Today is International Clash Day

[Songbird]

Not sure Big Audio Dynamite ever goe'd boom. Never really got into them but they were on the radio stations I listened to such as KROQ.

 

[Huggy]

To me this is their finest moment:



@PCLoadLetter, ICYMI, Rob Sheffield gives Sandanista some serious love here: In Praise of 'Sandinista!': Why the Clash's Triple-Album Mess Is Also Their Masterpiece

You're right, it is a mess of a three-album set but it does have one of the great Clash deep tracks, "Hitsville UK" featuring Mick Jones and Ellen Foley

 

[PCLoadLetter]

To me this is their finest moment:



@PCLoadLetter, ICYMI, Rob Sheffield gives Sandanista some serious love here: In Praise of 'Sandinista!': Why the Clash's Triple-Album Mess Is Also Their Masterpiece

You're right, it is a mess of a three-album set but it does have one of the great Clash deep tracks, "Hitsville UK" featuring Mick Jones and Ellen Foley

Thanks for that -- hadn't seen the Sheffield piece. That was good.

 

[TigerVols]

They're certainly on the very short list.

I was listening to Sandinista the other day. It's kind of forgotten and it's certainly a big sprawling mess, but my god, you knock that down to a single record and it's an absolute killer.

Kind of funny that Combat Rock, their big commercial breakthrough, is (to me at least) by far their weakest album.

Combat Rock is to The Clash what Little Creatures is to Talking Heads: albums that attracted enough teenage girl and pop radio attention to set the bands up financially for life but otherwise not something true fans listen to much at all.

 

[cyclingwriter2]

Interesting story and insights into the demise of The Clash.

Straight To heck - The Final Days Of The Clash | Louder

 

[PCLoadLetter]

Combat Rock is to The Clash what Little Creatures is to Talking Heads: albums that attracted enough teenage girl and pop radio attention to set the bands up financially for life but otherwise not something true fans listen to much at all.

I hate Little Creatures so much it makes it hard for me to enjoy the brilliant stuff that came before it. It's easy to shrug off most bad albums. Somehow Little Creatures makes me irrationally angry.

 

[qtlaw]

Admittedly I was late to the Clash party; I grew up listening to the Platters (mom), Motown (cousins), Frankie Valli and Four Seasons (PM TV), then Top 40 and Disco (AM Radio), some Kiss and Zeppelin (HS) them Soul and Funk (Jackson 5, EWF, Prince, college concerts). Not a whole lotta rebellion around me or my family, just dancing and girls.

But in fraternity house got into some Clash and listening closely to the music, became a fan.

 

[OscarMadison]

Have most of the catalogs of both bands and enjoy cuts from those discs.

I was at a music gathering when some men -so help me God, these guys were forty if they were a day old- were in a contest over which discs they owned, if they bought them on vinyl, and why "the mainstream stuff was trash." Also, "Lowell George is God," which is news to me, because I thought it was Robert Earl Keen, but I digress. They asked an attractive woman near them if she had this disc, had been to that show, etc., and then gave her the "you're new here" treatment.

Standing near us was Big Hairy Guy Who Could Feasably Claim To Be The Godfather Of Americana Before It Was Called Americana. He was looking at the superannuated frat boys as if to say, "Really?" He made eye contact with the woman and said, "Are you having a good time just because you're having a good time?" She said she was. He nodded. "Okay, then," he said, "That's what this is about."

I think it registered who BHGWCFCTBTGOABIWCA was to her and the SFBs just as he figured he'd better find some other place to stand until it was his time to play.

The SFBs got very quiet for a moment and then they started hooting and high-fiving each other. The woman looked at me. I shrugged and turned my attention back to stage. I enjoyed the feeling of my own knowledge remaining occult, which is similar to Charles Shulz's description of peeing in dark Sunday School trousers.

#Note to @TigerVols, I am not calling you out on this. It's just something I flashed on when I read your post. Sometimes I swear Nick Hornby stole the idea for "High Fidelity" from one of my ex-boyfriends.

 

[Neutral Corner]

You are going to have a hard time convincing anyone who saw Little Feat live with Lowell George that he wasn't at least close to God. Myself included. Feet of clay, and killed himself with his addictions far too young, but he was an amazing singer, songwriter, and guitarist.

Are you saying that BHG was Keen?

I'd have a very difficult time pinning down the origin of Americana as a genre. "Will the Circle be Unbroken"? "American Beauty/Workingman's Dead" period Grateful Dead? The Flatlanders? It comes from so many sources and genres cross pollinating that I think that it's easier to list the albums where it begins to emerge as a coherent strain of American music than it is to hang it on anyone in particular.

 

[PCLoadLetter]

#Note to @TigerVols, I am not calling you out on this. It's just something I flashed on when I read your post. Sometimes I swear Nick Hornby stole the idea for "High Fidelity" from one of my ex-boyfriends.

There's a scene in the film version of "High Fidelity" where Jack Black's obnoxious record store clerk is berating someone because they have everything by Echo & the Bunnymen but they are unfamiliar with "Psychocandy" by the Jesus and Mary Chain. It's played for a laugh.

I watched it thinking "How the heck would they not have 'Psychocandy?'"

Jack Black's assholishness hit a little close to home.

 

[PCLoadLetter]

I'd have a very difficult time pinning down the origin of Americana as a genre. "Will the Circle be Unbroken"? "American Beauty/Workingman's Dead" period Grateful Dead? The Flatlanders? It comes from so many sources and genres cross pollinating that I think that it's easier to list the albums where it begins to emerge as a coherent strain of American music than it is to hang it on anyone in particular.

I would lean toward "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" by The Byrds.

 

[Neutral Corner]

Or the Flying Burrito Brother's "Gilded Palace of Sin". I think my personal opinion is that albums such as these were the foundation, the building blocks of Americana. OTOH, none of them stood alone, they all had origins in American music that came before, whether it was Bill Monroe and the Carter Family or Hank Williams and Bob Wills or whoever. It's roots music, so it taps into a multitude of sources in gospel, blues, country, folk, jazz, roots rock, Appalachian music and more.

The music as a genre began to be recognized in what, the mid-80's, with the term "Americana" coming into popular use in the 90's or so? Obviously it was happening earlier than that, whether it was recognized as existing and gathering momentum or not.