Song of the Week: "Spanish Bombs", The Clash

Listen - The Clash perform Spanish Bombs

Today's SOTW comes from one of, if not thee, greatest albums ever recorded: London Calling. The song is the Joe Strummer composed Spanish Bombs, a song about the Spanish Civil War. As I listened to this album (yet again) over the weekend, I couldn't help but to be struck by the diversity of subjects covered in the lyrics and evident in the music composition. From Spanish Bombs to Wrong 'em Boyo to The Right Profile, Mick Jones and Strummer (mostly Strummer, in this writer's opinion) made one of those massive growth spurts as a writer. The kind that is so gigantic that one has to slap their head and just sit back and say "wow". The two front men had shown great songwriting on their first two albums, the angry The Clash and the spotty Give 'Em Enough Rope, but nothing that even comes close to the variety and complexity of their third album, London Calling.

On Spanish Bombs Joe Strummer fronts the song with his gravely voice, singing of the republican freedom fighters who fought against the fascist forces of Franco:

Spanish songs in Andalucia, the shooting sites in the days of '39. Oh please, leave the ventana open, Federico Lorca, dead and gone.

Mick Jones sings beautiful harmonies and interjects with interplay, often in Spanish.

Brilliant song, brilliant album.

Enjoy.

Song of the Week: "Brand New Cadillac", Vince Taylor & The Playboys

In a little exercise we're calling "Under the Covers", we're still exploring the original versions of songs that have been made popular by the cover artist. Today we're getting under the covers with a Brand New Cadillac.

Brand New Cadillac hit the ears of the masses when The Clash recorded it for their third album, the mega great London Calling. The song is a powerful romp that doesn't stray all that far away from it's roots as a rockabilly song. Joe Strummer, one of my all time favorite singers, rasps away in perfection as he makes the song his own: "I said 'Jesus Christ, where'd you get that Cadillac?' She said, 'balls to you daddy'. She ain't never coming back." Strummer's use of a vintage 50's Fender Telecaster to play the main riff ensures that the song keeps it's original feel and restraint. Mick Jones' use of the Gibson Les Paul and Marshall amps ensures the song is given a fresh coat of paint.

So where did The Clash find this gem? From 1950's British Rockabilly artist Vince Taylor. The leather-clad Vince Taylor and his Play-Boys recorded the number for Parlaphone records in 1959. The guitarist was one Joe Moretti who played on the original version of Shakin' All Over. The drummer was none other than Tony Meehan who went on to drum for The Shadows and later for Jet Harris.

Click here to listen to both versions of Brand New Cadillac.

Song of the Week: "Safe European Home", The Clash

Brargwahhh! That's my written primal scream. (I'm not sure one can legitimately write a primal scream, but that is not really germane to our conversation.) It's the primal scream I often want to make when I am listening to The Clash, one of my all time favorite bands.

Sometime around 1981, JBC-15 and I were hitting the downtrodden record stores of Sacramento, California (some of the same ones he mentions in his must-read tribute to Sacramento-ish band, The Cramps) when I picked up the UK pressing of the first Clash album, The Clash. I didn't know anything about them other than some word of mouth banter and the occasional Rolling Stone article about their exploits. It was love at first listen. So the next time we hit the dust bins in Sacramento which masqueraded as used record stores, I very logically pulled the next Clash album, Give 'Em Enough Rope. Man, oh man, was I ever disappointed. The album had a much more rigid, even, dare I say?, heavy metal feel to it. It sounded little like the first brilliant album. The songs were weak and Sandy Pearlman's production was awful, slick and totally wrong for the garage band. I filed it away and quickly moved on to their flawless magnum opus, London Calling and never went back to Rope. 

Fast forward to about 18 months ago when a friend of mine named his third child Rudy. I of course immediately emailed back to him with some probably-not-so-clever quip about the wonderful London Calling song, Rudie Can't Fail. (he had no idea what I was talking about). As I listened to that song 834 times in a row something kept nagging at me in the back of my head...didn't The Clash have an earlier song that incorporated a line about how some rudie couldn't fail? The search was on. Nothing on the first UK pressing of The Clash. Nothing on the much different and equally good US pressing. A handful of singles? Black Market Clash 10" ep? (I know, technically it was released after London Calling, but the songs pre-dated Calling.) Nope. That left Give 'Em Enough Rope. I dreaded putting it on as the sting of disappointment was still throbbing in my psyche. Vwalah! Rudie was right at the end of the first song on the album. And dang, that first song is a stunner (sadly, I continue to think the album as a whole is still lacking).

That opening number of their 1978 album is our Song of the Week.  Safe European Home is a bullet train ride about an eye opening trip to Jamaica that the band undertook earlier that year. The idealistic young Londoners went to Jamaica to record and pay tribute to their dub-Reggae idols. But instead they were met with antipathy, racial prejudice and were subjected to a robbery at gunpoint inside the studio at which they were preparing to record. Feeling like carrion on a desert road, the lads quickly retreated back to their safe European homes, took stock of their ambitions, licked their wounds, picked up some new equipment and went to writing. 

The song features the Pictures of Lily power chord attack, a nice little upbeat ska-riff at the end of the song (under the "Rudie, Can't Fail" refrain) and some wonderful call and response between Joe and Mick: "Whoa, the harder they come in the home of the old bluebeat (mick: where'd you go?) Yeah, I'd stay and be a tourist but I can't take that gun play (where'd you go?)." Each an elemental component of what would become the standard in modern punk as practiced by bands like Rancid, Green Day, and Offspring.

If nothing else, this is a tantalizing  hint at what the trailblazing band would do musically and lyrically with the Rudie, Can't Fail refrain and back and forth vocals on London Calling. The two songs are wonderful to play next to each other to chart the growth of the band. Enjoy and have a wonderful week.