Album Reviews

By 1981, The Clash was in shambles. Seeking more direction following their 1980 triple album Sandinista!, co-frontman Joe Strummer and bassist Paul Simonon rehired the band's notoriously difficult original manager, Bernie Rhodes, to the dismay of other co-frontman Mick Jones. Jones sought to continue the band's expansive forays into dub, reggae, and hip-hop, while Strummer wanted something more streamlined. Yet despite all of that, plus drummer Topper Headon's spiraling heroin and cocaine addiction, The Clash toured and managed to record new material at The People's Hall in the Republic of Frestonia (a small area in West London populated by squatters hoping to secede from the UK) as well as Electric Lady Studios in New York City.

Towards the end of that year, Jones presented to the group his mix of a planned double LP, Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg. While imperfect and somewhat overlong, Rat Patrol was a sprawling culmination of everything The Clash had to offer, good and bad; more concise than Sandinista! but more sonically diverse than London Calling, Rat Patrol was scrappy but considered, indulgent but not excessively so. (Acetates of a shorter Rat Patrol also circulate, though the double album configuration is better known.) Despite its convoluted tracklist and relative lack of overall commerciality, with some additional polish it might've been the best Clash record.

Yet, the other band members and Rhodes (who later assumed complete creative control of "The Clash") rejected Jones' version of the album, deeming it overlong and possibly too out-there. Rhodes hired Glyn Johns to remix the sessions and distill it down to the final 46-minute LP, May 1982's Combat Rock. Johns, along with Strummer and sometimes Jones, assembled Combat Rock for maximum commercial impact; editing songs, removing others, and giving the material a punchier, clearer mix.

Combat Rock became The Clash's biggest commercial achievement and is among their best records artistically, though in retrospect it's front-loaded and a bit inconsistent. Side one yielded the enduring singles "Should I Stay Or Should I Go," "Rock The Casbah," "Straight To Hell," and "Know Your Rights," alongside deeper cuts "Red Angel Dragnet" and "Car Jamming." Side two, however, fails to continue the momentum; "Overpowered By Funk" and "Death Is A Star" are good, and "Sean Flynn" is certainly interesting, though the rest sounds like filler, even if four decades later the politically charged lyrics about urban decay and war retain relevance.

Last month, Sony/Legacy released Combat Rock + The People's Hall, a 3LP or 2CD set combining the remastered Combat Rock album with The People's Hall, a 12-track, 2LP or CD compilation documenting the period from 1981's "This Is Radio Clash" 12" to Combat Rock's release. The People's Hall is 55 minutes long, and only takes up three sides on the LP version, leaving the last side completely blank—no etching, no printed label even, nothing. It's not the official Rat Patrol release that fans clamor for, nor is it a very deep dive into the band's vault.

To put it mildly, The People's Hall is a mess of a bonus compilation. Sure, it includes the previously unreleased instrumental "He Who Dares Or Is Tired," a scrappier early take of "Know Your Rights," the unreleased original mix of graffiti artist Futura's "The Escapades Of Futura 2000" (here labeled simply as "Futura 2000"), and some other B-sides and rare outtakes. However, it presents this often good material in the most boring way imaginable, and doesn't seem to serve any real purpose. To start, it's incomplete; they assume you already have the canonical "This Is Radio Clash," so they instead include the alternate lyrics version "Radio Clash" but neither of that original 12" single's two B-sides. You won't find "Rock The Casbah" 12" B-side "Mustafa Dance" or "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" B-side "Cool Confusion," yet they give you Mikey Dread's inessential "Radio One" (the B-side of Sandinista!'s "Hitsville UK," meaning it doesn't belong on a Combat Rock reissue anyway). The full-length "Straight To Hell" or the Bob Clearmountain single mix of "Rock The Casbah"? Missing, but you get the seven-and-a-half-minute extended "Sean Flynn."

The People's Hall opens with "Outside Bonds," an absolute joke of a bonus track that's merely a field recording from outside Bonds, the New York casino where the Clash played 17 shows in 1981. By the time you reach this set's best material—outtakes "The Fulham Connection" (aka "The Beautiful People Are Ugly Too"), "Midnight To Stevens" (a tribute to London Calling producer Guy Stevens), and "Idle In Kangaroo Court" (aka "Kill Time")—you're already exhausted by the poorly paced material stuffed in the middle, which would sound much less mediocre had someone rearranged the tracklist, which isn't even chronologically organized.

As for that blank last side? It's a violation of the "value for money" principles that the Clash so strongly held in its heyday, and Joe Strummer's probably rolling in his grave right now. "There will be no six-quid Clash LP, ever!" Strummer said in 1979, though £6 then is around £24 now, which in turn is about $30 USD, and the 180gm 3LP edition of Combat Rock + The People's Hall retails for around $60. Sure, the surviving members might have retirements to pay for, but it's not like those regularly issued London Calling remasters haven't already generated a nice nest egg. To add insult to injury, a 7" with Ranking Roger toasting over "Rock The Casbah" and "Red Angel Dragnet" sells separately for another $12, when using that blank LP side could've saved plastic (Strummer also cared about the environment).

Tim Young at Metropolis digitally mastered and cut lacquers for this reissue, although the main album is probably sourced from his 2013 remaster. These remasters are great for digital, and they sound decent on vinyl, though the Combat Rock disc can't even touch the original UK pressing cut by Noel Summerville. That original UK edition has an abundance of air and space, with spectacularly realistic vocals, taut bass, and extremely clean transients; in comparison, the digitally remastered vinyl here sounds thicker and blurred, and despite being similarly EQ'd and not too compressed, it eventually gets a bit fatiguing. It seems that MPO pressed the EU 3LP while an unidentified American facility (I'll assume United until/unless corrected) did the US version. My copy of the US version looks mediocre but plays quiet, and despite The People's Hall being ever so slightly off-center, the 180gm discs are thick and flat. That said, the artwork reproductions (including the original poster and inner sleeve) are grainy, and Tom Vague's new liner notes are an almost unreadable mess. For $60, the vinyl edition is a ripoff, but once the price inevitably drops, Clash completists might enjoy it.

There's also a limited edition Japanese pressing of the core album, cut in Japan (maybe from these same Tim Young remasters) and pressed on clear vinyl at the Sony DADC plant in Shizuoka. In my experience so far, the Japanese Sony plant is currently the best in the world for dead quiet vinyl, and in that regard this Combat Rock pressing doesn't disappoint. The cut is also better than the one in the US deluxe set—more realistic, more spacious, and with smoother bass. When put against the original UK it has less air and smeared sibilants, but it's a cleaner cut on quieter vinyl and therefore the absolute best you can get from a digital source (both pressings sound extremely close). The tip-on jacket uses the same mediocre artwork scans as the 3LP, though there's a replica of the original Japanese obi and information insert plus a new set of Japanese liner notes. It'll surely increase in value, so I'd recommend getting one (or two) as soon as possible. (The 8/10 sound rating is for the US 3LP set. The original UK pressing gets a 10 for sound, and the new Japanese reissue gets a 9.)

(Malachi Lui is an AnalogPlanet contributing editor, music obsessive, avid record collector, and art enthusiast. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.)