Workin' for the Clampdown

Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D'you know that you can use it?
- "Clampdown," London Calling

I am angry.

Let me rephrase that: Hell hath no fury like a senior who has to change his history thesis because one of the most important events in 20th century Arkansas history has a disturbing lack of fucking primary sources. On the way back from a most fruitless and infuriating trip to the Butler Center in Little Rock I screamed, cursed, gnashed teeth, punched my car, ground gears, flipped off drivers, and wanted to KILL something. I started off listening to Iggy Pop to serve as a foil to my mood, but decided to further exacerbate my mood by playing God's Single Greatest Gift to Angry White Men. If my mood and my actions at the time were a drinking game, it could best be described as thus:

For ever shot you take, take a shot.

Yes. Cyclical logic makes me happy. It's easy, for Chrissake, and I do NOT want anything complicating my life right now. Anyways, God's Single Greatest Gift to Angry White Men. There are times in the world when we encounter something that effects our mood so much that we can't help but lose control of our emotions as some uberstrong outside influence tells us what to do. When it comes to being angry and feeling good about being angry, The Clash is without a doubt that God not only exists, He wears leather, loves safety pins, has a neon green mohawk, is angry as hell, and is from Brixton.

Listen to them. Pop in their first album (either the UK or US version) and tell me you don't want to just go out and slaughter entire villages Viking-style with a smile on your face and a surge of endorphins that make you just feel so glad to be alive whilst removing that capability from others. It is gritty. It is stripped-down. It is fast. It is pure moshpit andrenaline coursing through your veins with three-chord riffs that make you want to strike a pose not unlike Venom and rip something into its constiuent organs with the subtlety and grace of a flying Cadillac in a Jerry Bruckheimer film.

For a more sustained anger, put in Give 'Em Enough Rope and let the bloodlust overwhelm you like a fox on 'roids who has just been dumped in the Overweight Chicken's Coop for Eldery Chickens Who Have a Hard Time Fleeing Predators. It's righteous. It's fast. It's a touch more refined and longer. Besides, punk covers of When Johnny Comes Marchin' Home coupled with unintelligble lyrics that you know are basically screaming rants about injustices in the world do more for a society's homicide rate than air-lifted machetes into Rwanda with tags attached saying "Apply this edge to enemy craniums." Sure, there are more quiet spots in this album, but you gotta catch your breath every once in a while when you're breaking crap.

Stay away from Sandinista! and Combat Rock. London Calling, their opus work, is really hit or miss. It's much more subtle anger that is produced from this one, a seething sort of rage that turns one into a postal worker; a timebomb of anger; a college student ready to find a damn clocktower and doing God a favor and putting a few more Longhorns in hell with nothing more than simple glance that hit one just the wrong way.

So, I've been blasting the Clash for a while. There is an unused TV in my corner.



How much for a baseball bat, and where is an empty field?