FUTURE SHOCK NOW (If You Want It)

FUTURE SHOCK NOW (If You Want It)

RECORDS

THE CLASH Give ’Em Enough Rope (Epic

by

Richard Riegel

I’ve loved the debut Clash album ever since it first graced my record collection, and I’ve loved it with the particular ardor only a punk kid laying out his hard-earned cash for his first important LP purchase can bring to such devotion, as that’s exactly how I acquired my copy. After skulking around my mailbox in jaded-rockcritic sloth for too many months, waiting to see whether Columbia would indeed exercise their option and release an American edition of the LP, I finally took the words of all my compatriots, breezed down to the local JEM outlet, and plunked down my $6.79 for my own import copy of The Clash.

It was first rock ’n’ roll love all over again, as I sat down with my headphones and the album jacket (sans bio), stared intently at that luridlytinted photo of the bobbies rushing to quell the White Riot that broke out while London was Burning, and let myself be consumed by the stark aural nightmare of the Clash’s vision of England 197X. I thrilled to the echoing vistas of urban terror and anonymity caught so exactly in “What’s My Name”. I fell hard for The Clash, deemed it the consummate New Wave product, and hoped that American CBS would quickly concur with me and make the album available to all of us trapped Stateside.

That was months ago, and the first Clash album’s still not released here (for whatever reasons), but the new Clash set, Give ’Em Enough Rope, is now out, released simultaneously in the U.K. and the U.S., so the earlier set’s absence is a moot point for now. Sandy Pearlman, fresh from his successful consciousness-raising session with the Dictators, has produced the new Clash album in a way that should de-fuse all the potentially explosive factions involved in the band’s relationship with their record label.

CBS undoubtedly appreciates all the production refinements, from the added piano and sax on some of the cuts, to the general clarity and consequent programmability of the total sound. The Clash must be gratified that the earnest urgency of their lyrics survived the cleanup (fortunately Pearlman didn’t hang any of his leftover B.O.C. cryptology on the Clash’s tunes), and we the consumers will be the ultimate beneficiaries of all this corporate accommodation of the New Wave: the new Clash set is as near as'your corner record discounter.

So much for the mechanics of the new album’s release; getting inside the thematic heart of Give ’Em Enough Rope is going to be quite another matter. After a few weeks of reverent listening, I still can’t say for certain what the new Clash album is really “about”, though I know that 1 like it a helluva lot, and I know that just as with the first set, I can never seem to listen to it often enough; new facets lunge out at me each time 1 give it another spin.

Complicating the analytical procedure are a couple of thorny facts: there’s no libretto enclosed, again this time (the Clash have always insisted that people not understand them too quickly); and some of the anger-choked vocals, for all of Pearlman’s production reforms, remain absolutely unintelligible to this Yank (what is that mysterious singsong chorus to “All the Young Punks”?). Mind you, I’m not complaining, nor am I forgetting that the Rolling Stones never went broke overestimating the aural acuity of their fans.

Apparently, the Clash have given me just enough lyrical rope to make me think (their stated aim in all their interviews), just enough to solve the concept of the album in my own time, or to hang myself up trying. I’ve got a long way to go with this album, but that’s the kind of depth I’ve sought in my music and art all along.

Still, for all their living-on-theedge:of-the-apocalypse-in-declining London existential urgency, the Clash have been known to fling a red herring or two up the snoot of critics who sniff their lyrics too intently. The Warholian Mao On Horseback Accompanied By Red Guards For A Few Dollars More cryptoquiz portrait onthejacketjust may be t he biggest Red Chinese herring of all, though it also tends to reaffirm the Clash’s uncanny instinct for Zeitgeist in light of Pres. Carter’s recognition of the People’s Republic. When does the CBS Peking office open?

Then there are the Clash songs. What can I say? Simply that Joe Strummer and Mick Jones capture the moods of the urban England of the 1970’s better than just about anybody else tackling this present moment? Yes, all that’s true, just as true as the unrelenting rock ’n’ roll energy emanating from Strummer’s and Jones’ guitars and Paul Simenon’s bass and Nicky Headon’s drums on every cut here.

Okay, here are some stabs at a preliminary textual analysis: “English Civil War” is “about” the political apocalypse imminent in the continuing decay of England’s socioeconomic structure; the Clash are even now casting their lot with the antiwar side to come. “Safe European Home” is both an appreciation and a satire of the Clash’s U.K. vantage point, where revolution appears both more urgent and less frightening than it could be in the oF rocked ’n’ rolled U.S.A-

“Drug-Stabbing Time” and “Julie’s on the Drug Squad” are similarly black-humored accounts of (justifiable) paranoia among the denizens of the London drug scene, paranoia nicely underlined by a shivery sax on the former song, and jived out of the bushes by the rippling 88’s of N.Y.’s own Al Fields on “Julie”. “Stay Free” is popper in sound than you ever dreamed the Clash could "be, and celebrates the intellectual independence this band has forged for themselves since they kissed formal education good-bye.

“Last Gang in Town” and “All The Young Punks” (the latter tune erroneously, prophetically listed as “That’s No Way To Spend Your Youth” on the jacket) alternately regret and applaud the inevitable passing of punk, due any day now. “Tommy Gun” is a self-explanatory, per Nicky Headon’s rata-tat-tat drumming. “Cheapskate” is odd, but could very well concern a modern miser(?) derived from English literary archetypes popularized by everyone from Dickens to Entwhistle.

“Guns on the Roof” lines up the Clash squarely against totalitarianism, a stance you might well expect from such an apolitical band of politicians. “Guns on the Roof” also happens to contain my favorite Clash couplets of the season: “I’d like to be in the U.S.S.R./Making sure that these things come/I’d like to be in the U.S.A./Pretending that the war’s all done!”

Almost exactly. The war (take your pick) is far from all done, and the crafty social engineers in the Clash are playing their best to bring the future home to all of us, before we get lost in the past for good.

(Now if CBS would just reconsider releasing that first Clash album in the U.S....)

ERIC CLAPTON Backless (RSO)

...I walked upstairs to the bathroom, and there was Kenny and his wife. They were alone in the house and this is what I saw: His wife put a large rubber tube around Kenny’s neck, and kept moving it around and around until they found a vein that stuck out (Kenny had no veins in the rest of his body from all that shooting up of heroin). Then I saw his wife take the biggest needle '• I ever looked at, stick it in his neck and shoot some dope. What it was, I don’t know, but she said she had Jo do this to keep Kenny normal. OH SHIT, it was hard to believe, but there it was—THE NECK FIX.

—The Life and Trials of Harvey Cohen a/k/a/ Tony Conn

ALBUM-FIX: Seems oF neck-fix brain Eric’s got a new one on the fire. Backless, eh? Is that supposed t’mean that he’s back with less7? Or, uh, maybe “backless” as in “spineless?” That this mothball’s back at all (with a hit single, platinum alb) can only be indicative of a massing legion of neanderthals condoning new necrophile-alternatives. God, I can’t even imagine hippies sitting thru this swill not suddenly self-conscious of worthless anachronisms.

Boy, is this record the pits. Guitar-prowess meanders somewhere between second and third grade with the most wretched, pathetically boring and constipated note/ chord riffs (so to speak) you’d never wanna sit thru; the sonics emanating from Clapton’s Strat are so abysmally lightweight, so fucking spaz, it’s embarrassing to consider historical perspectives (that once upon a time...).

“Slowmind” ’s vocals are about as overpowering as a Charley Hough fastball; listening to “Walk Out in the Rain” and “Watch Out For Lucy”, you get the distinct impression that concurrent with chirping offkey, something’s draining outta this guy’s mouth (grape Kool-Aid??)!!

The rhythm section sounds like one of those variable-speed machines Hawaiian nightclub/bar guitarlamebrains employ for accompaniment. Vocal, guitar, percussion arrangements hand-in-hand are so unambitious and energy-castrated, songs th’likes of “Early in the Morning,” “Golden Ring,” & “Tulsa Time” (??) ’re unbearably dull and pitiful. In fact, “I’ll Make Love To You Anytime” lingers so slowly and stale, Tony Conn’s insistence of having “had 9,862 women, 2,849 kids (‘one for every race’)” seems infinitely more plausible than Eric’s limp offer of potency.

The 45, “Promises," surfaces as | the most palatable tract, but that’s □ only relative to the rest of the | disposable non-entities on this RSO 5waxing; at best, it checks out as lOth-rate Fleetwood Mac—suffice t’say Clapton’s not a convincing Stevie Nicks replacement!

Legends are a dime a dozen; with Backless, Clapton doesn’t even measure up to Carter’s 7% inflationceiling (i.e., less than a dozen tracks not worth a dime).

Gregg Turner