November 12, 2004
FLOTSAM AND FLOTJOE
At a friend's urging, some outtakes from the Clash piece:
“London Calling” could be packaged with a dead fish and three bits of string and it would still make you want to run headfirst into a wall.
Anger is never half as impressive as fearlessness.
How could The Clash ever make peace with America, this overly large and overly musical country they loved and hated so convincingly? It happened with the last song on “London Calling,” a throwaway that almost didn’t make it onto the album, but became The Clash’s first American hit. Mick Jones’s “Train in Vain” is a dance song, a little like Bo Diddley, a little like Chic. Jones’ lover has left, and he’s calming himself down with a jerky guitar lick that sounds like the asymmetrical clack of wheels on train tracks. “You said you love me and that's a fact/Then you left me, said you felt trapped/Well some things you can explain away/But my heartache's in me till this day/Did you stand by me/No, not at all.” Heartache is no different from the CIA–it will not keep our boys down. It is also the case that when The Clash went and wrote a traditional love song and put down their bricks, the green fields of American opened up.
“Hateful” is a party song about hating yourself for being addicted to drugs, somehow equally rockabilly and fast reggae. A delicious guitar figure flashes in the space between lines, and you assume it will come back soon. It’s so good, it must. Jones instead rephrases it on a dinky keyboard and charges into the next bit of the song, which would already be the best bit on someone else’s entire record. But, ho look, we have fifteen songs to go.
Posted by Sasha at November 12, 2004 10:30 PM | TrackBack