Friday Flashback #3: The Clash

Make no mistake, new music being released today is some of the best in decades. It goes without saying (though, I'm saying it anyway) that contemporary musicians owe a great deal to their predecessors. So today we take a look back at some of the most influential and significant artists that established pop music as an art form.

In 1977, I was still a fetus developing ears. Meanwhile, a man by the name of Lester Bangs was on the road with The Clash. I'll let him describe it:

"It was one of those performances for which all the serviceable critical terms like 'electrifying' are so pathetically inadequate, and after it was over I realized the futility of hitting Strummer for that interview I kept putting off on the 'politics' of the situation. The politics of rock 'n roll, in England or America or anywhere else, is that a whole lot of kids want to be fried out of their skins by the most scalding propulsion they can find, for a night they can pretend is the rest of their lives, and whether the next day they go back to work in shops or boredom on the dole or American TV doldrums in Mom 'n Daddy's living room nothing can cancel the reality of that night in the revivifying flames when for once if only then in your life you were blasted outside of yourself and the monotony which defines most life anywhere at any time, when you supped on lightning and nothing else in the realms of the living or dead mattered at all."

The Clash, "Police & Thieves"
(From The Clash)


Lyrics:

Police and thieves in the streets

Oh yeah!
Scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition
Police and thieves in the street
Oh yeah!
Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition

From genesis to revelation
The next generation will be hear me
From genesis to revelation
The next generation will be hear me

And all the crowd comes in day by day
No one stop it in anyway
And all the peacemaker turn war officer
Hear what I say

Vocal ad lib

Police, police, police and thieves oh yeah
Police, police, police and thieves oh yeah
From genesis oh yeah
Police, police, police and thieves oh yeah

Scaring, fighting the nation
Shooting, shooting their guns and ammunition

Police, police, police and thieves oh yeah
Police, police, police and thieves oh yeah
Here come, here come, here come
The station is bombed
Get out get out get out you people
If you dont wanna get blown up

And little bonus material from The Clash for you. Turn up your speakers, get up out of your chair, and freak out everyone around you by jumping up and down or breaking something (like a number 2 pencil - damn you, standardized tests!):

-J2