THE ESSENTIAL CLASH
Directed by Don Letts, Joe Strummer and others
(Epic Music Video)
The importance of the Clash, the only serious contender with the Sex Pistols for the title greatest punk rock band ever, is at this point acknowledged pretty much everywhere and doesn't bear going into here. It should be noted, however, that among its other pioneering attributes, the Clash was one of the first punk bands to make full use of the burgeoning music video industry. The DVD The Essential Clash functions as a companion to the recent double-CD compilation of the same name; while it doesn't span the same breadth as the album, it does collect all the band's extant videos, with some extra goodies besides. Smartly, director Don Letts (Johnny Rotten's old running buddy and Clash guitarist Mick Jones' future bandmate in Big Audio Dynamite) filmed mostly live performances, capturing the adrenalized power of one of the greatest live rock & roll bands on earth in all its unfettered glory. Clips for "London Calling" (which is annoyingly interrupted by other footage right after the guitar solo), "Tommy Gun," Train in Vain," "The Call Up" and "Career Opportunities" burn holes in the screen. The funky, quirky "This is Radio Clash" mixes performance footage with shots of the band playing their radios and, after a fashion, dancing and "Bankrobber" allegedly documents the band in the studio, but they don't have the visual force of the concert stuff. The only "concept" clip that still inspires any real interest is the clever, controversial "Rock the Casbah;" its images of oil fields, combat gear and cash seem par for the course for a current audience raised on satire, but it's still a good video.
The extras included here are real treats for fans. Besides an interview clip and a smokin' performance of "I Fought the Law," you also get three songs performed in an empty club for a TV show when the band had been together a little over a year. The explosive takes on "1977," "White Riot" and "London's Burning" capture a quartet of very young men (longtime fans will be shocked at the boyish appearance of the perpetually grizzled Joe Strummer) ready to take on the world, whipping the crap out of the tunes even though the audience is merely a couple of cameramen. As a final bonus, the DVD also includes Hell W10, a silent, black-and-white crime film directed by Strummer in 1983 that's part The Harder They Come and part British sketch comedy. Starring Jones as a would-be neighborhood crime lord and bassist Paul Simonon as a young hood out to rip him off, the flick isn't a work of cinematic genius by any stretch, but it's surprisingly entertaining. The Essential Clash isn't all the Clash video available, of course—you'd need the films Westway to the World and Rude Boy for that—but it's a nice summary of the band's adventures in a marketing form that would explode into then-unimaginable importance just a few years after these clips were made. Michael Toland [buy it]