Monthly Archive for July, 2005

The Clash, London Call­ing : When­ever I hear the open­ing bars of this album, my pulse quick­ens and my hand reaches for the volume knob. The range of musi­cal styles the group takes on is absolutely amaz­ing — Rock­a­billy in Brand New Cadil­lac, reggae in Rudy Can’t Fail, disco in Lost in the Super­mar­ket, and even the Phil Spector-​ish Wall of Sound in The Card Cheat.

On Call­ing, the band bor­rowed heav­ily from the past, but fil­tered and sharp­ened the music through their late-70s, malaise-​clouded lens. Even the album cover design was an homage to Elvis’s first LP — how­ever, the smil­ing por­trait of the 50s rocker was replaced by a now iconic photo of Paul Simonon, smash­ing his bass on stage.

As you listen track by track, Strum­mer and Jones’s vocal har­monies inter­twine like a twin-​headed mon­ster — com­pletely synced, but so dif­fer­ent in tone. Jones’s Train in Vain sounds a lot like a bounc­ing McCart­ney tune turned sour, while tracks like London Call­ing and Death or Glory strut Strummer’s lyri­cal wit and cool­ness. This jux­ta­po­si­tion of song-​writing per­son­al­ity always inter­ests me in the great bands — like Bono & The Edge, and Lennon & McCart­ney, Strum­mer & Jones seem like an odd pair­ing. But per­haps this ten­sion fos­ters an unusual cre­ative chem­istry, I don’t know.

I do know that there was a time in the late-70s, not shortly after I was born, when the world seemed to be a mess. There was Three-​mile island, war in the Middle-​East, Thatcher, Reagan, and the demise of the polit­i­cal Left. In many ways, it reflects our times… which is why I think this album sounds as fresh and rel­e­vant today as it did 25 years ago.

Pixies, Surfer Rosa : Having been in Boston for 9 years now, I’ve lis­tened to and seen a lot of local live music — and none of it seems as good as it must have been in the late 80s. Rosa was the Pixies’ first LP, and though the fol­lowup Doolit­tle was more pol­ished, I prefer the rawer debut.

Recorded in Boston, at Q-Division by Steve Albini, there is some­thing spe­cial about this record — the way the drums thud, and the mis­matched vocal har­monies of Frank/Charles & Kim, it just seems so intimate… like you can sense the space where it was recorded.