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. 

Slamdance Cosmopolis

A Clash song and cover for Friday, a song from the tail end of the group's lifespan, when the days of squats in Davis Road must have seemed an eternity and a world away. By 1982 The Clash were playing stadiums (supporting The Who) and releasing an album which was partly made for mass appeal with singles that would get them on the radio and also an album that was very internationalist in its subject matter, about the Far East and New York rather than the Westway. Much of Combat Rock has a melancholic, weighty feel. Ghetto Defendant has a downbeat reggae groove with a particularly good bassline from Simonon, many memorable lines from Strummer about heroin addiction and Allen Ginsberg as 'the voice of God'. Jean Arthur Rimbaud, The Paris Commune, Marseilles, Guatemala, the Hundred Years War, Afghanistan...

Mick initially saw Combat Rock as another long album, fifteen or sixteen songs with extended dance mixes and lengthy intros and outros. He lost that argument as the album was remixed by Glyn Johns, trimmed back to forty six minutes and had several songs shelved. The Sound System box set included this original, longer Mick Jones version of the song, everything stretched out a bit further, more reggae groove, more bass, more Strummer and more Ginsberg.

Ghetto Defendant (Extended Version)

In 2017 New York's Megative put out a cover of Ghetto Defendant, an even more downbeat version than the original, slow and heavy but with enough groove to get you shuffling, slightly. Megative have their own apocalyptic take on the punky reggae party and on the basis of this cover plenty to bring.

Ghetto Defendant