The Clash - Combat Rock (1982) (vinyl Lp) - €10,00

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Combat Rock is the fifth studio album by the English rock band the Clash. 

It was released on 14 May 1982 through CBS Records. 

In the United Kingdom, the album charted at number 2, spending 23 weeks in the UK charts and peaked at number 7 in the United States, spending 61 weeks on the chart.

It contains two of the Clash’s most popular songs, the singles “Rock the Casbah” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go“. Combat Rock is the last Clash album featuring the classic lineup.

The music on Combat Rock has been described as post-punk and new wave. 

A recurring motif of the album is the impact and aftermath of the Vietnam War. “Straight to Hell” describes the children fathered by American soldiers to Vietnamese mothers and then abandoned, while “Sean Flynn” describes the photojournalist son of actor Errol Flynn who disappeared in 1970 after being captured by the Vietcong in Cambodia.

Biographer Pat Gilbert describes many songs from Combat Rock as having a “trippy, foreboding feel”, saturated in a “colonial melancholia and sadness” reflecting the Vietnam War. 

The band was inspired by Francis Ford Coppola‘s 1979 film about the Vietnam War, Apocalypse Now, and had previously released the song “Charlie Don’t Surf” on Sandinista!, which referenced the film.

Other Combat Rock songs, if not directly about the Vietnam War and U.S. foreign policy, depict American society in moral decline. “Inoculated City” satires the “I was just following orders” plea by soldiers on trial who’ve committed war crimes. 

“Red Angel Dragnet” was inspired by the January 1982 shooting death of Frank Melvin, a New York member of the Guardian Angels. 

The song quotes Martin Scorsese‘s 1976 movie Taxi Driver, with Clash associate Kosmo Vinyl recording several lines of dialogue imitating the voice of main character Travis Bickle. 

Bickle sports a mohawk in the latter part of Taxi Driver, this was a hairstyle adopted by Joe Strummer during the Combat Rock concert tour.

The song “Ghetto Defendant” features beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who performed the song on stage with the band during the New York shows on their tour in support of the album. 

Ginsberg had researched punk music, and included phrases like “do the worm” and “slam dance” in his lyrics. 

At the end of the song he can be heard reciting the Heart Sutra, a popular Buddhist mantra.

The song “Know Your Rights” starts off with: “This is a public service announcement…with guitars!” The musical style of the song is linear and simple, reflecting the open and clear lyrics of the song. The lyrics represent the rights for the lower and less respected class, with a nefarious Civil servant naming three rights, with each right having an exception to benefit the rich or being skewed against the lower class.

Music for “Rock the Casbah” was written by the band’s drummer Topper Headon, based on a piano part that he had been toying with. Finding himself in the studio without his three bandmates, Headon progressively taped the drum, piano and bass parts, recording the bulk of the song’s musical instrumentation himself. 

The other Clash members were impressed with Headon’s recording, stating that they felt the musical track was essentially complete. 

However, Strummer was not satisfied with the page of suggested lyrics that Headon gave him. Before hearing Headon’s music, Strummer had already come up with the phrases “rock the casbah” and “you’ll have to let that raga drop” as lyrical ideas that he was considering for future songs. 

After hearing Headon’s music, Strummer went into the studio’s toilets and wrote lyrics to match the song’s melody.

Side A

A1. Know Your Rights - 3:40

A2. Car Jamming - 3:58

A3. Should I Stay Or Should I Go - 3:06

A4. Rock The Casbah - 3:42

A5. Red Angel Dragnet - 3:46

A6. Straight To Hell - 5:26

 

Side B

B1. Overpowered By Funk  (feat. Futura 2000) - 4:52

B2. Atom Tan - 2:27

B3. Sean Flynn - 4:30

B4. Ghetto Defendant - 4:43

B5. Inoculated City - 2:40

B6. Death Is A Star - 3:08

 

Personnel

• Joe Strummer – lead and backing vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano
• Mick Jones – guitar, backing and lead vocals, keyboard, sound effects
• Paul Simonon – bass guitar (except on "Rock the Casbah"), backing vocals, lead vocals on "Red Angel Dragnet"
• Topper Headon – drums, piano and bass guitar on "Rock the Casbah"

Additional musicians

• Allen Ginsberg – guest vocals on "Ghetto Defendant"
• Futura 2000 – guest vocals on "Overpowered by Funk"
• Ellen Foley – backing vocals on "Car Jamming"
• Joe Ely – backing vocals on "Should I Stay or Should I Go"
• Tymon Dogg – piano on "Death Is a Star"
• Tommy Mandel (as Poly Mandell) – keyboards on "Overpowered by Funk"
• Gary Barnacle – saxophone on "Sean Flynn"
• Kosmo Vinyl – vocals on "Red Angel Dragnet"

Production

• The Clash – producers
• Glyn Johns – chief engineer, mixing
• Joe Blaney; Jerry Green; Eddie Garcia – assistant engineers
• Pennie Smith – cover photography, taken March 1982 in Bangkok, Thailand

Notes

Release:  1982

Format:  LP, Vinyl

Genre:  Post-punk

Label:  CBS Records

Catalog#  CBS 85570

Vinyl:  Goed (VG)

Cover:  Goed (VG)

Prijs: €10,00