sandinista! 2

the first time i owned this rekkid, i was living in an apartment up on las vegas trail, back when all of that shit was relatively new. i had three albums i listened to incessantly on a turntable i'd paid a guy five bucks for, that needed a nickel on the tone arm to make it track, which i ran through my tweed fender deluxe amp: besides sandinista!, there was captain beefheart's doc at the radar station and arthur blythe's illusions. my driver's license was suspended, and every day, my future ex-wife would come pick me up and drive me to the record store where we both worked. one day in december i woke myself up by spilling a glass of water on my head, just in time to hear over the radio that john lennon had been murdered. on the way out of the parking lot that day, we noticed that during the night, someone had torched the apartment office.

i never really thought of the clash as "a punk band." through no fault of their own, they were a _big rock band_ -- the last one with a major label contract that i gave a rat's ass about, in spite of columbia's deplorable "only band that matters" hype (which approached the same label's "the man can't bust our music" campaign of a decade earlier for pure, unadulterated crassness). london calling (which i rode down from aspen to denver with glen gutierrez to buy on the day it was released) had been their _big rock album_, their white album / electric ladyland / exile on main st., even though it showed the fissures beginning to appear between their roots (strummer) and pop (jones) impulses. i'd seen 'em twice the previous season, and they were undoubtedly one of the two most exciting bands i've ever seen in a big venue (other one: sproooce, _none_ of whose rekkids i can stand to listen to; go fig).

when it was new, sandinista! seemed like monumental self-indulgence; with hindsight, it seems like exactly the kind of grand, self-defeating gesture one makes if one is an artiste imbued with the d.i.y. aesthetic who's taken caesar's gold (others: playing a week at bond's casino in manhattan when they could have easily played to the same number of people for more money in a single night at madison square garden; busking in train stations after releasing an album called cut the crap). of course, husker du topped 'em a few years later by breaking up before releasing a third album for warner bros. the saddest moment came when the clash opened for the 'oo at shea stadium in a move that looked like someone's ill-conceived idea of a ceremonial passing o' the torch. ah, hubris. from where i sat at the time (an air force base in korea), i thought journey's escape was a better record than combat rock, and grandmaster flash's "the message," george clinton's computer games, and prince's 1999 all meant more in my own life than either of the aforementioned rock rekkids.

the weirdest part of listening to sandinista! in 2007 is how timely the political bits sound ("something about england," "the call up," "washington bullets"), and how sad that makes me feel. that and the fact joe strummer, by all accounts a good cat who really meant it, is gone.