“ARRRGHHHGORRA BUH BHVH DO ARRRRGGGGHHHHNNNN!!!!”

When they started calling Simon and Garfunkel “rock and roll,” something had to be done, pronto.

As the sixties wound down, so did rock music. In the fifties, rock and roll was something new and dangerous—back then a country boy raised in Tennessee could swivel his hips to something that sounded like blues hopped-up on steroids and cause an outrage. Then through the sixties, as Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and the Cold War adversely affected the minds of millions, rock musicians appropriately reflected the zeitgeist of a culture spiraling out of control. They weren’t afraid of anything, and they did whatever the felt like. But then things cooled down, and what used to be that damned devil music decided it was content lay down its guns and become the easy, ordinary, plain-old mainstream music. And that’s why we have punk.

Around ‘74, a new wave of musicians came to the understanding that rock and roll needed to get its bite back right now. In an attempt to regain that lost edge, they decided to forgo the complex arrangements and the polished studio effects in favor of stripping down to a handful of instruments and really bad attitude. They were loud, they were fast, and they were pissed—these were the criteria, and although musical aptitude was preferred, it certainly wasn’t required. The punks evolved: the Ramones were too mellow and the Sex Pistols were too untalented, but before long we got the Clash, and there was plenty to be happy (angry?) about.

Having started out as a supporting act for the Sex Pistols in 1976, the Clash released its first, self-titled record the following year to great commercial success in the U.K. and displayed an unusual amount of sophistication for a punk group. The Clash contained influences of early rock and roll and even reggae, but most of all it was loud, loud, loud and fast, fast, fast. It was followed up by Give ‘Em Enough Rope, and by that point the band added a degree of polish the previous record lacked, but don’t think that means the essential sound changed too much. It was possibly even louder and even faster (yet more slick), but above all retained the all-important sense of RAGE (caps warranted). And thus the Clash spoke to the pent-up restlessness of everyone who was discontent with rock’s coma, but their importance wasn’t much greater than that of all the other young punks around. They were playing angry for an angry fan base—essentially, they weren’t doing too much more than riding the coattails of the movement.

Then there was London Calling.

In 1979, the Clash released their unquestioned magnum opus to commercial and critical success which had previously eluded them, and solidified their place in cultural history. With London Calling also came a breakthrough in the U.S., something the previous records couldn’t manage. Incorporating blends of rockabilly, ska, reggae, and R&B, the new album not only pushed punk rock in a direction in which it had never dreamed of going, but also gave a new spark to rock music on the whole. With one album, the Clash made the penultimate accomplishment that was the goal of the punk movement from the very beginning—rock was new, experimental, and dangerous once again. But that’s not to detract from the previous punk bands and their accomplishments, since London Calling couldn’t have happened without them. But in the grand scheme of things, the punk movement on a whole was building up to this record—consistently ranked these days as one of the ten or so greatest albums of all time, London Calling was the punk flagship.

But things went downhill for the boys from there. 1980’s Sandinista! saw them getting a big head, releasing a monstrous three-disc album in which they did whatever sort of weird stuff they felt like (it’s been called their White Album, but being so out of control and unbalanced, it gives me a headache that John, Paul, George, and Ringo couldn’t rival). It wasn’t a bad album though. There’s some great stuff to be heard on it, but there’s also a lot of crap. Besides, there were problems within the band itself by the time Combat Rock was released in 1982, notably drummer Topper Headon’s heroin addiction and subsequent sacking. Then, when frontmen Joe Strummer and Mick Jones’ differences resulted in Jones being booted, the shattered remnants of the Clash (now Strummer, bassist Paul Simonon, and a few other guys) gave it one final shot with the aptly-titled Cut the Crap in 1985 before calling it quits less than a year later. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Clash captured the spirit of a movement more adequately than any other, and for while they really were the only band that mattered.