I just wanted to post a Cut The Crap appreciation thread. I know this album is universally despised by both Clash fans and general music listeners as absolute, well…crap. But I love this album. Sure, the sound production leaves a lot to be desired, but once you get over that, you realize there are some beautifully written songs here.
“This Is England”, “Movers and Shakers”, “Three Card Trick” and “We Are The Clash” stand up to the best of anything they’ve done in the post-London Calling years. In fact, the only Clash album that absolutely sucks isn’t Cut The Crap - its COMBAT ROCK. CtC is far, far superior to both that abomination AND Sandinista.
yup.
So to any Clash fans who have avoided this album, youre doing yourself a disfavor. Fuck the critics and give it a try.
I do have a secret appreciation for this album, in fact (or at least a good part of it).
I’ve got my motorcycle jacket but I’m walking all the time.
I do like Combat Rock, though, but I am not keen on Sandanista.
Bite your tongue. The highlight of CtC is easily This is England. The other tracks are lacking something… Mick Jones for one. Without him the chemistry was all mucked up and they suddenly lost the pop sensibility that made their earlier work so accessable and memorable. Bad timing didn’t help either. When CtC came out it just sounded kind of bland and synthetic compared to the raw hardcore punk scene erupting elsewhere.
On the other hand, I happen to really like Sandinista. Sure, sure, there’s a good bit of filler. But at least it was bold filler. It could have been a great double album or an amazing single one.
Combat Rock also kind of fell apart as a whole, but an album with Rock the Casbah, Should I Stay or Should I Go and Straight To Hell could have had white noise for the other half hour and still be brilliant.
The Clash pretty much sucked post London Calling. Rock the Casbah and SISOSIG are particularly bad - mediocre pop from a band that was revolutionary enough to know better.
I mean, is it any surprise that the only Clash songs I hear on Classic Rawk radio are those two? You never hear White Riot or White Man In Hammersmith Palais. You hardly hear London Calling. It’s always those monstrosities that they had to end their career with. Unfortunate.
I like CtC too. If it was produced and arranged different, it would have been great. IIRC its not in print anymore, and I’m almost positive there was no CD release. Combat Rock sucks ass, but I love Sandinista. like seriousart said, There’s a lot of filler, but its bold filler.
Gex gex…your problem is you listen to the radio! I hear White Riot and Hammersmith all the time. I just throw on the record!
Philistines! gex gex, I couldn’t disagree with you more. Should I Stay and Rock the Casbah were mediocre pop songs?! Not by a long shot. Perhaps your judgement is clouded by, as nitro said, the radio saturation. There’s lots of Beatles songs that I can’t bare to hear as well, not because they’re bad songs, just because they’ve been beaten to death by classic radio.
I read an interview years ago with Joe S and they asked him, in retrospect, what his all time favorite Clash song was. He said Casbah was, as he felt, IIRC, it summed up what the band had been trying to do for years.
And I think there’s underappreciated tracks from Combat as well. Straight to Hell being the most obvious one, but other tracks as well like Atom Tan and Car Jam. Those two, virtually unknown songs are as good or better as 90% of CtC and the other three songs are light years better.
And An Arky… you might as well scrape off half the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling as cut half of London Calling. (OK, that’s a little melodramatic) But to cut half of one of the most critically acclaimed rock albums of all time? Heresy.
nitro, CtC was not only released on CD, but is easily found in stores and on line today. In fact, I just bought it on CD about 2 months ago, myself.
Nah, it should have been three sides with maybe an etching on side 4. I don’t know though, just off the top of my head, the only expendable songs on that album is Lovers Rock and The Card Cheat. Lets just keep London Calling at four sides.
OK, I may have been brash suggesting that London Calling should have been a single album. I do love it just the way it is. However, if the London Calling HAD been a single album with these songs…
London Calling Brand New Cadillac Hateful Rudie Can’t Fail Spanish Bombs Clampdown Guns of Brixton Death or Glory I’m Not Down Train in Vain
…I think that it would be a shoe-in for Greatest Rock Album of All Time, instead of debatably so.
An Arky, I’ll grant you that those are probably the strongest tracks (though I’d include Right Profile). I still think it works best as a whole. The interim tracks just frame the stronger ones.
Nope. Can’t cut em. Wont let you.
But if you remove the tedious “Revolution Rock”, all 4 sides fit perfectly onto a C-60 cassette!
You know, cassette tape?
Magnetic audio tape?
Umm… never mind. Darn kids with their rippers and MP3s and what-have-yous. Why in my day, I saw Joe Strummer grab a would-be stage diver by the neck and toss him off the stage right behind the security barricade. Paid $15 for the privilege, I did, and some band called The Who played after them too. And another thing, nobody moshed back then, it was all pogoing and slam dancing…ramble ramble…
Damn straight, Combat Rock has very good songs on it. Know Your Rights, Red Angel Dragnet, Overpowered By Funk (despite Futura 2000’s rather inept rapping), Innoculated City, Death Is A Star… Yes, I’ll admit it, Combat Rock is my favorite Clash album. A pox on all ye who dis it!
Oh, and as for Cut the Crap, I’ve owned it since the CD was reissued a couple years ago. I have refused to listen to it, because I was always a Mick fan. As a completist I had to have it, but my allegiance to Mr. Jones made me refuse to listen to it. When Joe died I seriously considered playing it, but I decided to leave it for 20 years down the road so I can have something new from the Clash (or, as I’ve always thought of this period of the band’s history, the rump-Clash). So it sits, gathering dust…
I have a special place in my heart for Combat Rock. Being a wee youngin when London Calling was released, and only a slightly less wee youngin when Combat Rock was released, I missed the Clash in their heyday. Then a few years later when I started actually listening to music, I found Combat Rock in a cutout bin, bought it for Rock the Casbah, and damn near wore it out listening to it again and again. At the very least, it led me to the far greater pleasures of London Calling and the s/t album. Perhaps it’s mostly just nostalgia value, but I still love most of the stuff on Combat Rock.
And perhaps for lack of nostalgia value, I can’t remember the last time I dug out Cut the Crap, though I’m sure I still have the tape in a dusty shoebox somewhere.
