Note the slight relation to a recent thread, or did those 25k posts
constitute a skein? g
Cover stories
A tribute to the Clash
I still remember when I stumbled across an LP of various
artists performing songs by Neil Young a decade ago and
thought to myself, "Wow, that's a pretty cool idea." These
days, of course, tribute albums are a common, even
mundane part of the endless flood of CDs that arrive in
stores every Monday at midnight, week after week, on
big labels and small. I'm not sure why major labels
continue to devote time and money to the tribute album,
because for all the publicity generated by compilations
dedicated to new interpretations of the work of, say, a
John Lennon, in the end the CDs never sell all that well.
Old John Lennon fans are probably more interested in
hearing real John Lennon outtakes than new recordings of
his old songs by Cheap Trick and a bunch of bands they've never
heard of. And even if you are a
Red Hot Chili Peppers fan, you may not want to drop 15 bucks for
only one Chili Peppers tune
and a bunch of other tracks by bands you don't care about. My guess
is that the tribute album has
survived as something of a creative indulgence for fortunate AR
types whose jobs otherwise
consist of chasing new bands around with checkbooks in hand, keeping
their fingers crossed, and,
from time to time, getting fired and rehired.
Whatever the motive, I still look forward to tribute discs, mostly
out of an abiding fondness for
cover tunes, a pop novelty unfairly discredited by hordes of GB
(general business) bands who
specialize in rote versions of Top 40 hits and, of course, the
Grateful Dead. Back when I was
playing in bands, it was considered a point of pride not to do any
covers -- until we heard the
Replacements' version of Kiss's "Black Diamond" on Let It Be and saw
R.E.M. open a show with
the Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale." Suddenly, reinterpreting a
classic took on a whole new
meaning: covers became an integral part of a band's musical
identity, and it was perfectly
acceptable to judge an outfit by their choices. Those choices are
necessarily narrowed down to
material by a single artist on a tribute disc -- which isn't as
revealing as hearing, say, a band like
Hole pull a Duran Duran tune out of nowhere on stage. But you can
still judge a band by the quality
of their cover.
The new Burning London: The Clash Tribute (Epic; in stores Tuesday,
March 16) offers a dozen
or so contemporary artists the chance to do what they will with the
work of a now ancient punk
band whose songs have never been as popular to cover as the Ramones
or even the Sex Pistols.
That's partly because, with a few notable exceptions ("Train in
Vain," "Should I Stay or Should I
Go"), the Clash wrote songs that had some universal resonance as
anthems but were more often
than not self-referential ("Clash City Rockers," "This Is Radio
Clash"). Their best tunes were tied to
a specific time, place, and situation, whether it was visiting an
unwelcoming Jamaica as naive young
reggae fans ("Safe European Home") or simply squabbling with their
record label ("Complete
Control"). Their songs are so Clash-identified that they don't leave
much room for outside artistic
interpretation.
That's not a problem for Rancid, a band custom-made to play Clash
covers. They dig their combat
boots into the rebel rock of "Cheat" as if they'd been born
auditioning for the part of the Clash in
Calling London: The Punk Years, with Tim Armstrong singing as if he
had a copy of Black
Market Clash caught in his throat. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
handle the ska-flavored "Rudy
Can't Fail" with appropriate care; 311 put a Southern California
spin on the lyrics to "White Man in
Hammersmith Palais" (and prove that they've been a good band in
search of a good song all along);
and some outfit called the Urge do a respectable job with "This Is
Radio Clash," though it might
have been cool to hear what Fatboy Slim would do with what
