Sandinista! [Original recording remastered]

No matter what you think as a listener, the stylistic mélange has a definite purpose: to show the universality of fundamental human concerns about oppression, violence, poverty, and despair, and also the universality of music itself, as an expression of these concerns. As The Only Band That Matters, the Clash's main strength has always been their songwriting: indignant, sardonic, but always heartfelt in their concern for the downtrodden. Anthems such as "Magnificent Seven", "Up In Heaven", "Police on My Back", and "The Call Up" are equal to anything in the band's oeuvre, and still serve to remind us of the ideals that once made rock music seem relevant. And sure it's tempting to skip over the more off-the-wall selections (some of which foreshadow the coming of so-called "world music" and some of which are just plain annoying), but that's taking the easy way out, and at this point in their career, the Clash just wasn't ready to do that. Perhaps we shouldn't either.

But the simple fact is that most listeners today are less interested in the band's politics than in the music itself, and that's where the album's diversity can be problematic. How many of us can honestly say that we're strongly connected to all the various musical styles that the Clash attempt over the course of these disks? To this reviewer's ears, the rock and funk tracks still stand up very well, but what is to be made of the band's forays into dub, Irish folk music, calypso, the minuet, cocktail jazz, etc.? Whether you can hang with these tracks or not, it's hard not to admire the sheer audacity of it all, but that doesn't mean you'll want to listen to every song whenever you put on this CD. But despite the presence of material you might never want to hear again, the good stuff on this album is too great to ignore. I've found that an 80-minute CD is enough to hold all the real winners on this album, plus enough of the better oddities (not every experiment is a failure) to preserve the flavor of the complete work.

Now more than ever, we mustn't forget that there's a whole world of people suffering out there, and what diminishes them diminishes us, because we're all living in the same global village. This multifarious work of musical art is a powerful reminder of their plight. And ours.

the album is one for puzzle-lovers & is totally whacky, the first challenge is to sort the tracks to form some chronologic of what each is about, but this is fun! and once you get past that, you can appreciate each individually for what it is, & get the gist of the meaning, so, not a light album, it requires a lorra, lorra listenin' - but, hey, enjoy.......