Product Description

If punk rejected pop history, LONDON CALLING reclaimed it, albeit with a knowing perspective. The scope of this double set is breaktaking, encompassing reggae, rockabilly and the group's own furious mettle. Where such a combination might have proved over-ambitious, the Clash accomplish it with swaggering panache. Guy Stevens, who produced the group's first demos, returns to the helm to provide a confident, cohesive sound equal to the set's brilliant array of material. Boldlyassertive and superbly focused, London Calling contains many of the quartet's finest songs and is, by extension, virtually faultless.

Track Listing

1. London Calling
2. Brand New Cadillac
3. Jimmy Jazz
4. Hateful
5. Rudie Can't Fail
6. Spanish Bombs
7. Right Profile
8. Lost In The Supermarket
9. Clampdown
10. Guns Of Brixton
11. Wrong 'em boyo
12. Koka Kola
13. Koka kola
14. Lover's Rock
15. Four Horsemen
16. I'm Not Down
17. Revolution Rock
18. Train In Vain

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1687 in Music
• Released on: 2004-10-11
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Punk's death knell had already been called, but London Calling found The Clash fighting a heroic rear guard battle. Having shelved the no-frills heads-down thunder of The Clash and Give 'Em Enough Rope, London Calling was an extravagant benchmark. Ostensibly about the ideological and real struggles that rent British society asunder at the end of the 1970s, London Calling was couched in the language of revolutionary desperadoes. Influenced by reggae and ska, and augmented by the Irish Horns, the result was one of the most heady, celebratory rock & roll records to have come out of the punk movement. For every traditional rabble-rouser like "Rudie Can't Fail" or "Revolution Rock", though, there was a starker truth to London Calling found in "Guns Of Brixton", or a shred of poignancy in "Lost In The Supermarket" that confirmed The Clash's ideological importance to a generation. Seldom, if ever, had punk sounded so gloriously righteous, but so damn right. --Louis Pattison

From Amazon.com
Bursting at the seams with creative energy, the Clash's stunning 1979 double album more than made up for the artistic and commercial disappointment of its predecessor, '78's tried-too-hard Give 'Em Enough Rope. With ex-Mott the Hoople producer Guy Stevens harnessing their sound as never before, the band yielded what proved to be the best work of their career. Bouncing from hard-rock (the apocalyptic-vision of the title track) to rockabilly ("Brand New Cadillac") to reggae ("Rudy Can't Fail") to pop (the Top Forty hit, "Train in Vain"), the Clash knocked down all musical walls and, in the process, ended the argument over punk's viability in the U.S. --Billy Altman

Customer Reviews

Ratings track by track
London Calling is actually not as consistently great as "Sandinista!" (see my ratings on that album)
London Calling 9;Brand new cadillac 5;Jimmy Jazz 8;Hateful 6;Rudi can't Fail 8;Spanish Bombs 9;The Right Profile 9; Lost in the Supermarket 5;Clampdown 8; Guns of Brixton 10;Wrong 'em Boyo 6 Koka Kola 5;Death or Glory 6;The Card Cheat 9;Lovers Rock 5;Four Horsemen 7;I'm not Down 7;Revolution Rock 7;Train in Vain 9

Very good punk album
I'm not a massive fan of punk as i'm more into metal, but my sister and dad are massive fans of the clash so i decided to give this a listen their are some pretty kick ass songs on here the first 6 tracks are wicked and i like Lost in The Supermarket i havn't really listend to this fully my favourite would have to be Hateful i love that song. This is a good album to start off with the clash they are a great band.

Brilliant album with a little too much filler
Listening to this album makes me think of one word...inconsistent

The album has too many songs and a lot of them aren't that good. In my opinion this album would of been much better if it was just 12 songs long.

Tracks like "London Calling", "Rudie Can't Fail", "Lost In A Supermarket", "The Guns of Brixton", "Death or Glory" and "Train In Vain" are all classic songs. "Hateful", "Spanish Bombs", "Clampdown", "The Card Cheat", "I'm Not Down" and "Revolution Rock" are all great songs too. However the rest are not that good, songs like "Jimmy Jazz", "Wrong 'Em Boyo" and "Four Horseman" just sound uninspired at best and really should of never been included on the album.

However, despite this album's flaws it has to be said that it is indeed a classic album and one everyone should own. And in this day and age of computer playlists, one can remove the several weaker songs from the album and have a classic 5 star album that's just 12 songs long.