Sound System/Hits Back Reviews

[Dr. Medulla]

It's good fun, but it ain't winning no races.

Well, it comes in second on "best Clash songs sung by Paul"

RAD wins again!

Let's get Ringo to sing this one!

[Chuck Mangione]

Hits Back's album art looks like more of a rarities and outtakes album than anything else. That kind of obscure cover shot along with the trademark Clash stencilling really gives it a unique image. It gives the consumer a sense of discovery, but the product doesn't truly offer much. For prejudice's sake, I give Hits Back a pre-emptive 3.5/5, and am confident it will stay that way after listening because I don't expect to hear anything too new in the masters than what's already out there now, except the minor White Riot difference..

Sound System gets a strong and shiny 4.5+ bonus for having a cool design but no 5 because of its dirth of truly unheard/unearthed tracks.

Speaking of the studio talk on White Riot, I swear I hear the sound of someone clearing their throat on the start of The Prisoner in the SS box set.

[Heston]

Review from my mate via text...

Just bought the Clash Hits Back CD. Sounds great...maybe because it is.

[JennyB]

Review from my mate via text...

Just bought the Clash Hits Back CD. Sounds great...maybe because it is.

Best review I have seen.

[12XU]

Elsewhere, The Weeknd scores his highest charting UK album to date with 'Kiss Land' entering in at Number 12, The Clash’s latest best of collection, 'The Clash Hits Back', is at Number 13, while Janelle Monae’s 'The Electric Lady' debuts at Number 14.
Read more at http://www.nme.com/news/arctic-monkeys/ ... 2Z2qR0x.99

[Flex]

An excerpt of Brian Robbins' review - which discusses both the Sound System box and the Hits Back comp - at (heh) JamBands.com:

The new box set Sound System is a sprawling collection of sound, sights, and swag galore that totally befits “the only band that matters”: The Clash.

Packed into a replica boombox designed by Clash bassist Paul Simonon are remastered versions of five of the band’s studio albums ( The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, London Calling, Sandinista! and Combat Rock ); three CDs’ worth of rarities (including demos, singles, and B-sides); a DVD of unseen archival footage along with videos and live performances; and a pile of memorabilia that includes stickers, badges, dog tags, fanzines, and a poster – pretty near everything you’d want except the surviving members of the band hanging out in your living room.

The remastering of the studio classics – overseen by Clash members Mick Jones (guitar/vocals), Topper Headon (drums), and Simonon – offers new dimension to music that was already ahead of its time when released. From the snarling spit- and sweat-soaked immediacy of 1977’s The Clash to 1982’s Combat Rock (which offered up everything from Beat poetry to dancehall beats) the remasters do the band’s music justice – and pay tribute to the genius of vocalist/guitarist Joe Strummer, who passed away in December of 2002. From beginning to end, the five-album run makes one point perfectly clear: no matter how massive their output might have been, The Clash released no filler. They simply had a lot to say.

Full article: http://www.jambands.com/reviews/cds/201 ... -hits-back

Ben Greenman at The New Yorker gives the box what I would characterize as a "conflicted" review. Here's the last bit:

“Sound System” does not answer these questions; rather, evades them. It is lovingly assembled and remastered, certainly. In interviews with Mick Jones, he has discussed how improved tape-head technology allowed the band to pull more music off the original master tapes, and it’s true that the mixes sound richer. The formatting is also satisfying and intelligent. The divisions of the original albums are preserved: “The Clash” occupies one disk, “London Calling,” two, and “Sandinista!,” three. This decision is more than a trivial anachronism. It’s a reminder that LPs once existed, and that they had their own internal rhythms. Even that, though, is compromised by the modern world—if you listen to “Sound System” on Spotify, you get one endless album, which stretches from “Janie Jones” to “Death Is a Star.” And so it’s back to paradox and contradiction: to experience the albums in a setting of maximum integrity, you have to purchase an exorbitant object of minimum utility. Lost in the supermarket, indeed. In the end, “Sound System” is more like the boom box it resembles than anyone seems willing to admit. It’s a museum piece that deserves to be viewed with tender suspicion, from a slight distance, rather than a living thing that rewards intimate engagement. It’s a full account rendered in empty gestures—or, in the prescient words of Jack White, himself likely a future subject of an overstuffed boxed set: “I got a backyard with nothing in it / Except a stick, a dog, and a box with something in it.”

Full article: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/c ... e-box.html

Brendan Kelly at the Montreal Gazette with a little review of Hits Back and a 10 song sampler of Sound System he got (here's an excerpt):

I just received Hits Back and a ten-track sampler from Sound System. The Hits you already know. They’re all great. And there’s some cool stuff on the Sound System sampler. Some of it is familiar to us Clash aficionados. I already know all about Tommy Gun b-side 1-2 Crush On You, the first Clash number to include that most Supertrampy of things, a sax solo, and which just happens to be maybe their suckiest pop dittie ever (and I love it for its Jonesy cheesiness!).

The real deal here though is the early recordings. There are two tracks on the sampler from the Clash’s first-ever recording session, at Beaconsfield Film School in London in 1976, and what’s startling about the ferocious takes on London’s Burning and 1977 is how totally tight and together the band already was. They knew exactly what they were doing from day one.

But the track that nearly had me veering off the highway was the incendiary run through Janie Jones, taken from the Polydor demos, the band’s second recording session, in November 1976. The lead-off track from the original version of The Clash’s self-titled debut album – not the mish-mash American version – is one of my fave Clash songs of all time and this version actually just crushes the one we’re all familiar with.

I know, I know, there’s something obscene about shelling out $188.59 – Amazon’s price – for a punk-rock collection but man does this early early stuff sound effin amazing.

I sometimes wonder how it is that music that changed my world as a teenager still has as much impact all these years later. Usually it makes me think that I’m not all that good at growing up. Sometimes I think that’s a bad thing. But with Janie Jones turned to nutty loud volumes in the car and me screaming along with Joe Strummer, I figure at the very least it’s therapeutic and that, for me, is very much of a good thing. I need all the therapy, punk-rock or otherwise, i can get my hands on.

Full article: http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2013/0 ... nd-system/

[Dr. Medulla]

Ben Greenman at The New Yorker gives the box what I would characterize as a "conflicted" review. Here's the last bit:

“Sound System” does not answer these questions; rather, evades them. It is lovingly assembled and remastered, certainly. In interviews with Mick Jones, he has discussed how improved tape-head technology allowed the band to pull more music off the original master tapes, and it’s true that the mixes sound richer. The formatting is also satisfying and intelligent. The divisions of the original albums are preserved: “The Clash” occupies one disk, “London Calling,” two, and “Sandinista!,” three. This decision is more than a trivial anachronism. It’s a reminder that LPs once existed, and that they had their own internal rhythms. Even that, though, is compromised by the modern world—if you listen to “Sound System” on Spotify, you get one endless album, which stretches from “Janie Jones” to “Death Is a Star.” And so it’s back to paradox and contradiction: to experience the albums in a setting of maximum integrity, you have to purchase an exorbitant object of minimum utility. Lost in the supermarket, indeed. In the end, “Sound System” is more like the boom box it resembles than anyone seems willing to admit. It’s a museum piece that deserves to be viewed with tender suspicion, from a slight distance, rather than a living thing that rewards intimate engagement. It’s a full account rendered in empty gestures—or, in the prescient words of Jack White, himself likely a future subject of an overstuffed boxed set: “I got a backyard with nothing in it / Except a stick, a dog, and a box with something in it.”

Full article: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/c ... e-box.html

There is an argument to made about losing the integrity of the album and all given the ease of flipping from song to song, etc., but too many of these pieces come off as grandpa speaking into the waffle iron. Or maybe I'm confused and Spotify doesn't give you the option of stopping at any point, like, I dunno, when the physical album would end. I can't tell whether he's held hostage by technology or too damned lazy to move his mouse over and click stop.

[Flex]

There is an argument to made about losing the integrity of the album and all given the ease of flipping from song to song, etc., but too many of these pieces come off as grandpa speaking into the waffle iron. Or maybe I'm confused and Spotify doesn't give you the option of stopping at any point, like, I dunno, when the physical album would end. I can't tell whether he's held hostage by technology or too damned lazy to move his mouse over and click stop.

I mentioned this before, but I noticed a slightly different listening experience with S! by having the album actually divided up into three discs. I mean, yeah, I could hit stop on Spotify (or what have you) and wait a few minutes and hit play again but there's still something experientally different about actually having to switch out the CDs/LPs, pause and take a breath, etc. I mentioned that, for me, it cast a new light on the songs that closed disc two and opened disc three of S! I'm not arguing one is better than the other (certainly the endless play of Spotify and such is more convenient and accessible by a wide number of people) but I don't think "just hit stop for a minute" is really the same thing either. Also, I don't think it's how humans generally behave - if the music doesn't stop we're probably not going to stop it to simulate the original track sequence of the album, that's the laziness you speak of - so the point that you're losing a certain kind of listening rhythm seems straightforwardly obvious to me. Maybe what you gain more than outweighs it (and I think the review more or less sides with that opinion over the nostalgic excess of the box), but yeah, I see what he's saying.

[Dr. Medulla]

There is an argument to made about losing the integrity of the album and all given the ease of flipping from song to song, etc., but too many of these pieces come off as grandpa speaking into the waffle iron. Or maybe I'm confused and Spotify doesn't give you the option of stopping at any point, like, I dunno, when the physical album would end. I can't tell whether he's held hostage by technology or too damned lazy to move his mouse over and click stop.

I mentioned this before, but I noticed a slightly different listening experience with S! by having the album actually divided up into three discs. I mean, yeah, I could hit stop on Spotify (or what have you) and wait a few minutes and hit play again but there's still something experientally different about actually having to switch out the CDs/LPs, pause and take a breath, etc. I mentioned that, for me, it cast a new light on the songs that closed disc two and opened disc three of S! I'm not arguing one is better than the other (certainly the endless play of Spotify and such is more convenient and accessible by a wide number of people) but I don't think "just hit stop for a minute" is really the same thing either. Also, I don't think it's how humans generally behave - if the music doesn't stop we're probably not going to stop it to simulate the original track sequence of the album, that's the laziness you speak of - so the point that you're losing a certain kind of listening rhythm seems straightforwardly obvious to me. Maybe what you gain more than outweighs it (and I think the review more or less sides with that opinion over the nostalgic excess of the box), but yeah, I see what he's saying.

I'd never deny your experience, but it's nothing I ever got. Perhaps/Probably this is my lack of nuance in listening, but from vinyl to cassette to cd to iPod, I never discerned something superior in the slower, simpler technology. Or maybe it's just that I want greater control over my experience, so I preferred cd over vinyl/tape, and iPod over all others. I'm willing grant authority to the artist re. track listing on the first couple listens, but after that I see little virtue in not being able to easily skip or rearrange things. The argument against listener control is a much tougher sell, at least to me.

[Flex]

I'd never deny your experience, but it's nothing I ever got. Perhaps/Probably this is my lack of nuance in listening, but from vinyl to cassette to cd to iPod, I never discerned something superior in the slower, simpler technology. Or maybe it's just that I want greater control over my experience, so I preferred cd over vinyl/tape, and iPod over all others. I'm willing grant authority to the artist re. track listing on the first couple listens, but after that I see little virtue in not being able to easily skip or rearrange things. The argument against listener control is a much tougher sell, at least to me.

Well, I tried to be pretty careful to never say one way was superior to another. Just different.

I like having greater control over music when I want to listen to tracks. I like having an experience that more closely resembles authorial intent when I want to listen to an album. I think of those as two different impulses (it's why I've never cottoned to the "it's all just about the music" position. I mean, sometimes it is, but when I want to listen to an album it's about the music plus a host of attendant other things that create the aesthetic experience of the "album" beyond just a collection of songs). I enjoy being able to do both at the moment, but get a little wary at what seems to be a general move to collapse the latter experience into the former. Which isn't really what the review is about, but something I've been thinking of with some recent articles about the move of music to services like Pandora, Spotify, etc.

[Dr. Medulla]

I'd never deny your experience, but it's nothing I ever got. Perhaps/Probably this is my lack of nuance in listening, but from vinyl to cassette to cd to iPod, I never discerned something superior in the slower, simpler technology. Or maybe it's just that I want greater control over my experience, so I preferred cd over vinyl/tape, and iPod over all others. I'm willing grant authority to the artist re. track listing on the first couple listens, but after that I see little virtue in not being able to easily skip or rearrange things. The argument against listener control is a much tougher sell, at least to me.

Well, I tried to be pretty careful to never say one way was superior to another. Just different.

No, I didn't read hierarchy into your statement. I know that I have a hierarchy, but it's localized to me. That element of control freakery with me and music almost certainly drives my preference in cultural theory, which favours the consumer's role in generating meaning.

I like having greater control over music when I want to listen to tracks. I like having an experience that more closely resembles authorial intent when I want to listen to an album. I think of those as two different impulses (it's why I've never cottoned to the "it's all just about the music" position. I mean, sometimes it is, but when I want to listen to an album it's about the music plus a host of attendant other things that create the aesthetic experience of the "album" beyond just a collection of songs). I enjoy being able to do both at the moment, but get a little wary at what seems to be a general move to collapse the latter experience into the former. Which isn't really what the review is about, but something I've been thinking of with some recent articles about the move of music to services like Pandora, Spotify, etc.

As I mentioned in another thread, I can appreciate the authorial intent/whole album perspective with concept albums, where there is a narrative and skipping around or omitting would be like skipping chapters of a novel. Most albums, tho, the sequencing doesn't seem especially relevant to me, quite possibly because the sequencing wasn't especially relevant to the band. I'm skeptical that most albums are anything more than the best twelve songs the band had at that moment. Perhaps I'm projecting my own limited vision on the artist, but in the end it means I'm not going to appreciate the significance of the sequencing anyway.

[Wolter]

The first time I genuinely enjoyed Sandinista!, it was listening on vinyl. I think breaking it into six manageable chunks made me listen more carefully to songs I had kind of dismissed.

[Chuck Mangione]

Listened to the LC part of the box set on Spotify yesterday. So much new stuff.