This came out in 2004 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Not to put too fine a point on it or anything, but Entertainment Weekly recently dubbed London Calling “the best album of all time.” Their words, not mine.
Perhaps that’s a bit much. But only a bit. No matter how you slice it, this 1979 double album from the self-proclaimed “only band that matters” was a monumental achievement. The rare album that was both a critical and commercial success, London Calling reconfigured the boundaries of punk rock with its genre-crossing mix of punk, reggae, jazz and funk. It rejuvenated the struggling Clash artistically and vaulted them to full-fledged global stardom. Thanks to the last-minute inclusion of Train In Vain after the LP covers were printed, it can even take credit for pioneering the album-closing hidden bonus cut. So even if it isn’t the best album in history, London Calling is surely the apex of The Clash’s career.
And now it’s better. For its silver anniversary, the band’s crowning glory is getting the royal treatment. Precipitated by the discovery of long-lost demos and in-studio video footage, London Calling has been luxuriously expanded into a three-disc, 25th Anniversary Legacy Edition.
On the first disc, you get the remastered version of the original 19-tune album. On the second, you get the so-called Vanilla Tapes: More than an hour of demos and rehearsal tapes, including rough, lo-fi versions of most of the songs that made the album, along with a handful of tracks that didn’t. In case you missed that: The Vanilla Tapes has five previously unreleased Clash recordings — the rollicking country twanger Lonesome Me; the strolling instrumental Walking The Slidewalk; the reggae groover Where You Gonna Go (Soweto); a cover of Bob Dylan’s The Man In Me; and the Death or Glory-esque rocker Heart And Mind.
If that doesn’t sell you, there’s always the DVD, which has a half-hour documentary with plenty of interview footage (mostly recycled from the superior Westway To The World), three promo videos and, most significantly, home-video footage of the band in the studio with lunatic producer Guy Stevens, whose main input seems to consist of hurling chairs around to spur (or perhaps frighten) the band into playing with greater gusto and abandon.
Hey, whatever he did, it worked. And London Calling: 25th Anniversary Legacy Edition is all the proof you need — not to mention an absolutely indispensible addition to any Clash fan’s collection.
Not to put too fine a point on it or anything.
