Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. London Calling
2. Brand New Cadillac
3. Jimmy Jazz
4. Hateful
5. Rudie Can't Fail
6. Spanish Music
7. The Right Profile
8. Lost In The Supermarket
9. Clampdown
10. The Guns Of Brixton
11. Wrong 'Em Boyo
12. Death Or Glory
13. Koka, Kola
14. The Card Cheat
15. Lover's Rock
16. 4 Horsemen
17. I'm Not Down
18. Revolution Rock
19. Train In Vain

Disc 2:

1. Hateful
2. Rudi Can't Fail
3. Paul's Tune
4. I'm Not Down
5. 4 Horsemen
6. Koka, Kola, Advertising & Cocaine
7. Death Or Glory
8. Lovers Rock
9. Lonesome Me
10. The Police Walked In 4 Jazz
11. Lost In The Supermarket
12. Up-Toon
13. Walking The Slidewalk
14. Where You Gonna Go
15. The Man In Me
16. Remote Control
17. Working And Waiting
18. Heart & Mind
19. Brand New Cadillac
20. London Calling
21. Revolution Rock

Disc 3:

1. The Last Testament: The Making of London Calling (Documentary)
2. London Calling (Video)
3. Train In Vain (Video)
4. Clampdown (Video)
5. London Calling in Wessex Studios (Home Video Footage)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10402 in Music
• Released on: 2004-09-20
• Number of discs: 3
• Format: CD+DVD

Album Description
September 20th 2004 marks the Quarter Century of unarguably one of the greatest albums of all time. The Clash and London Calling constantly receive accolades from the media, industry and music buyers alike and this, the bands 3rd album is regarded as a groundbreaking masterpiece by many.

This deluxe edition, in digipak, with full-colour booklet and slipcase cover, includes the original album and a second CD of material found by Mick Jones--including all the album tracks plus 2 bonus tracks that did not feature on final album--"Lonesome Me" and a cover of Dylan's "The Man In Me". The bonus DVD includes 32 min doc, directed by Don Letts, and previously unseen footage of the band during recording of the album at Wessex Studios. A booklet includes previously unseen photographs by legendary rock photographer Pennie Smith.

CD Description
Released to coincide with the 25th anniversary of its release, this deluxe edition is an expanded and remastered version of the punk classic from 1979. This album best showcases the progressive nature of The Clash, retaining their punk aggression but fusing elements of dub and reggae as well as solid melodic hooks and thought provoking lyrics. This version contains unreleased tracks, including alternative demos, as well as a DVD documentary which surrounds the recording of the album.

Customer Reviews

London calling revisted
London Calling was one of my first purchases as a young teenager many years ago...which was a long time ago:-).. It sounded great then, just as it does today, brilliant production, every song is just as good as the one before as you go through the playlist and in my eyes, the best Clash album of all time.

The demo cd is just that, so dont expect anything too fancy. It is what it is, a pre album demo with some interesting takes of the songs at the early stage of composition. Some takes don't have vocals, some do, but above all, still amazing to listen to after all these years and the unreleased songs are more intersting than you could forsee.

The DVD is a bit hit and miss. The interviews were from the same session as "Westway to the world", but leaning towards the london calling era, that I am sure wasn't on the afore mentioned Westway DVD.

The black and white studio footage is priceless, with Guy Stevens shown getting up to his jinks such as throwing chairs and swinging ladders about in the live room, but it doesn't really feature the band actually doing much other than jamming for 13 minutes and joe doing a vocal take.

Live Features; "Clampdown" (complete song), Train in vain and the London Calling promo video.

5 stars for the original album, it would be four stars for the extra material to be honest, but definitly worth the money overall.

Bulletins from the front line
The Clash were perhaps the very embodiment of true punk, with a far higher level of musical versatility than may have been evident to the casual observer at the time. Joe Strummer and Mick Jones made a formidable songwriting partnership, with both immediacy and depth, and assimilated a huge range of musical influences. They were one of the few collection of musicians without Jamaican origins who could successfully play reggae, or their own punkish re-modelling of reggae, without sounding like an insipid imitation. As well as their own reggae or rasta-inspired Rudie Can't Fail and Jimmy Jazz, its influence is throughout and there are two reggae tunes, Danny Ray's Get Up (as Revolution Rock) and the Rulers' Wrong 'Em Boyo, which begins with a snatch of Johnny Otis' Staggerlee And Billy, just as the Rulers version did.
They also cover Vince Taylor's rockabilly classic Brand New Cadillac. When Joe Strummer later sang with the Pogues in place of the ailing Shane MacGowan, it made perfect sense because of the impassioned folk-a-billy sensibilities also inherent in the Clash's music.
The name London Calling comes from the call sign of the BBC's 2LO radio news bulletin, dating from 1922, and is apposite as the band send their own front-line bulletins around the globe half-a-century later. The call sign was retained by the World Service, for whom Joe Strummer was later to present record programmes right up to his untimely death.
The title song was a single in the UK, though in the USA it became the flip of Train In Vain (Stand By Me). Astonishingly, the dazzling Train In Vain was originally written and recorded to be a free cover-mounted single for the New Musical Express, and appeared on the album as a last-minute undocumented extra track when that didn't happen.
The double-album London Calling is an enduring masterpiece, though some of its sonic subtleties were lost in the original vinyl mastering, and far from being locked in a seventies time warp, the record sounds valid and meaningful today.
The original re-mastered CD rectified many of the vinyl shortcomings, bringing out parts of the musical palette that had previously sounded dull, and this new re-master is at least its equal, and often superior. It also sounds leaner, as the 3-second pauses between the tracks have been excised, hence the abbreviated running time.
The Vanilla tapes are demos recorded at a rehearsal studio in Pimlico, made in the final month before album recording proper got underway at Wessex in July 1979. Believed lost for many years they acquired legendary status, partly because Joe Strummer had at one time intimated that the demos might actually become the album, though this was mostly gamesmanship with the record label, as the sound quality is not of a releasable quality for that purpose. It is are a fascinating document of a series of songs in development, though; valuable to those with a serious interest in the band. I imagine it is disc one that will find its way back to my CD tray most frequently, but it is of course nice to have, along with the booklet, a facsimile of the original album insert and a bonus DVD, in a well presented package

One for the completist
When I read and heard about the re-release of London Calling, with some previously unreleased material, I was keen to hear it.

Way back then, I bought LC on vinyl and was blown away. A few years back I bought a CD copy and I still love every second of this album...

BUT... The Vanilla Tapes are nothing more than a curio and freebie DVDs always leave me a bit disappointed...

If you haven't got London Calling already, or are a total completist, this might be worth a look, but otherwise just buy the ordinary CD edition (or even an old Vinyl copy!) and save yourself a few quid...

Funny. Punk was supposed to be all about fighting commercial exploitation, but this seems to be that and little more...