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When the word "punk" comes up, the first bands to come to mind are "The Clash" and the "Sex Pistols."
What makes these bands punk is not their lack of corporate sponsorship or the speed of their music.
What punk bands have in common is rebelliousness if "The Clash" are "punk." "London Calling" is one of the
few albums that really deserve to be in the revolutionary's collection.
Looking back, what Billy Joel said that, "everybody's talking about the new sound, funny, but it's still rock and roll to me" applies above all to "London Calling." The pace of songs is slow, regular rock-paced. There is no thrash here and the vocals do not diverge from the mainstream. If you cannot take this album, you probably cannot take any punk. Sony/Epic picked up this album, so there is no issue of corporate sponsorship lacking. At the most, we can say that punk threatened the corporate sponsors in the late 1970s and early 1980s and let it be known that rock bands could go around the big music corporations if needed. In the 1990s and 2000s, it's hard to understand that, but in 1979, 1980, 1981, it was very difficult to find hard guitar-oriented rock of any kind. There came to be a niche of big hair heavy metal with a very narrow focus. There are a couple traditional love/sex songs here like "Lover's Rock." However, they are vastly outnumbered by songs about social and political matters. The title song is about London burning down and nuclear war as a threat. It echoes other rebellious songs about riots burning down cities by the MC5 and others. "Spanish Bombs" is about the Civil War in Spain which pitted roughly progressive forces against all combined reactionaries supported by Hitler. It sings the praise of communists and anarchists at that time. "Revolution Rock" is also obvious and "Guns of Brixton" is about not giving up without a gun fight. More social commentary comes in "Lost in the Supermarket." It seems that someone is offering "Guaranteed Personality" for sale. With so many songs of political and social progress, this album is a critic's choice. It belongs in the top 25 of recent times.
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