Forty Minutes Of Covers Of The Clash

To follow last week's post of The Clash sampled, edited and remixed, this week has a a forty minute set of covers of Clash songs by other artists. When I started to put a shortlist together I realised there's enough material for two or three editions. I thought of theming it- a dub mix, rock mix and so on but then in the spirit of Sandinista! decided to sling different styles together, so we go from dub to rockabilly and back again with several other points visited in between. The Clash's songs stand up well to being covered- the sheer variety is testament to their songs and the distance they travelled between White Riot in 1977 and Death Is A Star in 1983. 

Forty Minutes Of Covers Of The Clash

• Terry Edwards And The Scapegoats: Version City
• Megative: Ghetto Defendant
• Infantry Rockers: Rebel Waltz
• The Afghan Whigs: Lost In The Supermarket
• Citizen Sound ft. Prince Blanco and Ammoye: One More Time
• Hinds: Spanish Bombs
• Jimmy Cliff: Guns Of Brixton
• Lily Allen and Mick Jones: Straight To Hell
• The Pistoleers: Bank Robber
• Dub Spencer and Trance Hill: Train In Vain

Punk trumpeter Terry Edwards recorded covers of the Mary Chain, Bowie and The Fall with his Scapegoats as well as being a member of Gallon Drunk. It is typically punk of him to decide to cover Version City, a Sandinista! side 6 song and hence unlikely to have been heard by many but the most committed. 

Megative are from New York City. Their cover of Ghetto Defendant (a Combat Rock highlight, rocking dub with Allen Ginsburg on board) came as a bonus song on their 2018 album No Fear. 

The Afghan Whigs use Topper's Train In Vain drumbeat for their cover of one of Mick's greatest London Calling era songs, a single that never was. Greg Dulli et al recorded it for a tribute album that came out in 1999. 

Shatter The Hotel came out in 2009, a reggae/ dub album of Clash covers with Don Letts doing London Calling and Creation Rockers, Dub Antenna and Chomsky Allstars all feature. It's a really good album, good versions from start to finish. For this mix I included Infantry Rockers doing Rebel Waltz (a real lesser known Clash gem) and Citizen Sound's One More Time. Infantry Rockers are from Wisconsin with members from Venezuela, Sierra Leone, Costa Rica and Jamaica, which couldn't be more Clash if it tried. I can't find much info about Citizen Sound. Prince Blanco featured in last week's mix with 22 Davis Road

Hinds are four young women from Spain. In 2020 they kicked the living daylights out of one of London Calling's best songs, Joe conflating 70s mass tourism, the Spanish Civil War of 1936- 1939 and the terror campaign by ETA. If you're going to cover The Clash, do it properly. As Hinds do. 

Jimmy Cliff's cover of Guns Of Brixton came out on his Sacred Fire EP in 2011. Paul Simonon's lyrics refer to Ivan, the lead character in the Harder They Come. Ivan was of course played by Jimmy Cliff. 

Lily Allen and Mick recorded Straight To Hell for a War Child album in 2009. Lily's Dad Keith was a friend of Joe's and he was a regular visitor to their home. 

The Pistoleers covered Bank Robber in rockabilly style for a 2003 tribute album, This Is Rockabilly Clash- I'm fairly sure the first time I heard this was when it was played by Andrew Weatherall. 

Dub Spencer and Trance Hill are a Swiss dub outfit who released an entire album of dub versions of Clash songs back in 2011. It's quality stuff from top to tail not least when they tackle the less- dub oriented songs, like Train In Vain. 

Monday's Long Song

In 2014 Swiss dub merchants Dub Spencer and Trance Hill put out an album of recordings with the ghostly voice of William Burroughs laid on top.  The original Burroughs recordings come from 1975, an album of spoken word poetry and prose with that instantly recognisable voice drawling away, the back streets and canyons of NYC captured on tape. On the Dub Spencer and Trance Hill take on 103rd Street Boys the dub squelches away for seven minutes as Burroughs gets chopped up and bounced around. 

103rd Street Boys

London Calling

I'm off to the capital, that London, for a couple of days, on a school trip. I've done this trip several times before and it's always a good one, marshalling some sixth formers round the British Museum, Imperial War Museum and various other sights, plenty of urban walking with a surprise round every corner. So there'll be nothing here until I'm back. See you all at the weekend. And to send me on my way, how about a dub version of London Calling by a Swiss white reggae band?  It is much better than that sounds.

London Calling

More Clash Dub

An album of Clash songs done dubwise style by a Swiss reggae band may not set the heart racing in anticipation and may cause you to raise your eyebrow in suspicion... but you'd be wrong. Dub Spencer and Trance Hill released The Clashification Of Dub two years ago. I stumbled upon it the other day. It's really good- lots of already dubby basslines from songs like Bankrobber and Guns of Brixton given the full version treatment with spacey effects and the unmistakable whiff of the skank but the real treats are the riskier dub versions of Lost In The Supermarket and Train in Vain, expansive, imaginative and beautifully played. Train In Vain is way out there in dubsville.



Train In Vain

There's a lot of The Clash in the air right now. Mick, Paul and Topper can be found interviewed here for BBC Radio 4 (promoting that boombox shaped boxed set). There's a pop-up shop about to open in London for a few weeks in September with a load of Mick's memorabilia on the walls (and with a shedload of boomboxes to shift). And in early September Cerys Matthews will be interviewing the threesome for BBC 6 with an audience asking questions as well. As Drew remarked recently, London Calling may well be the best lp ever. And, three decades after they split, they still have a claim on that 'only band that matters' tag.