As was said of the HJH's "White" album - it would be one stunning single disc but would detract from the sum of it's parts.

If you're only getting to Brand New Cadillac, you're missing Train in Vain, Death or Glory, I'm Not Down, Guns of Brixton, Clampdown, Lost in the Supermarket and Wrong Em Boyo.

A chum once banged on and on and on about Brothers In Arms. I was put off by its ubiquity at the time and the risible Money for Nothing. Gave it another spin a couple of years ago after having yet another Dire Straits pro/con argument and was actually rather taken by the wistfulness of the title track and So Far Away. Fair to say it's grown on me. Unusual because when people tend to bang on, it puts my hackles up further!

I love it, but then I got into it when I was 17. And there is something 17 year old boy about it. But you could say that about so many bands.

The first thing about it is that you can't dip into it, listen to it in order, no shuffle play. Listen to it loud. And watch as it jumps from style to style across the album. Listen to riff after riff and hook and after hook, some of my favourite lyrics of all time, some of the best tight but loose playing and production and a complete little world of it's own.

I think there's a certain point in my observation about it being '17 year old boy' though. I was into my soul and reggae and my punk. The year was 1986. The Clash weren't really what anybody I knew was into. I was in a band who were trying for that typical teen rock rebel thing. If none of that was ever you then you're going to miss out on a particular dimension of it all. But that aside, if the rockers aren't thrilling you then you're probably best leaving it aside.

I hate Pink Floyd and Zeppelin and try and connect every so often and can't. Somethings are made for you somethings aren't.

(some favourite bands and albums and artists to place it in context: The Jam, Dexys, the Motown chartbusters series, Lee Perry, Prince, Orbital, Super Furry Animals, Tunng, Al Green)

actually.

And still do. Showed a band happy to wear their influences on their sleeves and move beyond the limited scope of "punk".
However, I honestly believe that you had to be the right age at the time to really love The Clash.
Mind you I don't "get" ELP's music or the Smiths so we are all different thank god.

There's a few albums that I found out I quite like actually, having given them a gap of twenty years or so between listenings. Some I wonder what I saw in them in the first place, ELP springing eagerly to mind.

Like most double albums, it is too long with too much padding. Plenty of good stuff on it though.

And I agree with SimonL's age comment: frankly, you have to be 17 or younger to swallow the lyrics to Guns of Brixton - new wave era risible posturing at its finest.

I couldn't disagree more, there's nothing on it I would change from side one to side four. It's a very coherent album in terms of track listing too.
I'll stop now, only to say it's worth it for side two alone and especially for 'Lost in the Supermarket' by itself.
And also, where would be in rock and roll without risible posturing?

It's a lumpy, jumbled affair that feels like sifting through a charity shop's second-rate hand-me-downs.

There's nothing wrong with albums/bands picking 'n' mixing musical swatches and styles - it's the very thing that provides focus for the Stones looseness on Exile. But London Calling just comes across like an unraveling patchwork.

That's the sound this album makes as it flies over my head (or past my ears).

Lord knows I've tried. Plenty of folk have attempted to sell me on the Clash over the years but I just don't see it, London Calling in particular.

Oddly enough, I tried giving another 'meh' album a go fairly recently - 'I Want To See The Bright Lights' by Richard and Linda Thompson. Yes, heresy and blasphemy, but relistening actually made me actively dislike it. Some times we just have to admit to ourselves that some things will never work on us, just as we are constantly bamboozled by others' apparent blindness concerning the altars that we worship at daily.

…. I’d say that half of the album is made up of a-grade classics (my faves are Clampdown, Spanish Bombs, London Calling and Guns of Brixton), which given that there are 18 tracks in all, makes this a classic album in my books…

I’d also argue that while the lesser tracks are not classics, they are still good enough to make it on to most albums, and I’d say the same for The White Album. Also, like the White Album, it’s the sheer variety that makes it so special….

I’d be more inclined to say that Electric Ladyland and Exile on Main Street should have been singles. I’d certainly be inclined to listen to the former more often if I didn’t have to wade through the full 13 minutes of Voodoo Chile and the piss poor Little Miss Strange.

...when it came out - I was 15 at the time - double album in a single album cover. Lots of different musical styles, very USA and not very punk. "Train in Vain" wasn't even listed on the original vinyl release (but was on it). At the time, I didn't get the Elvis cover reference. Not in my all-time top 10, but a great record nonetheless.

The Clash's reputation rests on their live performances and their singles. All the albums are pretty useless.

If you inspect the supposed "greatest albums ever" lists that frequently pop up, you'll notice that most of them are merely good, and not great.

One example being Bowie's "Hunky Dory", which although good, is not consistently great. And the first Stone Roses album, again, good, but not great. It makes you wonder if the world's first perfect album will ever be made?

After all, "Rain Dogs" my personal favourite has "Blind Love" on it, which quite frankly is poor. A trainwreck of a country song. Rather than simply a wreck of a song. It's overbearing barroom sentimentality and cheesy slide guitar somewhat spoil the mood of manic clanking and jazz interludes of the rest of the album.

London Calling not a classic?? Has the world gone mad?

but I like it, quite a lot. It's rousing.

yes indeed - and it introduced me in my late teens to a range of musical styles I had never dabbled in - without a doubt it opened my mind.
At the age of 48 - I look up from my work desk and see the vinyl framed on the opposite wall - "Working For The Clampdown" - that couldn't be about me could it??

Pretty sure it would feature in my Top 10 - probably there since the day it came out. I'm trying to think of any tracks I would skip or cut but can't. It's a belter.
Someone said on a recent podcast that they'd struggle to stretch the best of The Clash over an ep (or was it both sides of a single) I realised that, much as I enjoy it, The Word isn't truly mine.

Earlier this week the wonderful "Trout mask replica" was given a kicking. Today, certain albums by:

The Clash
The Stones
Led Zep
Pink Floyd
David Bowie
Jimi Hendrix
Richard & Linda Thompson (what?)

have also been described as non-classics.
Bloody hell, what are they putting in the water over there in Britain-land?

Just because you don't like it, it doesn't mean it can't be considered a "classic" by the people who are given to that sort of thing.

Next you'll be telling me Mozart & JS Bach were a bit "meh" (whatever that means).

Top tens - albums, gigs, books, films whatever - can't be bothered, there's too much choice & too many situations/moods to be taken into account.

I love London Calling bar Guns Of Brixton (shit singing of even worse lyrics), Lover's Rock and Four Horsemen.
But in the celebration of the great tracks above The Right Profile has gone unmentioned. Fabulous song; I just love it. I also love the final three song sequence of Hateful, Revolution Rock and Train In Vain.
If you don't like it, you don't like it. I'm blind to Radiohead, but so many others think they're inexplicably quite good.

My opinion, for what it's worth, is a variation on Six Dog's - that is you have to be really determined not to like London Calling thanks to the critical adulation foisted on it, to not like it. If you know what I mean.
There's not a bad song among all four sides:
London Calling/ Brand New Cadillac/ Jimmy Jazz/ Hateful/ Rudie Can't Fail/ Spanish Bombs/ The Right Profile/ Lost in the Supermarket/ Clampdown/ The Guns of Brixton/ Wrong 'Em Boyo/ Death or Glory/ Koka Kola/ The Card Cheat/ Lover's Rock/ Four Horsemen/ I'm Not Down/ Revolution Rock/ Train in Vain.
It's an album made by really enthusiastic lovers of rock and roll, soul and reggae. Great guitars, incredible drumming and arguably Strummage's finest hour with the typewriter.
What's not to like apart from the above mentioned Guns of Brixton?

... "struggle to stretch the best of The Clash over an EP".

I'm tempted to shout LUNACY!

Instead, I will be polite, and say "personally I disagree".

Someone's made a good call on "London's Calling" An absolute abortion, from start to finish, including the title track, the most embarrassing thing the Clash ever recorded. Apart from the first album, "Complete Control" and "This is England" forget it. "Guns of Brixton"? Air guns is it? Go back and listen to "Gimme mi gun" by Dr. Alimantado. The Clash were great in 1977, but like most groups of that time don't time travel well, however much they tried to (ahem), assimilate different musical styles. Give me the Pistols any day of the week.

If I had to recommend one Clash record to anybody, it'd be London Calling. Apart from the slightly embarrassing self-aggrandisement of Four Horsemen, which has "filler" written right through it, it's far and away their most complete record; all the more remarkable if you consider how primitive their debut album sounded in comparison. Admittedly, they were coming on in leaps and bounds anyway, but that's still some distance to have travelled in just two years, particularly when the prevailing wisdom still had it that these punk rock types couldn't play their instruments. Sandinista, on the other hand, remains a sprawling, unfocused, if well-intentioned mess. Deep within that triple-album, there's a single album struggling to get out that's as good as anything they ever did.

I don't think I've ever been talked into an album, although I may have talked myself into a couple, so to speak. For instance, I used to think Fleetwood Mac were the apogee of self-regarding, coke-frosted, navel-gazing Laurel Canyon muzak, but this was back when being a fan of The Clash came with a fair bit of ideological baggage. As I grew older, and all that stuff became less and less important, I found myself more inclined to give a bit of room to things I'd once dismissed. Thus the familiarity of songs like Say You Love Me, Go Your Own Way and Dreams no longer seemed so irritating, I began to notice things like how subtle and economic the playing was, and so on. If I'm being honest, developing a taste for Fleetwood Mac probably arose from a general need to hear music made for/by/about grown-ups a little more often. But just as I can still enjoy London Calling separate from all the political/cultural signifiers that once seemed to be almost as big a deal as the music itself, so it is with Tusk, Rumours et al.

Its no longer just "my" guilty secret. For me London Calling has some great singles but isnt a great album. God that feels good.

For the first 2 years of listening to London Calling I only ever heard sides one and three as my elder sister had decorated her bedroom whilst leaving her vinyl copies lying on the floor. It wasn't until I was 16 and able to but my own copy that I got to hear Spanish Bombs, Train in Vain, Clampdown etc without great big jumps caused by lumps of gloss stuck to the grooves and while I can see there are some great songs there they still don't match up to Brand New Cadillac, Card Cheat, Rudie Can't fail and Wrong 'Em Boyo in my mind.
Never keen on the title track though.

it's been over-praised to the point of tedium. I like huge chunks of "London Calling" but there are plenty of crap, dodgy, even embarassing moments on it - and they were dodgy, crap and embarassing at the time, not simply with hindsight.
Yes, brilliant cover, superb title track, great opening side but it flags eventually as the ideas get spread thinner and thinner. Mick Jones' vocals are sometimes on the weedy side (that doesn't mean they aren't utterly perfect on, say "Train In Vain") and by side four the sprawl and musical diversity of the whole thing borders on a handicap robbing the whole thing of any coherent thread.
I admire the fact that they considered themselves to be on a real creative roll and they put the thing out as a double vinyl album for a proper budget price - a real consideration back then in the pre-Asda CD dept, pre-Fopp days - but an album like "Imperial Bedroom" (released I grant you a couple of years later, or "East Side Story" or "Rattlesnakes" is never going to top those "Best 70's or 80's or Best British album lists of all times because the like of Costello, Cole or Difford and Tilbrook don't have the "iconic" retro status of The Clash and certain other bands.
You see kids walking around in Clash tshirts - I couldn't resist buying my own baby daughter one a few years ago (First album cover - now that was an album and a half) - who possibly don't know or care anything about the music, they just like the outlaw image, same as kids wearing Guevara shirts or Ramones and Stones regalia. Artists who were just as brilliant contemporaneously don't have that kind of enduring hip chic-ness so their work is permanently but sometimes undeservedly cast in a dimmer light than "London Calling"

In the right mood, this is a great listen. If you pay too much attention to it you'll realise that most of the songs drop their payload within 30 seconds and nothing new happens after that. Actually that might be what makes it good, the fact that it's not Tales from Topographic Oceans.

still listen to it 30 years on, what more could you want from an album