Some thoughts on the Clash and political punk

Starting in high school in the late 70s, I discovered punk, and The Clash quickly became one of my favorite bands. Along with the Jam's This is the Modern World, the Clash's 1st LP The Clash (the American version, which was all that was initially available to us Yanks; I now own both) had a profound influence on me, and I recall listening to these records over and over again.

Through the Clash and Joe Strummer, through song lines like "the truth is only known by guttersnipes" or through sarcasm about "career opportunities...the ones that never knock," and also through the very Hegelian/Marxian idea of a "clash of opposites," I discovered a kind of critical social analysis, at a time and in a way that made perfect sense to my teenage sensibilities, which has been with me to this day and which sustained me through various future endeavors. In that sense, the Clash were right up there for me as offering the same kind of inspiration that cultural icons like Woody Guthrie, Charlie Parker, The Weavers, Bob Dylan, and others offered to earlier generations.

The first Clash album, The Clash, is without question for me one of the greatest rock albums ever. Along with the much more cynical Sex Pistols, the idealistic Clash helped to define 70s punk, British division, and in doing so, sustained a global influence. They also helped popularize reggae and dub. And they did it all with a great sense of style. Songs (or perhaps I should say three chord musical riots) like Clash City Rockers (from the American version), Garageland, Janie Jones, Career Opportunities, White Riot and I'm So Bored With the U.S.A., in all of their raw sounding glory, are not just songs, but anthems; as anthems, they are songs of praise and glory toward the spirit of punk, a DIY spirit meant to change the world. They are statements of a condition of seeing the world as a really messed up place but of also seeing how it could be made better. In fact, there is a quote on the cover of the book Punk (1978) by Isabelle Ancombe and Dike Blair which states "it's about doing something and getting off your ass saying something seeing what a shitty place this is and what a jam place it could be" and this quote sums up everything I like about the social critiques of punk, a kind of praxis philosophy embodied by Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Terry Chimes and Topper Headon, and later by groups like the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, MDC, Minutemen, Tom Robinson Band, Bikini Kill, and even the likes of Green Day, who speak directly to kids today, about such issues as war, peace and freedom.