According to Aria, who sat and listened to this with me, she likes it because it's not really hard rock but it's also not Disney music. Not to mean that she doesn't like Disney music, she just happens to like this because it isn't. Make sense? Her favorites on here are Should I Stay or Should I Go and Rock the Casbah (though she pronounces it as Rock the Cash Bar). She is also a particular fan of Red Angel Dragnet. She was horrified at the lyrics to Straight to Hell and refers to it as Straight to Not-Heaven.
As a kid I recorded Rock the Casbah off the radio multiple times on my little Sony Cassette recorder. It's only now that I write this do I realize what the song is about. Religious fundamentalism trying to control the populace. Some things never change. For those new to the Clash, this is as good as any an album to start with. No two songs sound alike. Their musicianship and creativity far out pace your typical punk band and their music-with-a-message was pretty much un-heard of for groups like this back then.
Mick Jones went on to form Big Audio Dynamite and had a hit with the song Rush back in 1991, just as I was graduating high school. Sadly at the time I wasn't interested in hearing anything new and the Clash roots of BAD was lost on me. Joe Strummer died suddenly in 2002 of heart arrhythmia after a very active career which even included a stint with the Pogues filling in for Shane McGowan. I've got a couple more Clash albums in my collection, sadly I don't yet have a copy of London Calling. I think I had one once but cleared it out with some other albums in the 90's when I was more stupid than I am now. I look forward to adding that one back into the fold and to listening to the other albums in my collection soon.
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