Music Monday brings you . . . The Clash: Sandanista

My Five for Friday list last week inspired the idea of Music: Monday. Problem was . . . I was so busy yesterday.

Over the last several weeks, I have been re-digesting The Clash's 1980 uberalbum Sandanista!. When I was initiating myself into Clash-cultdom as a high school sophomore, I ran all of their albums through the processor and loved this one. While London Calling is The Clash's best rock album, Sandanista! is like the poor bespeckled cousin in the corner whom no one understands . . . but has the deepest reggae in his heart. When I downloaded the album (who knows where my cassette dub from 1989 went to?) three weeks ago, I did myself a favor. By the way, do you know that eMusic has some of its catalog set to download at reduced rates? There are 36 songs on the album, but it only cost 12 song credits. eMusic is the jam.
 
Sharing the music with my kids has been a blast. You may know by now that I see one of my jobs as a parent insuring that my children grow up to have "good taste" in media rather than "pop taste." I have had them on a steady diet of important cultural digestion from the 80's for about two years now (more on that later). I introduced them to London Calling several months ago and my 11 yr. old son, in particular, loves it; some of the tracks went on his birthday CD, which is high praise. As we have been listening to Sandanista!, I have pointed out how extreme of a transformation the band went through from LC in 1979 to S! in 1980. My youngest just likes it when Joe Strummer mutters little words at the ends of choruses in "Hitsville," like "remember".

Finally, I came across a "Exploring Rock's Cliche's: Sandanista! as single LP" from Setting the Woods on Fire (thanks for the JPG above, Paul!), an interesting looking blog that's apparently on hiatus. Paul's idea in the post is that, for posterity, we could trim down Sandanista!'s enormous six-album size to one digestible LP by threshing out the lesser creations. I like his choices and the idea in general; it's super listy, a la High Fidelity. However, the album's experimentation was so extreme and important that I just feel bad skipping a track, almost sacrilegious.