‘Fire and Rain’ became a hit when I was only three years old. As such, I was cheated of hearing it for the first time, or at least having any memory of having heard it, specifically, for a first time. Like ‘Happy Birthday to You’ or ‘I've Been Working on the Railroad’, the song was ubiquitous most of my young life. I could hear the chorus repeated on mainstream NY radio stations like WNBC or WYNY without ever giving thought to its meaning. I could hear it sung on TV variety shows (I'm so sure Cher sung it on her post-Sonny show, yet I have no proof), in barber shops, and department stores. James Taylor, the man who was made famous by singing and recording the song, himself parodies the way it overwhelmed his career in two of his own songs: his hilarious pantheon to selling out – ‘Money Machine’ - in which he declares triumphantly "I've seen fives and I've seen tens" and more tenderly in his later song ‘That's Why I'm Here’ where he muses about why "perfect strangers" would want to "pay good money to hear 'Fire and Rain' again and again and again." He also sang it on The Simpsons. My favorite allusion to the song is in Jim White's "Christmas Day" where he sets the scene of a heart-rendering breakup at a Greyhound station on Christmas against "a bad Muzak version of James Taylor's big hit called 'Fire and Rain'". So perfect: canned angst played off against real sorrow: mocking it. The commodification of art until it's a meaningless grotesque of itself.

"Fire and Rain" is a song about suicide, depression and addiction written by a man who was in the grips of a heroin habit that would stay with him for years to come. It chronicals the reaction to the death of the songwrite’s' friend Suzanne by her own hand, and the time he spent in mental hospitals as a teen and the struggle with his demons he was facing at the time of his earliest brushes with success. It's a very finely-crafted pop song, a late-20th century folk song in the purest sense: something one finds oneself whistling aimlessly while working. It demonstrates the best type of songwriting. When I stopped hearing the song as something that just was and started listening, I related it to every sad moment in my life: every family illness, every hurt feeling, every pointless crush.

I remember singing it in junior high chorus. Not as a song being taught in the actual class for any performance. Waiting for the chorus teacher to work out the girls' parts, my friend and I would sing it quietly on the other side of the room. He was a very good singer. I was a terrible singer who just squeaked into chorus. We weren't really harmonizing in a literal sense, but it was a way to communicate through what was already an oldie. High school was filled with heartache - real or imagined - and it was just very difficult to express those emotions or talk about them honestly. Here we sat, all of 14, claiming we had seen fire and rain, stormy days that we thought would never end. Certainly we had seen lonely times where we couldn't find a friend. And we would again. And at times, we'd come barreling towards disaster on the level of what James Taylor was really writing about and somehow we'd make it through. It was a time for me, when I realized that there would be no such thing as a sad song, as long as it was honest and true, that I wouldn't love.

‘Fire and Rain’ wasn't the only great song on 1970's Sweet Baby James. It may not have even been the best one. And, despite its iconic stature, Sweet Baby James may not even be the best James Taylor album. (That for me would either be 1977's JT or 1991's New Moon Shine.) It is an album, however, with a reputation. And that reputation seems to be the launch of the phenomenon of the 1970s singer-songwriter. It stayed on the Billboard charts for two years (despite peaking - curiously enough - at number 3) and shared the charts with the follow-up Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon the next year.

Sweet Baby James is seen by some as the killer of rock and roll in the 1970s much in the same way that Rocky, Jaws, and Star Wars are often claimed as the killer of cinema in the age of Cassevetes and Coppola. Suddenly, the radio was filled with the likes of Al Stewart and Gerry Rafferty and a commodified mellowness took the edge off of music while making it a mega-industry that could only be saved from the pit of despair by the coming of punk (or Springsteen depending on who you talk to.)

I'm here to tell you that James Taylor was not the reason the Velvet Underground never hit it big and he was also not the reason for the Eagles coming into existence. This Yankee from Massachusetts did not take a shovel and dig Laurel Canyon and I find it telling that as an older man, with his past behind him and a zen-like peace to his stature, he moved away from LA and settled in Nantucket, away from the glitter of stardom and back to the setting of the first song on Sweet Baby James. The title song and the one I probably do consider my favorite.

‘Sweet Baby James’ combines a lullaby James was writing for his nephew with a remembrance of a "dreamlike" ride through a snow-covered road in the Berkshires on the way to Boston. Each half of the song is drenched with a spiritual loneliness: an isolation without anxiety and an inner peace. It is the simplest of nursery rhymes. And it recalls another journey once chronicled by Robert Frost as the singer, really at the beginning of his life and art, admits to "ten miles behind me and 10,000 more to go." In that same chorus, he defines the way I've come to feel about spirituality and the power of music:

There's a song that they sing when they take to the highway
A song that they sing when they take to the sea
A song that they sing of their home in the sky.
Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep
But singing works just fine for me.

The last two lines of that stanza should be the slogan for the American Humanist Association. Strange coming from an album where Jesus is invoked more than once. But both ‘Sweet Baby James’ and ‘Lo and Behold’ (which is practically a spiritual), despite their contradictions, share something deeper, and that's something true for the entire span of what is a very short record after all. ‘Lo and Behold’ with its cries of "you just can't kill for Jesus" and claims of "glorious sights this soul has seen" are both born of cowboy poetry and a minstrel’s tradition. Unlike much of Taylor's later work, there seems to be a distinct, definite focus on creating work that seems to escape time.

"Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose" Taylor sings in ‘Sweet Baby James’ and the album is, as such, a work inspired by nature ... country roads, simple pleasures and introspection. In ‘Anywhere Like Heaven’ he declares "There's a natural pillow for my head the grass has overgrown. I think of that place from time to time when I want to be alone." The answers are in the world around us and then ultimately in us. You might call on Jesus, but you do so in order for your own self to make a stand. You might think that all this introspection equates to navel gazing but in one of the slyest songs on the record, a man named Sunny Skies finds a way to "ease down slow and everything is fine in the end" only to find - in fact we're told we'd be "pleased to know" - he's friendless, alone and left behind. And ultimately you don't have to go it alone, as expressed in the completely joyful ‘Country Road’ where Taylor makes his case for love (even if has to be "some kind of natural born fool" to want to love again) with someone to whom he declares "your way and my way seem to be one and the same." It's all so simple and yet nothing is simple. We all have to be going down a road, measuring consequences, going through the craft of living a life.

It all has felt like a whole for me ever since I heard the entire album for the first time. There a fantastic easiness to it resulting from the stellar lineup of musicians who would end up defining the California sound for better or worse for years: Danny Kortchmar, Russ Kunkel, Randy Meisner, Leland Sklar among others. Always precise and catching the right note and yet never drowning out Taylor's guitar or his voice or the aspect of the piece that I haven't touched on yet, namely his simple melodies and his ability to write an acoustic guitar lead that takes you right into the setting of a song. And underneath: Carole King, another east-coaster, grounding the work with her piano, her voice and her common sense.

And maybe it's that easiness that allows me to listen from beginning to end despite having to hear the corny reconstructed version of ‘Oh Susannah’ or the goofy blues of ‘Steamroller’ (which I would come to find as an irritant as Taylor's live version started stretching and stretching in length) or the awfulness of the end part of ‘Suite of 20G’ (hard to argue that JT didn't kill rock and roll with lines like "when I get a common cold, wanna hear a saxophone”). But for the way the songs feel together, including gems like ‘Blossom’ not covered here, I have a soft spot in my heart for James Taylor and Sweet Baby James even if I don't visit it as much as I used to. I may not notice it every day, but it's there, under the skin, every time I go down in my dreams.

There are so many reasons that Washington D.C.-based Slant 6 - and in particular their first full length release Soda Pop * Rip Off - keeps rattling around that part of my brain reserved for sentimental music favorites. First there is the band’s name. Slant 6 was named for a six cylinder engine made by Dodge in the 1960s and 1970s. (Speaking of nostalgia it is surprising that as Detroit rolls on with its auto making comeback and so many American car companies reintroduce their classic muscle cars, that Dodge doesn’t produce a special edition charger with a slant 6.) The band’s lineage also justifies a fond recall of Slant 6 since guitarist and vocalist Christina Billotte was a former member of the seminal all female band Autoclave. Future Helium lead singer and solo artist Mary Timony was an Autoclave band mate.

The three women line-up of Slant 6 recorded for one of those great small/regional independent record labels so prevalent in the 1990s. Sub Pop would probably be the gold standard in terms of commercial success because of their early work with Nirvana. Due to sales and label consolidations Sub Pop has since ceased being a truly independent label. The Pacific Northwest also gave us CZ records who gave bands like the Gits and 7 Year Bitch an outlet for their recordings. Currently CZ only offers very itinerant releases. Portland’s Kill Rock Stars is still going strong though they have not repeated the high visibility their relationship with riot grrrl bands like Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear earned them. In the Midwest, though originally founded in Washington State, there was Amphetamine Reptile records featuring artists such as The Cows, Hammerhead, and Janitor Joe. Unfortunately AmRep today offers very infrequent releases. Simple Machines was founded in Arlington, Virginia and offered bands like Lois and Scrawl a place to record. All of these labels and the countless others not mentioned shared punk’s “do it yourself “(DIY) ethic. Perhaps the regional label that is the biggest standout in this regard is DC’s Dischord Records. They produced their albums in-house and distributed their recordings without the help of large distribution channels. Happily Dischord is still standing today. Slant 6 was a Dischord artist.

Slant 6 has widely been considered a riot grrrl band, though that may be more a consequence of the fore mentioned DIY ethic as well as gender and era. This band was far less political and not really the embodiment of riot grrrl postmodern-feminist values the way bands like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile or Heavens to Betsey were. It is probably more correct to consider this band as a sort of musical hybrid combining elements of foxcore, surf punk, pop, new wave, rock, and DC hardcore. On this record you can hear shades of everything from the Ramones to L7 to The Buzzcocks to Kim Gordon. Seemingly the biggest debt of influence gratitude however belongs to Penelope Houston and her work with the Avengers. Likely it is all of this variety that results in a record that still sounds fresh today.

Soda Pop * Rip Off is heavy on short, upbeat tracks. Amazingly the release containing 16 tracks comes in at just over 30 minutes. This is a straight forward rock record, generally featuring your traditional line up of guitar, bass and drums. While musically sparse, the sound is still up-tempo; big as well as raw and powerful. The songs are melodic and catchy. Soda Pop * Rip Off has that frenetic almost urgent sound that makes punk pop great. Simplicity also reigns lyrically. This musical directness lead to an album without any standout tracks but also lacking any stinkers. In my experience, each track at one time or another has been a personal favorite.

Soda Pop * Rip Off was basically a collection of 7-inch releases and other separate recording sessions. More or less this is a compilation record. However for me it works better than their later album, Inzombia. That record tried to be a bit of a concept album with a nod to B-movies. The problem with Inzombia is it goes off the rails a little bit with the overly goofy ‘Retro Duck’ and extended jam title track. It also offers fewer songs than the earlier release. Soda Pop * Rip Off on the other hand finally brings to fruition the promise of an all-girl band playing rock and rebellion to its hilt, offered us by The Runaways so many years earlier. This is particularly evident with the fast moving, down stroking guitar on tracks like ‘What Kind of Monster Are You’ and ‘Night X 9’.

Another fantastic aspect of this album is while it offers straight forward rock riffs; they are not so simple and fundamental that you feel like you have heard then over and over before. Instead it is a fresh twist on classic punk pop, particularly evident musically on ‘Love Shock’ and ‘Invisible Footsteps’. Lyrically Soda Pop * Rip Off is uncomplicated but still effective in conveying whatever the theme of the song may be. The fed up lover on ‘Time Expired’ expresses with ease that things are over: “Time expired, violation. Your presence is a real invasion.”

In so many ways Soda Pop * Rip Off is the perfect record. If you have a short attention span the quick hit of short, sharp Soda Pop tunes will keep you interested. Also the punk simplicity makes it a sound choice if you are looking for background noise. On the other hand if you need to gear up for a fantastic night of partying the feverish pace found on each track will certainly put you in the mood. This record definitely deserves to be remembered and played in heavy rotation. It certainly makes me long for a time in the early-mid 90s when girls picked up guitars in droves, applied a DIY vibe, and really rocked.

It may be a reach classifying someone buried in Paris’ prestigious Montparnesse Cemetery as being “unsung” but that I was unaware of Serge Gainsbourg’s stature until two months ago is stupefying to me. I discovered him because of a recommended bio-flick. I was told he looked like a scruffier Shane MacGowan (he does) and that was enough to make interested in director Joann Sfar’s Gainsbourg, which I give three stars, but, more importantly, give it credit for making me check out the man’s work, much of it as innovative as it is provocative.

For example, Je t’aime … moi non plus’ (‘I Love You … Me Neither) - his duet with British model (and future wife) Jane Birkin amid Procol Harum-ish keyboards– scandalized Europe and was banned in Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom for its sexy moans and groans in 1968, seven years before Donna Summer moaned and groaned her way to disco stardom with ‘Love To Love You’. (And recently used by Sofia Coppola in Natalie Portman’s ad for Miss Dior Cherie Perfume).

As a another example, I give you Rock Around The Bunker, a 1975 concept album about Nazis and World War II that had to have influenced Malcolm McLaren’s nurturing of Nazi imagery in Sex Pistols songs and persona. Remember ‘Belsen Was A Gas’? Remember Sid Vicious’ swastika shirt?

I could go on and on. I hear him in Barry White. I hear him in The Specials. I hear him in Beck. You know Lou Reed’s talking vocal style that everybody thinks Lou invented? Uh-uh. Gainsbourg was doing it back when Lou Reed was still setting his sights on being an occupant of the Brill Building. At the beginning of his career – if he had been American – Gainsbourg would’ve been working in that mid-Manhattan building with Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, and Burt Bacharach, to name songwriters who - like Gainsbourg - went on to be singing stars themselves.

Because that’s how Gainsbourg started out: as a writer of songs. I love his life story. Self-destructive creative people are fascinating: the dichotomy is breathtaking. Just about the only artist type I like better are late bloomers such as German author Theodor Fontane, who published his first novel at the age of 60. In Gainsbourg, I have both since he didn’t release his first album until he was 30, having previously failed at painting.

Gainsbourg’s earliest work is indebted to chanson, a type of French song that is lyric driven, but what differentiates his work from other singers specializing in this genre – such as Edith Piaf – is the space given to the instrumentation. Gainsbourg will step aside and let the organist, pianist, guitarist play. (His songs are marvels of arrangement (for which some credit must go to Alain Goraguer, Arthur Greenslade, and Alan Hawkshaw, the principal arrangers of his hit singles). For example, ‘Intoxicated Man’ is organ driven – it either influenced Hendry Mancini’s writing of ‘The Pink Panther Theme’ or vice versa – and Gainsbourg just disappears so the top-notch organist can solo.

Researching ‘Intoxicated Man’ led me to a Mick Harvey CD with the same title whose artwork I remembered. I remembered thinking of buying it back in 1995 and so it turns that I I had heard of Gainsbourg before. Harvey was a member of Birthday Party (a band that’s never gotten it’s true due), a Bad Seed, and a P. J. Harvey cohort and on his album he covered 16 of Gainsbourg’s songs. Reading the track listing, I could see why I had heard good things about it. Many of Gainsbourg’s best singles are covered (only with English lyrics), singles such as ‘Initial B.B.’, ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, and ‘Lemon Incest’, the song Gainsbourg – always one for pushing society’s prudish buttons – dueted on with his daughter Charlotte, a popular singer in France in her own right.

That’s part of the secret of Gainsbourg’s success: duets or female harmonies for the choruses. ‘Initials B.B.’ refer to French actress Brigitte Bardot with whom Gainsbourg had a fling: brief but long enough for her to sing on his 1968 hit ‘Bonnie and Clyde’. (Gainsbourg lyrically has a thing for American pop culture and in his songs you’ll find references to New York USA, Ford Mustangs, comic strips and et cetera.) Bardot also did the original moaning and groaning on ‘Je t’aime moi non plus’ but by the time Gainsbourg wanted to release the track, she had abandoned her inner Bonnie Parker and had returned to her husband and respectability and would not allow Gainsbourg to use her contributions to the original sessions. In walked Jane Birkin – who said she spent her first night with Gainsbourg in a night club then a transvestite club then Gainbourg’s hotel room, an evening that is depicted in Gainsbourg. Birkin overdubbed new moans and groans and went on to be featured on other Gainsbourg recordings, including Historie de Melody Nelson, a concept album that some consider Gainsbourg’s finest.

Gainsbourg continued courting controversy over the last 15 years of his life. Veterans of the Algerian War protested when he recorded the reggae flavored ‘Aux Armes et Caetera’, which they thought showed disrespect to the French national anthem. Bob Marley was pissed off at Gainsbourg for having his wife Rita singing erotic lyrics on another track. (I find this surprising because Gainsbourg and his material reeks of sex, so what did Marley expect? Even in photos of Gainsbourg if he’s not smoking, he’s standing near a woman in a scattered state of undress.) In 1986, he told Whitney Houston “I want to fuck you!” when the two met on a television show and the host Michael Drucker would not translate what he was saying in French. Like I’ve pointed out, Gainsbourg may have been French, but he knew his English well enough.

But that’s unimportant now. We can’t let these controversies detract from Gainsbourg’s contributions to pop music, especially his playfulness as a singer, lyricist and songwriter. What is important now is the music that remains twenty years after he died: songs written for other singers, hit singles, concept albums, 40 film soundtracks. I suggest you check some of them out because his work touches so many genres – jazz, ballads, mambo, lounge, reggae, pop (including adult contemporary pop, kitsch pop, yé-yé pop, '80s pop, pop-art pop, prog pop, space-age pop, psychedelic pop, and erotic pop), disco, calypso, Africana, bossa nova, and rock and roll according to Wiki – there’s bound to be something you’ll that’ll appeal to your French side.

So said David Foster Wallace, generally considered by his peers to have been the James Joyce of their generation.

Hellbomb has assembled a literary guide for our visitors: one hundred works of fiction spanning four centuries: from the work of the first novelist Cervantes to arguably the finest novel of 2010: works you should read.

Titles are ranked chronologically because all are ranked No. 1 and all are about what it is to be a fucking human being.

The Clash may not have been the only band that mattered, but they were the only band that cared.

They proved this repeatedly in many ways, large and small, throughout their quixotic existence, an adjective I do not tie lightly to The Clash for no other band’s actions more closely resembled that of Don Quixote. Like Cervantes’ famed fictional conquistador charging at windmills, The Clash repeatedly charged their record company, winning small but costly victories on behalf of fans. Over the course of eight years The Clash continually strived and gave their fans music at bargain rates and operated as if CBS Records was a socialist enterprise instead of capitalist.

Consider this, at their creative apex between December 1979 and December 1980, The Clash:

• Released a double album (London Calling) for the price of a single. (They had tricked CBS by arranging to have a free single included with the album. They never told CBS that that would be a 12-inch “single” with ten songs, including their hidden first American radio hit ‘Train In Vain’.)
• Engaged in a 6-month stand-off over CBS’ refusal to release ‘Bankrobber’ as the first 45 of project known as the Singles Bonanza, which was supposed to be a series of monthly singles meant to keep fans informed as to what was happening in the world. (Ironically, only ‘Bankrobber’ ever was released as part of this project so it turned out to a Single Bonanza.)
• Released a triple album for the price of a double by agreeing to receive no royalties for the first 200,000 copies sold.

That triple album was the controversial Sandinista! released 30 years ago on December 12, 1980 in Great Britain. But could be found in the cooler record stores stateside by the depressed rock fan looking for consolation in the wake of John Lennon’s absurd murder the previous week. I know because I was one of those depressed rockers. I bought it at Bleecker Bob’s, subwayed home, rolled six joints and then spun all six sides – a joint a side – and listened to all 2 hours: 24 minutes: 47 seconds the first December night I bought it. And it helped in many ways because for rockers of a certain age Joe Strummer was our John Lennon despite Strummer’s protestations against “phoney Beatlemania!” a year earlier.

(And in light of Strummer’s death in 2002, the likenesses are even more striking. I came up with almost two dozen similarities off the top of my head – and more substantial than both being photographed on the same recording studio couch by rock photographer Bob Gruen – but I’ll pursue that in a separate feature since I do want to concentrate here on The Clash’s last important album.)

Stranded in Manhattan at the end of the 9-date American leg of The 16 Tons Tour in March 1980 (and with bassist Paul Simonon off to Canada to play a bit part (as a bassist no less) in Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains), the remaining members of The Clash convened at The Power Station on 53rd Street to record some covers, including The Equals’ ‘Police On My Back’ (written by Eddie Grant). The sessions were going so well that The Clash decided on extending them only to discover studio time at The Power Station already blocked out.

This necessitated a move 45 blocks downtown to 52 West 8th Street: address of abstract artist Hans Hoffman’s old haunt, then the Generation Club, and ultimately Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios. Two of Ian Drury’s Blockheads were flown over from London to assist: keyboardist Micky Gallagher (who had already supported The Clash at concerts for approximately half a year) and bassist Norman Watt-Roy, who quickly laid down the bassline that was looped for Strummer to crest as he tackled rap music, which no white band had yet attempted. It still seems like a strange move for a London-based band but with lead guitarist and occasional lead vocalist Mick Jones at the controls, The Clash – especially Strummer - were encouraged to experiment in the studio and try new things, which is how the opening track ‘The Magnificent Seven’ came about.

Jones was listening to black New York City radio stations and it was clear to him before it was to most that rap was more than a fad and had musical legs. He pushed Strummer to take Watt-Roy’s bassline – which is very punky in its own way – and use it as a vehicle to free associate about what was going on around him. And so ‘The Magnificent Seven’ begins Sandinista! by ringing in a new work day, another song in the long line of the “corporations are killing the worker” vein that The Clash regularly issued to their fans. It is an indictment of capitalism and even references Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Consider: there’s “knuckle merchants,” Japanese products that are “so cheap and real phoney,” “clocks go slow in a place of work.” And what is lunch?: “It’s our profit – it’s his loss” and the worker gets an hour to “do your thanng!” Back at work “it’s no good for man to work in cages/hits the town. He drinks his wages.” And for all the worker’s purchasing power, your vacuum cleaner sucks up your pet bird!

The political nature of The Clash’s lyrics has monopolized the attention of lazy journalists, but - if you really listen - their most consistent message to the public was not revolt; it was to not waste life working for others. As Joe Strummer asks later during Side 4’s ‘The Call-Up’: “Who gives you work? And why should you do it?” It’s the age old question.

Curiously, despite his exhortations to Strummer to experiment, Mick Jones mostly plays it safe on Sandinista! Almost all of the album’s rockers are his vehicles, including ‘Hitsville U.K.’, the album’s second track. The song is actually an off-handed, organ driven, Motown homage about DIY bands in England featuring harmonized vocals courtesy of Jones and his then girlfriend Ellen Foley (Meatloaf’s vocal foil on ‘Paradise By The Dashboard Light’ and later a featured actor on NBC’s Night Court). It is, unfortunately, the most ineffectual song Jones ever sang while with The Clash. It’s not bad – like Paul McCartney, Mick Jones always had his way with catchy melodies - it just lacks oomph.

Next up is a reggae number recorded in April 1980 at Channel One studios in Jamaica, a session that didn’t go very well because of threats and extortion attempts from the locals who thought a famous rock band should be spreading their wealth around. The Clash fled with only an unfinished version of ‘Junco Partner’ (but that is the infamous studio’s piano you can hear Strummer striking throughout). Back in 1980 I thought this was Sandinista!’s first amazing track, partially because it’s the first track with Simonon on bass and not Watts-Roy.

‘Junco Partner’ takes on even greater relevance now that the Strummer’s race has been run and we understand how the song was dear to him. At every stage of his career, Joe Strummer sang this traditional blues song with its New Orleans roots. He sang it with the The 101’ers, he sang it with The Clash, he sang it with Latino Rockabilly War, he sang it with The Mescaleros. (It was actually the last song I ever saw him sing at St. Anne’s Warehouse on April 6, 2002. It had morphed into a rockabilly shuffle by then.) I bet there’s even a bootleg recording out there somewhere of Strummer doing it with The Pogues during a sound check. The dub version on Side 6 is the most terrifying track The Clash ever recorded. I still get chills listening to it. With an echo rivaling midnight in the Times Square of the 1980s (that true New Yorkers mourn: Patti Smith was so right on New Year’s Eve when she called today’s Times Square “Little Tokyo”), Strummer’s mixed vocals careen wildly and the desperation of a man who’d pawn his “sweet Gabriella” for a bottle of whiskey comes through loud and clear.

So wot have you got at the end of Sandinista!’s first three songs? A rap song, a Motown tribute and reggae fried blues. Not exactly a New Waver’s pint of beer. The fourth track - drummer Topper Headon’s ‘Ivan Meets G.I. Joe’ probably should’ve followed ‘The Magnificent Seven’ as it does on The Essential Clash (2003). With its lyrics about being “on the floor at 54” and lasting “at Le Palace,” the dance friendly rocker with all its sound effects fits better behind the unexpected rap song. It’s as if ‘The Magnificent Seven’ had just played at one of the clubs this song namechecks. Coming up second on Sandinista!’s first side, it would’ve given the white crowd something to warm up to, especially if you still follow with ‘The Leader’, one of Strummer’s few rockers on Sandinista! Giving the fan base a little of what it wanted, they might’ve been more accepting of the album’s black tracks: the rap, the funk, the dubs, there’s even gospel (Side 3’s ‘The Sound Of Sinners’, of which Elvis Costello once said was the Clash song he’d like to cover someday.)

I mention alternate programming because the most common criticism of Sandinista! is that it is too long and should’ve been a double, even a single album. Forgotten now, however, is the fact that Sandinista! was at one time The Clash’s best selling product in America (thanks ironically to the black stations broadcasting remixes of ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and ‘The Call Up’: the same stations The Clash had listened to when making the album). It peaked at #24 on the American charts and was picked as the best album of the year in The Village Voice’s annual Pazz And Jop Poll. A weeklong engagement at Bond’s International Casino in Times Square in May and June 1981 swelled to 17 dates to accommodate the fans from all over America who flocked to “old New York” to see punk’s most popular band. The band and record were successful despite their American distributor’s refusal to finance the 60-date American tour The Clash had planned to promote their mammoth offering; the tour another causality of The Clash’s jousts with record company executives.

Only in the latter half of the decade did the voices calling Sandinista! a debacle prevail in the now accepted view. Critics who embrace their calling as being one of criticism over one of championing art complained: “Why does it have to be a triple album?” (‘Why did they have to complain?’ I always wondered. It’s not as if fans are paying for the third album. They’re getting 50+ minutes of music for free.) But no, critics really railed against the sixth side. It was their Exhibit A as to where The Clash had erred on Sandinista! Admittedly having Gallagher’s sons sing a MOR version of ‘Career Opportunities’ was a filler move, but everything else on the side was better than anything The Bush Tetras – the then darling of the purveyors of hip press – ever produced.

But don’t take my word for it. Judge for yourself. You can find a used copy on Amazon for ten bucks – still a bargain. Even new it’s $15.81, cheaper than just about any other multi-disc collection out there and complete with the original liner notes, lyrics and art work. (iTunes has it for $16.99.) Discover for yourself how Side 1’s closer – ‘Something About England’ – serves as a mirror for Side 4’ closer – ‘Broadway’. I’ll let you catch all the cinematic references, spot the sporting terms, count the number of times that time is mentioned. Get it and I’ll bet that thirty years hence you’ll still be checking it out. Especially in the summer. It may have been released in December, but this is a record to swelter along with.