The Clash are the essential punk group because they survived the original punk explosion and evolved into other contemporary forms, all the while maintaining and elaborating upon their original ideas. Singer/guitarist Joe Strummer was a diplomat's son with an upper-middle class education playing in pub-rock bands with the likes of Graham Parker and Elvis Costello when he heard the Sex Pistols for the first time in early 1976. "It's a whole new thing, man," he confided in reverent tones to Parker, "a whole new thing."
Immediatley thereafter, Strummer quit his pub-rock band and formed the Clash with guitarist Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon, and various drummers, including Topper Headon. The Clash's first album - released in England in 1977, but not in the US until 1979 - was an incendiary classic that was at once more melodic and more assaultive the the Sex Pistol's album.
Several songs from the first Clash album (The Clash) are on this collection. The greatest of which is the Clash's remake of the Bobby Fuller Four's "I Fought the Law." Bobby Fuller's 1965 original was a Buddy Hollyesque classic rife with ambivalence and sweet regret. It is more apologetic than antisocial:
"I miss my baby and I feel so bad,
I guess my race is run,
She is the best girl I ever had,
I fought the law and the law won,
I fought the law and the law won."
The Clash tilt the rhythm forward, shift the guitar riff from rockabilly-melodic to punk-propulsive and howl their way through the song with monomaniacal outrage and defiance. When Strummer sings, "A-breakin' rocks in the hot sun,
I fought the law and the law won, I fought the law and the law won," the rocks are beaten into dust and the law is put on notice that its victory is only temporary.
The Clash set the tone for the band's subsequent career. While the Clash moved musically through a variety of styles on subsequent albums: Give Them Enough Rope (1978), London Calling (1979), Black Market Clash EP (1980), Sandanista! (1980), Combat Rock (1982), including reggae ("Pressure Drop'" "The Guns of Brixton," "Bankrobber"), funk ("The Magnificent 7," "This Is Radio Clash," "Rock the Casbah"), and various rock permutations, the Clash's focus always remained on one thing: confrontation. The Clash is among the most aptly named groups in the history of rock and roll.
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