I personally think "Somebody Got Murdered" is very haunting. I'm also surprised "Police on My Back" isn't remembered more fondly. Same for "Hitsville U.K." I mean, it has a very commercial sound that I'm surprised never caught onto mainstream radio.

 

I think my favorite track is "Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)". It's what the Clash was all about...talking about social issues in a meaningful way. The lyrics are just so clever and Mick Jones' delivery dead on. I think Strummer was the better vocalist by far, but this is one of Jones' best performances. "Allianza dollars are spent...to raise the towering buildings...for the weary bones of the workers...to be strong in the morning." The music haunts you...it's a masterful piece.