THE CLASH: "The Clash" (CBS 82000)

Generation Clash

Mick Jones (lead guitar), Paul Simenon (bass), Joe Strummer (lead vocals, guitar), Terry Chimes (drummer). Produced by Mickey Foote.

By an odd quirk of fate, this debut album by The Clash came into the MM office on the same day as the Beatles' Live At Hamburg. Both found their way onto the record player and the somewhat surprising reaction was that the Beatles album induced derisory laughter while The Clash produced requests for even louder volume.

The lesson from that is not that the MM is full of punk rock freaks — not a safety-pin among us (honest) — nor that we don't like the Beatles, but that in the Seventies punk rock has the vitality which many now-esteemed bands had when they were first starting. And it sounds a lot more fun, especially when you're not listening too closely, than triple-album concepts.

It would be ludicrous, of course, to judge the Beatles by what is little more than a bootleg; probably even more ludicrous to expect The Clash to achieve even more than one-tenth of what the Fab Four did. But it at least shows that at one time they and the Stones, and The Who, and all the other Establishment bands sounded pretty rotten. They weren't adept at their instruments (to say the least — you ought to hear George Harrison on Hamburg), they hit bum notes, their harmonies were flat: all the faults we lay at the punk rockers' door.

Yet they had an energy that overrode all those considerations, and a defiance of the status quo. The attitude was, if you want to hear note-perfect music, go to a classical concert.

The same applies today, except that in many cases you can substitute "rock" for "classical." It all boils down, of course, to what exactly you do want. Personally, I care neither for the reverential neo-classical shows of the Pink Floyd, nor for my turntable to be filled all day with the extremely restricted music performed by The Clash and their cohorts.

Punk rock strikes me as an experience to be savoured in small doses and, if on record, then at a high volume and preferably while doing something else. A closer examination, I find, leads to headaches, due to the tuneless repetition of chords at a breakneck pace.

The Clash, if you can believe it, manage to make the Stooges sound subtle. A shame that the instruments have the upper hand, because lurking beneath the racket are some interesting lyrics, snatches of which it's possible to hear if you listen carefully (not recommended).

It's here that The Clash, and others of their ilk, justify their existence. Just as in the pre-Beatles era lyrics had degenerated into "moon in June" romantic slush, so has the standard of today's pop song lyric gone back into a moronic slump.

By its very definition "popular" music should not just be for the people, but about them, too. The Clash do exactly this, chronicling the ideas, frustrations and problems of disaffected youth in songs like Remote Control, Cheat and 48 Hours. These are the kind of themes that ought to be in the chart (if someone could write a tune for them, of course).

Particularly impressive is the sneering denunciation of the employment prospects faced by the young.