Steve Sailer via MeanSpeed.com:
Ian Schneider’s MeanSpeed.com website lists the times of all 18 singles on the Clash’s compilation album Singles. Note that the Clash’s marketing decision making was always debateable, and a number of these tracks were curious choices to promote.
In general, the Clash weren’t a great singles band: they worked fast and released an immense amount of material (about 120 tracks in these six years).
Even what’s now their signature song “London Calling” struck me back in 1980 as needing one more hook. Still, the great double album named after the song was released two days after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, which made the band’s combination of Nuclear Freeze weenie prudent politics overlying Strummer’s innate romantic Kiplingesque militarism a potent combination in that anxious hour. It’s probably not a coincidence that just about the last song Strummer released in his lifetime was a long rendition of Daniel Dravot’s song, “The Minstrel Boy,” from The Man Who Would Be King, which played over the credits of Black Hawk Down.
