I suppose that one of the big reasons that I still appreciate punk rock so much is that as a teenager, when I was just discovering my interest in music, it was a form that allowed my friends and me to participate. It's a bit like folk in that way: if you want to play, you can. (Of course, participation is the point of music in general, and one of the reasons that I write this blog is to help me to formulate my ideas on the experience of listening to music and how we can make that enterprise as active as possible.) Folk and punk also share the fact that they have goals outside of the aesthetic: beauty is not really the aim, it's rather more about argument and the consequent changing of minds.

The Clash, in many ways, were the best embodiment of these ideals, as they wrote about their times from a street-level perpective that still seems entirely relevant. "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais" would be the song that I would select as their most representative, both lyrically and musically, as the song mixes punk with a reggae/ska beat to tell a story of attending a reggae concert and being left alone with one's thoughts, in the middle of a large crowd. (The Clash, like one of their models, Mott the Hoople, had as one of their primary subjects the rock and roll experience itself.) This song, even more than the cover of Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves" on their first album, pointed the way that they (and the rest of the punk world) were to go in the years ahead, a journey which would culminate in their all-embracing masterpiece, Sandanista!, only two years later. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTnijX0TH-w)

The Clash (1977) is another of the all-time great debut recordings. But before I go further, I have to be clear that I'm referring to the real debut album - not the 1979 U.S. release that dropped "Deny", "Protex Blue", "48 Hours", and "Cheat" in favour of later singles-based releases like "Clash City Rockers", "Complete Control" and others. With the changes, the album sounds more like a compilation than a cohesive statement, which is too bad, because it was one of the most powerful statements of its kind in rock history. It brought a very important concept to the world of rock and roll: the idea that the way you think and act are important. It could be argued that the Pistols were more pyromaniacal in their approach to social issues (although I'd argue that it was necessary at the time), and that the Clash offered a way forward. For me, and many others that I knew at the time, and others I've met since, it was tremendously exciting and liberating. Rock badly needed to re-integrate the do-it-yourself ethos. Don't forget that this was the time when rock musicians used to wear capes, bat-wings and so forth onto smoke-machined stages that contained banks of synthesizers, where they'd play the scales and arpeggios that they had learned in piano lessons. Yipes. For a teenager who wanted to participate, there didn't seem to be a point of entry. Until the Pistols, the Ramones, and these guys, that is. As a matter of fact, this may be the album that I've listened to the most times - due to endless plays through headphones during my high school days. Time well spent.

The Clash was probably the most articulate and idealistic of all punk bands, and very likely the most influential. Virtually every artist that tries to make their work move toward improvement and equity in the world is indebted to them. Also, the idea that punk should be inclusive in terms of musical style and cultural input mostly came from them as well. They were one of the first punk bands to cross-pollinate their music with reggae, and certainly the most successful. I'll dedicate another post soon to their awesome fourth album Sandinista! from 1980, which took this aspect of their work to its furthest point. In the meantime, listen to this album in its original form if you possibly can, and see the film that does justice to Joe Strummer's great legacy: Julien Temple's Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten (2007). Here are links for two of the album's greatest tracks: "Janie Jones" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyoW0tf6N-Q&feature=related and "Police and Thieves" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6FZwVvS8_8 .