The Clash - The Clash

The Clash – The Clash

That's what it says. Eponymous, some say. The first, eponymous, Clash album, they write, forcing readers to scratch their heads and look it up with the online dictionary thingy.

I've written this before so here's the short version:

Roundhouse, Camden, ages ago. A different world (vinyl, cassette tapes, vandalised telephone boxes on every corner, three telly channels). The Clash. The actual Clash. Third on the bill to the mighty, headlining Kursaal Flyers. Southend's finest export in those days. The DJ was playing tracks from the first Derek and Clive album between sets. Things were about to change...

...fast forward to the near past...

Layer Cake: Kenneth Cranham as Jimmy Price says to Daniel Craig:

(Something like this) [on entering a private room at an exclusive restaurant]

“Take a seat, son. The food here's so good it'll make your bollocks tingle.”

That's how good I think this album is. From Janie Jones, and the practicalities of life...

An' in the in-tray lots of work

But the boss at the firm always thinks he shirks

But he's just like everyone, he's got a Ford Cortina

That just won't run without fuel

Fill her up, Jacko!

...to Garageland...

I don't want to hear about what the rich are doing

I don't want to go to where the rich are going

They think they're so clever, they think they're so right

But the truth is only known by guttersnipes

...it's spine-tingingly, bollock-tingingly good. There's a White Riot in there, too, and a London's Burning, and that blissful, internal-organ jangingly Police and Thieves.

Here's a little personality test:

You listen to White Riot by The Clash, with Mick Jones' guitar taking the lifeblood of rock'n'roll, throwing away the plasma, platelets, and other watery stuff, and distilling the very essence of the stuff, then pouring it, by the gallon, by the bucket, by the barrel, unfiltered, into your ears.

• Are you unmoved?

• Do you think “that's not bad but I don't really get it”?

• Do you instantly feel like pogoing, preferably on the heads of the nearest politicians, and knocking the helmets off live coppers?

Check this out:

Career opportunities are the ones that never knock

Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock

Career opportunity, the ones that never knock

Career Opportunities, compare that, from 1977, with Ed Balls' education policies in the 2010s, with standards and attainment levels aimed at the point where our kids are statistically less likely to end up inside.

This should be (on) the national curriculum.