Winamp Wednesday: Sharif Don't Like It
By order of the prophet: ban that boogie sound!
Winamp Wednesday is our continuing feature spotlighting all the MP3s I downloaded in the wild-west days of the early internet. B-Sides, live shows, off-air recordings, classics, and today's track...
The Clash, “Rock the Casbah”
The Clash were the only band that mattered.
That was true in 1979 for the whole world and it was true twenty years later when some kid was wading into the waters of punk for the first time. They did everything and they did it louder and with a more discerning eye than practically everyone else. There were faster bands, sloppier bands, bands with more strident political tones, but for those of us who weren’t ready for “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” or the entire discography of Reagan Youth then The Clash was the hardest stuff in the world. London Calling lived in the stereo of my first car from the day I got it until it finally quit working a hundred thousand miles later. We’ll see all kinds of rarities and b-sides on here eventually, especially as I grew so bored with the U.S.A. But as for now I had been really introduced to The Clash by their appearance on the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack, and I needed more.
So why not start with something ubiquitous, something that had clogged the airwaves my entire life, something that had become nearly a punchline for whenever the Middle East was mentioned? “Rock the Casbah” was the most commercial thing The Clash had ever released, but it still went hard in the paint. Anything that earned a single-serving reference on The Simpsons had to be cool. Armed Forces Radio played it the second we commenced Operation Desert Shield, and if the rah-rah America at AFRTS would deign to choose a British band to cheer on our men and women in uniform then it had to have something special to it.
Of course the song was about the persecution of the Iranian people post-revolution, but since when did anyone listen to the lyrics outside of the chorus?
I was drawn to it by the layers of instruments each doing their own thing and then coming together to make this incredible groove. It starts with that tuk-tuk-tuk drum intro, a harbinger and a warning of the rhythm to come. The stabbing guitar and crazed bass line jump directly in, but then there’s that piano that feels like it was airlifted by a totally different hit. It shouldn’t be there but it’s perfectly in tune with everything else. It makes sense that drummer Topper Headon had already laid these tracks down without the rest of the band, a product of showing up to Ladyland for a recording session on time rather than five hours late. And then there are all the sound effects, the peow-chow-chow-chow of a laser that could well be on loan from the BBC Radiophonic Orchestra. The attack of allied jet fighters reminds one of Blake’s 7 and that’s just all right by The Clash.
Then there’s that tinny blitter version of “Dixie” that plays behind the last verse. God knows where that came from. All I know is that I couldn’t play this song in the car because every time my dad would insist that it was someone’s cell phone going off. All my playlists included “Rudie Can’t Fail” instead because I learned my lesson.
I don’t know the last time I queued up “Rock the Casbah” on its own. It’s never been my favorite track on Combat Rock; even as a snotty teen I had scrawled “KNOW YOUR RIGHTS” on my notebooks and makeshift posters inside locker doors. Once I was fully engulfed in The Clash this track seemed sort of corny. But does it still rule? Will I ever flip past it if I hear that drum intro? Nah, I’m no square. I know exactly how great this band and this song are. Maybe they’re not the only band, but The Clash still matter. And it’s amazing to rock for a moment and remember how it all started for a lot of us.