From the beginning, The Clash was a study in contradictions: a breathtakingly aerodynamic band that became one of rock and roll’s most self-indulgent outfits; punks who were never quite punk; a legitimate exercise in rebellion that was, at the same time, a calculated corporate construction. Even the group’s famous slogan, “The Only Band That Matters,” was originally a record-company tag line. Now, decades after their dissolution, Mick Jones, the late Joe Strummer, and company return to the public consciousness with an object that sums it all up: “Sound System,” a boxed set, designed by the band’s bassist Paul Simonon, which looks like an old boom box and contains a dizzying wealth of media.
All five of the band’s American releases are here—the self-titled début, “Give ‘Em Enough Rope,” “London Calling,” “Sandinista!,” and “Combat Rock.” (In a permissible bit of revisionist history, the band’s hobbled, post-Jones sixth record, “Cut the Crap,” largely crap, has been cut.) In addition, there are three discs of B-sides, rarities, and outtakes; a DVD with videos, live material, and previously unseen footage by Julien Temple and Don Letts; a reprint of the famous Armagideon Times zine; and sundry merchandise, including badges, stickers, and dog tags. It’s a tremendously expansive set, and it’s tremendously expensive, currently retailing for a hundred and seventy seven dollars on Amazon.
Positively reviewing the set is beside the point. The albums range from unimpeachable (“London Calling”) to fascinatingly impeachable (“Sandinista!,” obviously, and then, depending on your perspective, either “Give ‘Em Enough Rope,” with Sandy Pearlman’s vexed production, or “Combat Rock,” with its uneasy split between massively popular singles and spacy experimentation). Diehard fans already have a lot of this music, whether it’s the “Combat Rock” outtakes from “Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg,” B-sides like “Cool Confusion” and “Long Time Jerk,” or the “Cost of Living” EP. The Clash didn’t stockpile without releasing; Mick Jones has joked that they were the kind of band that would record thirty songs and release thirty-one.
If you love The Clash, you’ll love the music on the set. If you don’t love The Clash, you should. “London Calling” isn’t a great record because of its reputation. It’s a great record because of its music, from the one-two punch of the title song and the Vince Taylor cover “Brand New Cadillac” to the pure pop of “Train in Vain.” The band’s excursions into reggae, dub, funk, and what would eventually come to be known as world music are omnivorous in the best sense, presented in a spirit of enthusiasm and optimism. “Stay Free” is one of the loveliest songs ever written about childhood friendships. And science has proven that less than one half of one per cent of human beings can sit still while listening to “White Riot.” The heady, brilliant, fifty-plus years documented here follow a somewhat predictable arc—an immortal opening salvo, a period of expansion, a period of contraction, a period of nonexistence—and “Sound System” tells that story, dutifully if redundantly.
And yet, negatively reviewing the set is beside the point, too. It was released yesterday, in record stores (whatever those are) and also on online streaming services like Spotify. As a result, the brilliant music created can be had for “free” (meaning at no additional incremental cost over the price of subscription to the service). If for some reason you’re a new Clash convert interested in hearing “1-2 Crush on You,” or an old fan who wants to reconnect with “Police on My Back,” you can. Streaming services don’t carry have the video material, though YouTube has plenty, and it doesn’t have the merchandise and ephemera, which is where things start to get interesting. Who are the Clash fans willing to shell out almost two hundred dollars for a badge and a dog tag? Are they obsessives? Collectors? Prisoners of nostalgia? Masochists? Surrealists? In an era when the financial, if not the emotional, value of music has shifted so radically, what is the meaning of gegaws that are only tangentially related to the music? Who is served by Clash stickers at this point in time, other than an anthropologist looking for an object lesson in commodify-your-dissent absurdity? And by reprinting Armagideon Times, has the band and the record company diminished the importance of the original zine, which can be found on eBay for prices roughly equivalent to the cost of “Sound System”?
“Sound System” does not answer these questions; rather, evades them. It is lovingly assembled and remastered, certainly. In interviews with Mick Jones, he has discussed how improved tape-head technology allowed the band to pull more music off the original master tapes, and it’s true that the mixes sound richer. The formatting is also satisfying and intelligent. The divisions of the original albums are preserved: “The Clash” occupies one disk, “London Calling,” two, and “Sandinista!,” three. This decision is more than a trivial anachronism. It’s a reminder that LPs once existed, and that they had their own internal rhythms. Even that, though, is compromised by the modern world—if you listen to “Sound System” on Spotify, you get one endless album, which stretches from “Janie Jones” to “Death Is a Star.” And so it’s back to paradox and contradiction: to experience the albums in a setting of maximum integrity, you have to purchase an exorbitant object of minimum utility. Lost in the supermarket, indeed. In the end, “Sound System” is more like the boom box it resembles than anyone seems willing to admit. It’s a museum piece that deserves to be viewed with tender suspicion, from a slight distance, rather than a living thing that rewards intimate engagement. It’s a full account rendered in empty gestures—or, in the prescient words of Jack White, himself likely a future subject of an overstuffed boxed set: “I got a backyard with nothing in it / Except a stick, a dog, and a box with something in it.”
Photograph: The Clash.
