Saturday, December 28, 2024

The Clash - Give 'Em Enough Demos (1978)

Yet another band I haven't featured on here, and obviously of a higher stature...and not-quite-obscure.  When I made a conscious decision to listen to punk in my mid-teens I had long been acquainted with "common" classics in the Clash canon - "Should I Stay...," "Rock the Casbah," "London Calling."  Songs all of us have heard to death, so much so they've taken on the air of classic rock.  It was time to excavate deeper however, and the most recent edition of The Trouser Press Record Guide left no doubt in my mind that the band's 1977 debut was all but essential listening.  In short order after reading that I did indeed listen, and the American iteration of The Clash got a workout on multiple tape decks for numerous years.  But I wasn't going to stop there.

The next order of business was to obtain Joe Strummer & Co.'s subsequent albums, and Give 'Em Enough Rope and London Calling were utmost priorities.  While I sincerely appreciated the band's ambitions (and for the most parts, songs as well) entailing L/C I did find the album as a whole a bit over-lauded, with Rolling Stone going so far as to insist it was the finest album of the '80s.  As it turned out ...Rope, their "difficult" second album wasn't so difficult at all, wherein the boys did make a progression from the debut without eschewing it's vim, rambunctiousness and overarching social critique. It was apparent to me that "Complete Control" from The Clash foreshadowed what they had in store on ...Rope - just a tad more melody and negligibly curtailed tempos. They were maturing at their own whim - one that just so happened to be at a pace parallel with the logical progression of any decent punk band that wanted to be relevant beyond the late 1970s.  "Safe European Home," "Tommy Gun," "All the Young Punks," and the driving-as-all-get-out of "Drug Stabbing Time" were the most stimulating throw-downs they had accumulated to date, and for me ...Rope placed the Clash in a unique, and dare I say hallowed pantheon. 

So here we have a collection of prototypes for the record I so fondly speak of.  The demo variants are not at all far removed from the finished product.  Certainly rawer, but the arrangements and gait are almost inseparable.  I suppose this might suggest that the demos in themselves aren't particularly revelatory, but the songs are, and that's what counts.  I obtained a rip of these tracks secondhand, which were taken from a vinyl bootleg.  There was a skip about 40 seconds into "European Home," and while it was requested that the track be re-ripped, the call unfortunately fell upon deaf ears.  I went in and removed the skip and applied a very brief fade in/out.  I was able to locate an unblemished version of "European" from a second source, but only in MP3 form which I tacked on as a reference.  Furthermore, I gently futzed with the tone and color of the album jacket just for the heck of it.  Enjoy.      

01 Safe European Home
02 English Civil War
03 Tommy Gun
04 Julie's Been Working For The Drug Squad
05 Guns On The Roof
06 Drug-Stabbing Time
07 Stay Free
08 Cheapskates
09 All The Young Punks (New Boots And Contracts)
10 Groovy Times

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid London Calling cannot be the best album of the 1980's because it was released in 1979. Good post though.
J from Europe

Andrew Christopher said...

Wonderful...thanks so much!