From the start, the Clash has made a religion out of being non-conformists—either by rarely doing what would appear to be in thier best interests, or by refusing to fulfill people's expectations of them. The secret to all this, of course, is that they themselves don't know what's next on the agenda; their unpredictability isn't so much a smokescreen as a blank screen. As a result, a lot of speculative writing constantly dogs them. Every new record runs into the same futile...

[The] message of Combat Rock—the Clash's fifth album and a snarling, enraged, yet still musically ambitious collection of twelve tight tracks on a single disc—is pop hits and press accolades be damned. This record is a declaration of real-life emergency, a provocative, demanding document of classic punk anger, reflective questioning and nerve-wracking frustration. It is written in songwriter-guitarists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones' now-familiar rock Esperanto, ranging from the loc...

Until now, the Clash has been lionized as much for its potential as for the quality of its recorded work. To a rock intelligentsia frustrated by the genre's commercialism and subsequent loss of urgency, the awkward angles and rough edges of the band's early singles and albums were proof of its authenticity. (p. 120) Yet this recklessly honest British quartet has been as limited as it has been liberated by the very passion so central to its critical esteem. It has been the galvanic live show th...

The thing you have to understand about the Clash is that, good as they are, you must take them with a grain of salt. God knows, we need bands that have more on their minds than a fat royalty statement, but I'm old enough to remember the revolutionary rhetoric of a lot the Sixties musicians, and while I doubt that the Clash will wind up their career singing million-selling love songs à la the Jefferson Starship, that prospect does help put things in perspective somewhat. So the Clash's p...