The Clash's Sandinista!

Good, but not great Sandanista! is a sprawling, epic album that has had its share of critics over the years. This book attempts to review the triple album. It does a reasonable job but is flawed in its excessive focus on the 'should it have been edited down to a single album?' question. As a result, it......more

Back in 1980, I was a rather un-precocious teen who defined himself—much like American youth over the last generations—by the music he listened to. No band was more important to me than the Clash, whose double album, released in the waning moments of the 70’s, has been deemed by many rock critics as......more

I first heard this album in 1983 as an impressionable 13-year-old with a more sophisticated older friend who knew "Combat Rock" was the first album I had ever bought. At that time, I had zero context for this sprawling, genre-spanning, triple-album given that I had zero exposure to most of the polit......more

One of the weaker - and certainly most slight - 33 1/3's I have read. Henley's thesis is sound: Sandinista! is good precisely because it is a stylistically wild triple album, and that it is optimistic about the 1980s because of the example set by the FSLN. Unfortunately, the book is slight and struc......more

I've been waiting for a book in this series to cover a Clash album for what seems like forever. The one on London Calling never materialized, so I was so happy when this one was published. Honestly, I could read a book on each album The Clash did (except Cut the Crap) and this one was a really fun t......more