Main menu
Fretplay home Submit tabs

The Clash
The Clash tabs The Clash discography

Channels
Guitar channel Bass channel Guitar videos Reviews

Message Forum
Guitar forum Bass forum Bands and artists Promote your band Recent discussions All categories

Fretplay.com

The Clash guitar tabs

CD reviews

Combat Rock

The Clash - Combat Rock Audio CD

A fair review of the The Clash "Combat Rock" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all The Clash reviews here, or go back to the The Clash tabs.

Band: The Clash
Title: Combat Rock
Rating:

Release Date: 1990-10-25
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Know Your Rights 2: Car Jamming 3: Should I Stay or Should I Go 4: Rock the Casbah 5: Red Angel Dragnet 6: Straight to Hell 7: Overpowered by Funk 8: Atom Tan 9: Sean Flynn 10: Ghetto Defendant 11: Inoculated City 12: Death Is a Star

1982 THE CLASH
I found the record interesting, and perhaps, one of their best. At this point, The Clash were beyond the mere label of "PUNK ROCK", and were branching out in new directions, that is perhaps why, the record was called, "COMBAT ROCK", in order to reflect, their somewhat urban sound at that time. Shortly after the 1982/83 tour, which I saw twice, they broke-up at the peak of their popularity, much like THE POLICE, who disbanded in 1983.

Huh? What?
The only reason I am reviewing this album is because I just wrote a review of Flipper's "Gone Fishin'" and scrolled through the "Customers Who Bought . . Also Bought" section and this came up! How does one become a Clash fan (the single most over-rated band of all time) and a Flipper fan?! I am shocked. I am just going to pretend it was former Clash fans who finally discovered Flipper and are selling their Clash albums in the Amazon Marketplace.

By the way, the only reason I give this album two stars is because "Rock The Casbah" was a pretty good single. Everything else they ever did was atrocious. They did for British music what Hitler did for London.

Weird, Scary, Catchy, Underrated, Misunderstood, GOOD.
It was a hell of a swan song for the Clash as we know and love it--the music and lyrics are brilliant, and as for them having sold out. I can never understand why nobody loves this thing. . . Well, I look at it this way: any band that puts a commercial for toliet cleaner in one of their songs (Inoculated City) is either A) not a sell-out, or B) conscious that they are a sell-out and very, very angry about it. I think I may be leaning toward the latter assessment, and fair play to them for being that principled and self-aware.

The Clash might have been on its last legs here, and the crazy success of Should I Stay and Rock the Casbah might have been the last straw--but Combat Rock is still a great album. Topper, who got the pink slip shortly after its release, provides some KILLER drumming: Check out Car Jamming and Straight to Hell--no, actually don't check out Straight to Hell. Draw the blinds in your room, lie on the floor, turn the volume up to max and prepare to let Straight to Hell f--- you up. That song needs to come with some kind of warning label, or be sold by prescription only to people who are too cheerful.

It's a weird album, alright--you have Overpowered By Funk and Should I Stay, which are prime dance party material; you have Know Your Rights and Red Angel Dragnet, which are mostly spoken (or yelled) rather than sung; you have Ghetto Defendant, which features Allen Ginsburg talking about methadone kitties and doing the worm on necropolis; you have Death is a Star and Sean Flynn and Straight to Hell, which are downright beautiful and therefore positively scary. . . but I still feel the album has some kind of unity. Maybe just the bitterness, sarcasm and--nihilism? incipient despair?--that creep into even the few 'happy' tracks. And I like nihilism and dispair. I like the half-horrified, half-reverent references to pop culture, the beats, the basslines, the weird instrumentations. . . it's like riding the subway home over Queens as the sun sets on the day before the Apocalypse. You don't ask questions--just look at the sunlight on the billboards and the graffiti and enjoy your last ride. Maybe dance in the aisle while you're at it. .

A Band That Mattered
The bottom line is this WAS the last important Clash release. Was this the best Clash album?, save that for Sadinista or London Calling but this was a excellent album by a band that most people never thought would play music like this! Besides the hit single's "Should I Stay Or Should I Go and Rock The Casbah, "Straight To Hell" and "Know Your Rights" were good solid tracks. Really after this the only band that mattered did not matter any longer. I suggest picking this one up but if you want to sample the band, try a "Best Of release" from one of the many sellers on here and then check this one out. Punk started out with the Sex Pistols and The Clash and really ended in my opinion with this album.
Come by my site sometime for a visit; Google Judemac Forever.

Know Your Clash!!!!
Well that may be true,in a sense. On a recent interview CD,which came from a local record store grab bag no less,members of The Clash described this as their last album with a united front,both musically and personally. I will say that most of the drive and spirt in the band came from Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. And both left the band. . . . . well after a whole fiasco involving drummer Topper Headon,resulting in a feud. Well that's too bad because topper really put out here with "Rock The Casbah". It's a masterjam of the punk-funk movement (sorry Rick James). And it's got a message too but hey THIS IS THE "ONLY BAND THAT MATTERS" RIGHT?Well forget what the press said about them:the quartet are still on a mission here and the music is evolving yet again. You have The Clash kind of treading new musical waters here:where there are some pretty standard fare dubby punk kind of tunes here such as "Know Your Rights","Car Jammming" and "Ghetto Defendant" (with Allen Ginsburg no less) there is also an attempt outside "Casbah" to do something poppier with "Should I Stay Or Should I Go",the other big US hit here anyway. Nevertheless there are some places here that,even for Clash fans accustomed to some of the warped grooves of Sandinista! seem to come a bit out of left field. "Overpowered By Funk" is. . . . well one of my favorites on the album definately goes by it's name as a heavy,percussive 80's "naked" funk groove. Other tunes such as "Red Angel Dragnet","Straight To Hell" again do a pretty good job at the whole mutant groove thing. Of course there are some plain sharper attacks such as "Atom Tan" and the more ambient dub of "Inoculated City" has some great use of sound samples:it has been said that the great "2000 flushes" ad featured has been deleted from later pressings of this CD but mine has it so I am not worried lol. One track that really impressess me here is a tune called "Sean Flynn";with it's dissonant jazzy sound and likeminded sax solo it's definately about where I personally live musically!This whole thing ends with. . . a slower but similar tune really in "Death Is A Star". So,if you like a lot diverse,mutated punk-funk grooves with heavily leftisty political lyrics this will be just up your alley. For those punk fans who hate this album. . . here's another way to look at it as The Clash themselves admitted it:their concept of bringing their message to everyone would be felt just as well with the pop and abstract musical concepts dealt with on this album as with hard core punk rock because if their music felt like nothing but a huge attack,it would've never gained more then a cult following. They wanted to get as many peoples attention so they didn't change their message,just made music that could reach out to people who might not typically go for a Clash album. And from the look of how time has treated this album that was a pretty good choice.

You can see a complete list of all The Clash discography, or go back to the The Clash tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.