P’s Take: “Combat Rock” is the last Clash album, the last that mattered. As much as I always disliked Mick Jones; his songs, his singing, his Mick Jonesness, it was wrong to kick him out then try and keep going with “Cut The Crap”. This Is England is a pretty good song though, but I digress. The Clash has been one of those bands I have always loved and “Combat Rock” has been the album (along with “London Calling”) I go back to by them nine times out of ten. And I didn’t even like the record at all the first time I heard it. I have been thinking bout it and I think what makes “Combat Rock” so important to me and to a lot of people is what made me hate it at first hearing. It was just too fucking difficult.
Lemme explain what I think I mean. The Punk Rawk is a lot of things but what it isn’t (usually) is complicated. When Sham sang If the Kids Are United they meant then they will never be divided. Beat on The Brat is about disciplining your kids with baseball bats and I think we can all get behind that. Pretty much every Black Flag song was about miserable paranoiac desolate existentialist pain with some yeahs thrown in. What I’m getting at is you knew what you were gonna get from these bands and you got what you needed from their songs easy. You got jams to fuck shit up to about shit you could understand. Simple.
“Combat Rock” doesn’t offer that. At least, not just that. Know Your Rights opens the record in an amphetamine rockabilly manner but the mood changes. Car Jamming is some more odd “Sandinista!” type stuff. Should I Stay Or Should I Go and Rock The Casbah are the two feel good radio hits. Red Angel Dragnet is a good photograph of New York in the bad old days. Straight To Hell is haunting and evidently about half-American Vietnamese trying to get into the States after the war ended in ’75. Side B has some weird Clash-funk, a story about Errol Flynn’s kid and Allen Ginsburg being Allen Ginsburg. It don’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense.
But it is beautifully done. And it offers you something new to hear every time you put it on. “Combat Rock” came direct from Strummer’s odd heart and was meant to be puzzled over and listened tight to. And all these years later I still do. “Combat Rock” didn’t immediately give me the 1, 2 fuck you I wanted at 15 but at 31 it still gives me something to think about.
T’s Take: I was four years old when this album came out, and the odd thing is I remember it pretty well. I remember loving the video for Rock the Casbah. I don’t know if it was the fact that there was an armadillo, pac-man noises, a Burger King, or Joe Strummer hilariously ripping a mask off Mick Jones (it’s still funny). It was one of my favorites right next to Who Can It Be Now by Men at Work and Our House by Madness. What can I say I had pretty good taste even back then.
Memories of music videos aside this album, specifically this copy that I’m listening to right now brings up other memories and emotions as well. You see the copy I have to this day is the same one my dad bought back in 1982. If you look close enough on it you can see my little fingerprints on it from back then. I don’t listen to this much anymore. Like when I listen to The Who or Todd Rundgren it makes me think of my dad, who passed away when I was 22. Even taking “Combat Rock” out of the sleeve is something I get uncomfortable doing. I can listen to it on my iPod or on CD, but it’s just something about my vinyl copy and all the memories it entails that makes it difficult for me. It’s just too big.
Growing up we listened to a lot of music in my house. A lot. Mostly we listened to the radio, 92.3, 102.7, 104.3. Classic Rock (or just plain Rock to them). But my parents did own a small amount of music too for car trips and such. The Beatles, The Who, Rundgren. No matter where we were, or where we were going there was music playing. I’d like to think that I was engaged 100% of the time when listening to music with my parents, but the truth of the matter is that growing up it was mostly just background noise. Since it was always there, I never really noticed it otherwise. When I started getting into music myself my parents were obviously supportive. I remember my dad telling my mom that Guns N Roses were “just hard rock” when she expressed concern that I liked them so much. When I got into the Punk Rock I more or less shunned all of my parents music. It wasn’t anything personal against them, I shunned a lot of things back that that didn’t fall into my idea of Punk. What can I say; I was a dumb stubborn teenager. After my dad passed, I found myself going back to some of the music of my youth. My parents’ music. Even now writing this I get upset. Upset that I’ll never have the chance to enjoy any of it with my dad as a fellow adult. Maybe take in a Who reunion show, put him on to some music I’d think he’d like, or just sit around and talk about why I’m not giving back his copy of “Combat Rock”.
So yeah, putting on this record is complicated. But maybe after writing this all down on the FSS it’ll get easier.
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