In the Mix

The fortieth anniversary of Sgt. Pepper has been predictably accompanied by hosannahs declaring it the greatest album ever made. I debunk that idea in the Saturday Inquirer. And here's a piece I wrote back in 2004 arguin for my favorite horse in that race.

A call for 'London Calling' as best pop album ever

What's the greatest pop album of all time?
With apologies to Pet Sounds, Exile on Main Street, and It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, I'm going with London Calling.

And I cast my vote for the Clash's 1979 double LP - recently reissued in a three-disc edition, with rehearsal tapes and a making-of DVD - without even being sure it's my favorite album by the British foursome once hyped as "the only band that matters. "

But London Calling is that rare magnum opus - like, say, The Godfather or Moby Dick - that fully delivers on its grand ambitions without sacrificing a smidgen of immediacy.

Guttural-voiced Joe Strummer and sweeter-sounding partner Mick Jones took on suburban alienation and global fascism, referenced the Spanish Civil War and Three Mile Island (the "nuclear error" in the title song), and remained steadfast in the face of personal heartbreak and soul-sucking greed.

And without stinting on punk- rock swagger, the band - which included matinee-idol bassist Paul Simonon and ace drummer Topper Headon - made room for dub-reggae and Memphis soul, rock-steady ska and rockabilly, sloppy jazz and exuberant pop.

OK, so it's a really good album, the high-water mark for an important band, certainly the most impressive musical achievement of the punk era.

But does it earn a place in the pantheon above the stylistic derring-do of Revolver, the gorgeous lyricism of Kind of Blue, and the outrageous experimentalism of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below? Or, for that matter, is it more awesome than that really cool mix you burned, or made into an iPod playlist, that speaks to your soul right now?

For me, it is. And that's largely because London Calling is, for my money, the most powerfully realized platter of raggedly glorious rock-and-roll idealism ever recorded.

Later named the best album of the 1980s by Rolling Stone (though it was released in December 1979), the Clash's third full-length album arrived at a pivotal period in the history of pop music.

Looking back, the '70s was a fantastic decade for pop music, from Al Green to Neil Young, from Springsteen to the Sound of Philadelphia. But the punk revolution kick-started by the Ramones was a reaction to what was seen as the bloated excess of bands like Pink Floyd and Yes. Riding a wild amphetamine rush, punk was all about saying no. No guitar solos, no songs over three minutes, and as the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten exuberantly put it: "No future! "

The Clash's jolting, uncompromising stance marked them as punks, but from the beginning, they were different. Their first album contained a cover of Junior Mervin's reggae hit "Police and Thieves," and unlike most of their compadres, the Clash always had an abiding interest in black, and what's come to be called "world," music.

In The Last Testament: The Making of London Calling, the informative if nonessential DVD that's part of the new set, Strummer talks about his politicized songwriting style. Strummer, who died of a heart attack two years ago at age 50, says it was based on the Jamaican model, in which the events of the day were sung about in the dance clubs at night. (The 25th-anniversary edition's other disc, a 21-track rehearsal tape, holds no revelations. )

As the British novelist Will Self has said, the world back then seemed to be divided into Sex Pistols people and Clash people. When Rotten sang "We mean it, man!" in "God Save the Queen," he was a demonic court jester up to no good, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Strummer didn't need to say it. He really did mean it, man: He was as dogged as his chosen name, hammering away in the unwavering (and possibly uncool) belief that, dismal as the world may have been, there had to be a way he and his mates could make it a better place.

I was with him. London Calling came out when I was 17, in the thrall of Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town and Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True, looking for something to believe in.

London Calling supplied that, and more. It helped that Strummer and Jones were great songwriters, in the Brit-duo tradition of Lennon and McCartney, and Jagger and Richards, with Strummer writing the lion's share of the words, Jones most of the music. And that London Calling was a double album in the age of vinyl, meaning that, at 65 minutes, it survived passage into the digital age as one jam-packed, no-filler CD.

Strummer and Jones' finest hour delivered tunes like "Lost in the Supermarket" and "Train in Vain (Stand by Me)," each catchy enough to burn in your brain. Two years earlier, on their furiously paced first album, the Clash had showered contempt on America with "I'm So Bored With the U.S.A." But London Calling, recorded after a U.S. tour with Bo Diddley, looked to the future while drawing on the past. There was an ode to fallen movie star Montgomery Clift ("The Right Profile"), a take on the Stagger Lee legend ("Wrong 'Em Boyo"), and an iconic cover design based on Elvis Presley's first album.

But the songs that sealed the deal - the ones I was most desperate to hear when, pressed against the stage at Bond's International Casino in Times Square in 1981, I finally saw the band - were the galvanic rockers that positioned the Clash as heroes, unafraid to take on the world.

"London Calling" sent out a signal that they were up for the job, now that "phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust. " "Clampdown" urged fans to get involved, constructively: "Let fury have the hour, anger can be power/Do you know that you can use it? " And "Death or Glory" told of sad sacks and losers, as the defiant music made clear that the Clash would remain committed to the end.

Of course, it didn't work out that way. After following London Calling with the audacious three-LP set Sandinista! and the workmanlike Combat Rock, the Clash fell apart in the 1980s. Rock bands don't last forever.

But sometimes their music does. And the Clash's, unquestionably, has. That's attested to by the band's status as patron-saint punks to the Warped Tour nation in general (and Clash sound-alike Rancid in particular). And London Calling still sounds remarkably fresh and gripping in 2004.

Does all that mean it's the greatest album of all time, better than Dylan's Blonde on Blonde or Joni Mitchell's Blue? Immersed in the album once again, it sure sounds that way to me. But aesthetic value judgments are ultimately subjective, and all about your own experience.

What my experience tells me is that while the Clash had their weaknesses - they weren't so good at writing love songs, for instance - London Calling is an inspiring, impassioned album that argues for the absolute necessity of connecting with the outside world while remaining true to yourself.

And for 25 years, that's been good enough for me.

"As much of a great guitarist as Jimi was, Bert Jansch is the same for acoustic guitar, and my favorite." That's the money quote about Bert Jansch, courtesy of Neil Young. The 64 year old Jansch was a key figure in the Brit folk scene of the '60s, and is hero to the neo-longhairs of the freak folk scene these days. He made a surprisingly strong return to form with The Black Swan last year, which featured Beth Orton on a couple of cuts. He's at Johnny Brenda's tonight, with P.G. Six.

When Lester Bangs wrote Elvis Presley's obituary in 1977, the rock critic played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous put it this way: "I can guarantee you one thing; we will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis."

Bangs was talking about the continued fragmentation of the pop music audience, which mirrored society at large. It used to be, or at least it used to seem to him, that we could all get behind the same "objects of reverence."

But as the '60s counterculture dream of unity gave way to the '70s Me Decade, everybody got into their own thing. "I thought it was Iggy Stooge, you thought it was Joni Mitchell, or whoever else seemed to speak for your own private, entirely circumscribed situation's many pains and few ecstasies."

Of course, even the idea of cultural alliance over as outsized an icon as Elvis was a lie, as Chuck D. made plain in "Fight the Power" in 1989: "Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant s--- to me."

I'm bringing all this up because in the 30 years since Elvis' death - that's another anniversary that'll have to be commemorated, come August - the pop music mirror has continued to shatter in a million little pieces. You're either into Bright Eyes, or Beyonce, or Ghostface Killah; or Carrie Underwood, or Miranda Lambert, or Pink Floyd; or Mims, or the White Stripes or Norah Jones. Or maybe, all of them at the same time.

But amid all this Balkanization of the pop music landscape - and speaking of which, have you heard the new Balkan Beat Box album? - there remains one thing that almost all pop and rock fans, anyway, can kinda sorta agree on: The Beatles.

Which leads me to the piece I wrote about the 40th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper in Saturday's paper, and the fired up response it got. I knew that saying that Sgt. Pepper was not the greatest album of all time, as it has been regularly coronated, was sure to get Fab Four fans furiously bent out of shape.

And indeed it did. Despite the fact that, right at the top, it said The Beatles were unquestionably the best pop group of all time, I still got called a "communist greaser" for it.

Nice. Not just a greaser, but a “communist greaser.” I’m like Chairman Mao, with bryl creem.

Anyway, along with the Pepper defenders, and the skeptics tired of hearing about the Beatles undying brilliance, there were a bunch of alternate choices for best album ever proposed on the philly.com comments board: The Smiths' Queen Is Dead, Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Yes' Close to the Edge, Radiohead's OK Computer, Guns N' Roses’ Appetite for Destruction, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On, and, I kid you not, the Best of Bread.

As I said in the first place, it’s all apple and oranges. And, of course, as much fun as it is to argue about it, actually crowning a certifiable best album of all time is even more absurd than comparing great baseball players who played in different eras. There’s no wholly objective yardstick of excellence, like there is in, say, the long jump.

But a whole lot of the comments and emails I got suggested that there was. And not only that, but that I would surely understand that Sgt. Pepper is the ultimate high water mark in pop history if only I had been of proper music appreciation age when it first came out.

It’s the “you had to be there” argument. Among its sharper proponents, my Inquirer Metro columnist pal Dan Rubin, in his Blinq blog.

It goes something like this: If you had lived through it, if you had experienced how completely revolutionary the album was at the time, from the photo collage cover to the lyric sheet on the back, from “the one and only Billy Shears” fake band concept to the gloriously quotidian “A Day In The Life,” well, then you’d understand just how totally mind-blowing it was that the Beatles, the “we're more popular than Jesus" biggest band on the planet who only a few short years before were singing “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” had pulled off such a multi-dimensional masterpiece. And you’d put Sgt. Pepper on top of your list, too.

Sorry, but I’m not buying. The question we’re wrangling with here is not "What album blew the most baby boomer's minds during the Summer of Love?” It’s “Is Sgt. Pepper really the best album ever made?”

And if it isn’t, really - as even many of the Pepper proponents acknowledge when they admit that they like Revolver and Rubber Soul and maybe even Abbey Road and the White Album more - then why does Pepper consistently sit in the top spot?

Because baby boomers who lived through it say it should.

Being a music fan is subjective – the album you think is the best ever is probably the one that had the most emotional impact for you at the most crucial time. That’s why my pick is The Clash’s London Calling. It’s a tremendously varied artistic statement that still stands up proudly. But more importantly, it came out when I was 16, and delivered just the desperate passion and intelligence I needed to hear as I was trying figure out who I was.

And as it was for me, it’s likely the same if the album that hit you like a ton of bricks when you needed it most was Public Enemy's It Takes A Nations of Millions to Hold Us Back, or Madonna’s Like A Prayer, or Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, or Prince's Sign O' The Times or Nirvana's Nevermind, or N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton or PJ Harvey's Dry or Kanye West’s The College Dropout or The Strokes Is This It or M.I.A.'s Arular or The Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible.

People who love those “objects of reverence” love them every bit as much as Beatles fans love Sgt. Pepper. But they can’t compete in a consensus contest. They all came out long after the pop audience had splintered into separate factions. And for decades now, we’ve lived in a land of pop culture niches.

But the Beatles predate all that. They have history on their side. Their most self-consciously grand artistic statement is born of a time when, much moreso than bad-movie-making Elvis, everybody could pretty much concur that they were the best thing going.

And as baby boomers have aged, armed with plenty of musical evidence, they've carried that conviction forward, holding sway over a classic rock cultural agenda that, by now, has informed the tastes of multiple generations.

Which means that when round number anniversaries roll around and all-time best lists come out, Sgt. Pepper is always a safe bet to come out on top. Because, after all these years, it's nice to still have something to agree about.

Next time James Murphy comes to town, he might want to make a set list adjustment.

Oh, for most of the evening on Wednesday at the TLA – er, the Fillmore of the TLA - the leader of LCD Soundsystem was a hero.

And why not? The show was a freebie, promoted by MySpace. All you had to do to get tickets was send an email answering the trivia question “What does DFA (Murphy’s record label) stand for? (The answer: Death From Above, not to be confused with Canadian duo Death From Above 1979, with whom the DFA label was involved in a lawsuit. But that’s another story.)

And for a good hour or so, Murphy and his five-piece were pretty much on fire, banging out percussive, electro-funk that kept bodies in motion on the packed dance floor. (I had beer spilled on me twice. That’s a good sign, I guess.) The new LCD album, The Sound of Silver is an excellent, kinetic affair, but with a full band filling out the sound on stage, the music was itchier, more energetic, and made it extremely difficult to stand still. “Everybody keeps talking about it,” Murphy spoke/sang on “Yeah.” “But nobody’s getting it done.” Except for him.

For LCD’s second encore, though, Murphy made a fatal when-in-Philadelphia error. He sang a slow dance, a love song, a romance. It’s called “New York, I Love You.”

This was not a sentiment shared by audience members. The thin line between love and hate was crossed. Murphy, who grew up in Princeton, was trying to lay out a complicated relationship with the Big Apple. “New York, I love you, but you’re bringing me down …”

But on a night when the Phillies were felling the first place Mets at Shea, the critics in attendance were not interested in such subtleties. The boo birds rang out, and let Muphy know that wasn't going to fly in the 215: “New York Sucks!” It was fun while it lasted, but please, take it back to Brooklyn.

It's all about the journey, not the destination. Or in the case of the final episode of the Sopranos, the Journey.

As in "Don't Stop Believing," the Steve Perry sung '80s-rock exhortation which played as the nuclear mob family gathered for one final meal - "I got some onion rings, for the table" - before David Chase devilishly cut to unresolved black.

Like any mook addicted to my Sunday slice of mortadella and mayhem, I'm bummed. I grieve for Bobby Bacala. I look for solace in the poetry of William Butlet Yeets. And I'm more than a little miffled by the idea that this time, the Sopranos are gone for good.

Along with the baked ziti, I'll miss the music. From the O.C. to CSI to Gray's Anatomy, soundtracks have become an synergistically essential part of any TV series marketing project. Young (and old) bands do an end around restrictive radio playlists to get exposure, and the shows use Death Cab For Cutie, the Who and Rilo Kiley to zero in on the target demographics.

And as with most things, it's never been that simple with the Sopranos. Instead, it's all about the right song, in the right place, at the right time. Examples from this just past season, may it rest in peace, abound.

Like The Pretender's "The Adultress" and "Space Invaders" playing in Vegas when Tony cheats on Carm after killing Christopher by hold his considerable schnoz closed. Or the week before, when Los Lobos, "The Valley" provided the soundtrack to Christopher stumbling home wasted, trying to fix up his garden, after he flew off the handle and clipped his screen writing buddy J.T. Or Daddy Yankee's "Rompe" playing at the Latino day parade where Blanca blows A.J. off, and Howlin' Wolf's "Goin' Down Slow" underlines Tony's taking a beating at the roulette table.

The final episode had some great moments, such as A.J. having his mind blown by Bob Dylan's "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding") in his soon-to-be flaming SUV while with his eating disorder afflicted girlfriend Rhiannon, of whom Tony tastefully expresses his approval by saying "I wouldn't kick her out of bed for purgin' cookies." And the range of music was neatly demonstrated by the use of Vanilla Fudge's psychedelic cover of the Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On," in the opening sequence when Tony wakes up to a world of trouble, to the hipper-than-the-room (but completely appropriate) sound of the Noisette's Shingai Shoniwa singing "Scratch your name into the fabric of this world" when A.J. starts from scratch in the movie industry, cruising in his new BMW.

And for the final scene, "Don't Stop Believing" - a song that also played a key role in Dave Egger's book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - was a masterstroke. Partly because of what may have been terribly brutal irony - if that dude really was going for a gun, Michael Corleone style, in the men's room. And partly because of how gloriously cheesy and uplifting it sounded as Carmela ("Just a small town girl, livin' in a lonely world...") showed up with a gleam in her eye to take her place across from the boss of the family at the table.

But I also loved the leadup to the Journey: Tony walking into the diner to Little Feat's "All That You Dream," and then paging through the jukebox to program the soundtrack to what might have been his last meal. Sawyer's Brown's "Somewhere In The Night"? Heart's "Who Will You Run To?" Or maybe go old school Italian to express the existential situation he finds himself in with a double shot of Tony Bennett: "I Gotta Be Me," b/w "A Lonely Place."

Nah. The episode was called Made In America, after all, a play on the series' original working title Made in Jersey, so it needed to end on a note that said something essential about the country of which A.J. had earlier noted "is still the place people come to make it. It's a beautiful idea. And then what do they get? Bling and come-ons for s--- they don't need and can't afford."

So Tony couldn't punch up something tragic, or morose, that suggested his isolation in the universe, or the reality that even if he wasn't about to be plugged full of lead, the Feds were ready with a RICO case that would be tough to beat. It had to be something soaring, and hopeful, and ridiculously undeniable that conjured up quintessential American optimism to go with the onion rings. Because like Steve Perry sings (and Sopranos fans can only hope, as they find solace in their DVDs and pray that Chase and Gandolfini go back on their never-again word): "Oh the movie never ends, it's goes on and on and on ..."

The voters for the 2007 Short List prize proved their mettle by awarding the trophy to The Greatest, by Cat Power, a.k.a. Chan Marshall. A fine choice. The panelists who did the picking included Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody, the members of Franz Ferdinand, KT Tunstall, Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne and last year's winner, Sufjan Stevens. Finalists included Regina Spektor, Bonnie Prince Billy, Tom Waits, Joanna Newsom and Philly (and Baltimore's) own Spank Rock. A Greatest outtake, the country lament "Up and Gone" is up on iTunes.

The Valerie Project During last September's Fringe Festival, a group of musicians centered around the Philadelphia freak folk band Espers, including Greg Weeks and vocalist Fern Knight, performed a new score of music as live accompaniment to the 1970 Czech gothic fantasy sexual awakening horror flick Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. The movie is based on a 1935 novel by surrealist writer Vitezslav Nezval. (Say that three times fast.)

A cool idea. And after the ensemble took the show on the road to New York, savvy Englishman Jarvis Cocker (former leader of Pulp), picked the Project to open for him next week at London's Royal Festival Hall as part of the prestigious Meltdown Festival. Haven't yet seen it myself, but if it's good enough for JC, it's good enough for me. The Valerie Project makes one Philadelphia stop this year, at International House on Saturday night.

Voxtrot, "Trouble." Austin indie-buzz band led by Ramesh Srivastava, who writes hooky pop songs that rarely stumble over their self-consciousness. "Blood Red Blood," from the new album, Voxtrot, is particularly good. But here's looking at "Trouble," from last year's Your Biggest Fan EP. Voxtrot are the centerpiece of this Saturday's Making Time at Transit, with Dave P. and a host of other DJs.

When I was adding to the blather about whether Sgt. Pepper is or isn't the absolutely best thing ever, I mentioned that, given the choice among 1967 LPs, I'd put Aretha Franklin's I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You, among others, before Pepper. Beatlemaniacs given to grandiose claims about Sgt. Pepper's astounding "impact" consider that blasphemy. But consider for a minute the enormous impact in the real world among women, African Americans, and anyone in the need of a little long overdue R-E-S-P-E-C-T of I Never's lead track. And that's not to even mention "Drown In My Own Tears," "Baby, Baby, Baby," or "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man." But I'm not here to make the argument myself. Check out the tremendous multi-media package the Detroit Free Press did this week on the 40th Anniversary of "Respect."

Continuing the sacred cow tipping debate in this Sgt. Pepper month, the British newspaper The Guardian asked a host of musicians to name the most overrated album they'd gladly never hear again. Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand takes down Television's Marquee Moon, Scritti Politti's goes after this year's hallowed Arcade Fire disc, Neon Bible, Billy Childish joins the Pepper backlash and Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips has the cheek to criticize the sainted Kurt Cobain and Nirvana's Nevermind. Pink Floyd, the Strokes, and the Smiths also get strafed, and my favorite crime writer, British novelist Ian Rankin, takes aim at one of my favorite bands, the Velvet Underground. Hmmm. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

And speaking of the Guardian, and British writers, Martin Amis of London Fields and The Information (that's a novel, not a Beck album) fame, has an epic profile of Tony Blair in the UK paper. It's extremely long, but contains references to Bob Geldof and Kate Moss as well as the phrase "velvet looned Bee Gee." Oh, and somebody give Jon Corzine the Brit PM's number to tell him to buckle his seat belt.

Is Hillary Clinton incredibly uncool, or slightly cooler than you think? The choice of Celine Dion's super schmaltzy "You And I" as her campaign theme song seems intent on proving the former. In the YouTube pop politics sweepstakes, her fellow front runner gets Obama Girl ("I can hardly wait 'til 2008/Baby, you're the best candidate"), and Clinton counters with the Canadian queen of Vegas kitsch? Does it get any more staggeringly unhip than that? But the Sopranos spoof costarring Johnny Sac with which she made the annoucement, with the big lug sitting across from her expressing his fondness for onion rings and Smashmouth while Chelsea parallel parks, argues the latter.

There's something funny about Frank Caliendo. He's at the Borgata on Friday and Saturday, at the same
time Bob Dylan is playing across the hall.

M.I.A., "Boyz." It's good to have something to look forward to. M.I.A.'s Kala comes out Aug. 21.

I saw Bob Dylan play guitar at the Borgata on Friday. That wouldn't seem to be such an odd thing, but Dylan, in his mysterious way, hasn't handled a six string in these parts for quite some time. For the past several years on his Neverending Tour, he's hid out, stage left, leaning on a barely audible keyboard, spurring speculation that he had a bad back, or arthritis, or that he was just being perverse and playing piano because he was Bob Dylan and that's what he felt like doing.

I wasn't aware that, with no explanation, he had started playing guitar again on his European tour dates this spring. So I was quite taken aback to see the skinny old Bard with a feather in his broad brimmed white Renaldo and Clara hat (though without the whiteface makeup), and an electric guitar strapped around his neck.

He only kept it there for four tunes - "Cat's in the Well," "Don't Think Twice, It's Allright," "Watching the River Flow" and an "It's Alright Me, I'm Only Bleeding" that sounded much perkier than when A.J. heard it before his S.U.V. caught fire on the Sopranos a couple of weeks back.

After that, he took shelter behind the keyboard again, which was perfectly okay with me. It gave guitarist Denny Freeman and multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron (the guy from BR549) room to move. And whether he was looking forward to playing the nickel slots or is just under the influence of a better brand of painkillers, Dylan was particularly spry and engaged the rest of the night. He even smiled a couple of times, I think, during "Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again."

He never did grant the dude next to me's repeated request for "Romance in Durango." (Not surprising, because he's never played it, which, of course, the dude next to me knew.) But he tore me up with two songs: A beautiful and slowed down "Shelter From The Storm" that he sang as if he was actually emotionally invested in what the lyrics meant, and "Nettie Moore," from last year's Modern Times, which gently rattled and stomped as he sang about irrevocable heartbreak: "I loved you then and ever shall, but there's no one left here to tell/The world has gone black before my eyes."

Bill Henrickson, the polygamist played by Bill Paxton on HBO's Big Love, has nothing on Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the late, great Nigerian musician and political rhetoritician who once married 27 women in one ceremony. And as is not surprising for such a prolific guy, Fela, who recorded hundreds of albums before his death in 1997, left behind children to carry on his Afrobeat legacy. The best known is Femi Kuti, who plays the World Cafe Live on July 12. But younger son Seun is no slouch either, and has the added advantage of playing with his father's band, Egypt 80. He'll be at the WCL on Saturday. Here's a clip of him playing with Egypt 80 in Dakar last year.