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Remember punk and new wave?
The movement didn't exactly bring about a revolution in pop and rock music. But it had a lasting effect, restoring much-needed energy and a sense of purpose to a music that long ago had become flaccid and dull.
And they offered ways for a young generation here and in Europe to express feelings of alienation from a society that generation had no hand in creating but which seemed to offer only the most impersonal of roles. The television view of "the good life," based only on surface values, is far removed from the real world and its changing societal systems.
The Sex Pistols in England and the Ramones in the U.S.A. found that acting outrageous while playing rock music could be a quick way to focus attention on their concerns, Overnight, hundreds of other rockers, including the Clash and Elvis Costello, made their statements heard. Few survived.
However, not only are some of those original rebel leaders still conducting regular raids on the conservative sanctity of pop music, they are continuing to chew at its foundations while demonstrating exciting new ways to make music.
Elvis Costello and the Clash, both based in England and both in the Top 30 charts with new albums, are proof that being popular and being revolutionary are not necessarily incompatible.
For example:
The scene is a disco, where "Ivan Meets G.I. Joe."
As the dance beat churns along, singer Joe Strummer runs down an incredible rap about a dance contest pitting Ivan (USSR) against Joe (U.S.).
It ends with Ivan and G.I. Joe destroying the disco, but the audience has grown bored and moved across the street to watch China do its dance.
As should be obvious by now, this is no disco, nor is it Blondie's Deborah Harry rapping about men from Mars eating cars, nor even Kurt's Blow breaking down.
This is rapping with a political purpose, dance hall as metaphor for the nuclear arms race. It's life during wartime, according to the Clash.
Ivan and G.I. Joe do their dance on the new Clash album, Sandinista!. It is one of the most ambitious and successful rock recordings in years.
Sprawling across three discs, the 36 songs and 2½ hours of revolutionary rock mix countless instruments, voices and settings in a way that reminds one of both the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street and the Beatles' White Album.
The album is offered at the low list price of $15 (you can find it for $11 in some Eastbay stores), cheaper than Bruce Springsteen's two-disc The River. The band wanted it even less expensive, but at least Epic Records went that far.
Sandinista! has so much going on simultaneously that it takes many listening sessions before one begins to fathom the real depth of the music. There is an abundance of anger at world political situations, a concern for human rights and a surprising amount of humor.
The album takes its title from the Nicaraguan grass-roots people's movement that led to the overthrow of the dictatorial Somoza family in 1979, and was successful mainly because (for a change) neither the U.S. nor other large powers intervened to bolster the unpopular ruler.
Strummer recently explained that the band chose the title because the 1979 Nicaragua civil war and its outcome represented what could happen when nations are left to handle their own destinies.
"The revolution and civil war had turned the country," Strummer says, "and yet America has not sent in troops like Russia would or America would in any other way, like Vietnam. You could see what would happen if the Imperial powers weren't putting their fingers in."
I wonder how Strummer is reacting to what is happening this week to Nicaragua's next door neighbor, El Salvador.
After producing the commercially successful London Calling album last year, the Clash has not slowed down to refine any of its musical innovations. The Clash has moved into new waters, a move that may not please old fans, but in the long run may have vast repercussions on the rest of the rock world.
Gospel, disco rapping, reggae, dub (using studio gimmicks such as echo to alter various parts of a song), punk, soul, jazz, it's all here in a fusion of current popular folk music horn around the world.
There are even a few non-originals, including Mose Allison's "Look Here" and Eddy Grant's "Police on My Back."
Everything is political, and that's just fine. It is also usually delivered on a human level, flashing scenes from people's daily life struggles around the world.
In "One More Time" the band sings: "You don't need no silicone to calculate poverty / Watch when Watts town burns again / The bus goes to Montgomery / Cos it's one more time in the ghetto."
The songs spew forth too quickly:
"Washington Bullets" relates the story of the Nicaraguan civil war. "Career Opportunities" uses a children's chorus to sing this remake from the first Clash album. "Rebel Waltz" uses a harpsichord and xylophone with baroque horn choir backing the vocals. This is punk?
"The Sound of Sinners" is a tongue-in-cheek gospel song about being too impure for heaven. Recurring themes pop up throughout the album, giving the music something of the continuity of an operatic work.
It's not just that Sandinista! is a great rock album (if rock is the right word for this music). The band has created more exciting music on four albums in just a few short years than most musicians produce in a lifetime. Rather than locking into a hit formula, the Clash continues to try to create music for a world's people.
Where the Clash crams the human race into each song, Elvis Costello achieves the same end by investigating the alienating and antiquated systems of interpersonal relationships, usually in a setting limited to just two people.
An exception was "Radio, Radio," Costello's strong stand against corporate and government control of music on radio.
Elvis, who once used his songs to attack those — mostly women and music business people — who had wronged him, is not so angry now. He is more concerned with exposing the personal politics that created those hurts.
His sixth album, Trust, crams 14 songs onto one disc, bristles with rock excitement, and offers a few new twists to the Costello character.
As with the Clash album, the Costello effort offers so much that is new and different that even after a dozen listens the songs continue to reveal new insights.
It's still a small combo effort, but Costello and his Attractions band come up with a wide variety of sounds, not all of them native to rock music.
Grand piano licks are added to the electric combo sound, extra musicians (especially Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze singing on "From a Whisper to a Scream") help out, and rock takes another giant step forward.
In "Shot with His Own Gun," Costello sings passionately, backed only by acoustic piano in art-song style.
Then there is "White Knuckles" on black-and-blue skin, the powerful "New Lace Sleeves," the danceable "Clubland." The album's best dance tune, "Strict Time," revives the Booker T. & the M.G.'s sound of "Temptation" from his previous album, except now the music is taken at cut-time with piano replacing the organ part.
And, as with the Clash, Elvis has added a good dose of humor, especially on the record sleeve photos, one of which shows him as a private eye type with hat pulled over his forehead, and another with Costello in front of his EC orchestra in a '20s dance ballroom setting.
The world as viewed by The Clash is: rock music is politics is life. What happens to an average family in El Salvador or Zimbabwe has as important an effect on the members of the English rock quartet as does what happens in Washington or Moscow.
Elvis Costello takes much the same tack, but on a personal level. What happens between two people differs only in scale from what happens between two nations — and just as important.
Not only are the Clash and Costello the most prolific musicians of this era they seem to have their fingers on the world pulse beat.
Recent album sales by both in past months indicate that the general public has tuned in to their message and likes it.
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