Music: The Best Gang in Town

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The Clash offers visions of a rock-'n 'roll apocalypse

A word from a fan in Berkeley, Calif:

"I like the Clash because they're not disco. They're not fat, bald, aging hippies in hot tubs."

A reflection from the Clash singer Joe Strummer, backstage at Berkeley: "We shouldn't have played here. It's a university town. They're boring snobs."

Standoff. Stalemate.

It is a curious situation, not without a certain undercurrent of irony. The Clash, an English band of four tough-strutting musicians who together lay down the fiercest, most challenging sounds in contemporary rock, has just finished up an

American mini-blitz on behalf of their new album Give 'Em Enough Rope: ten days, seven cities, stretching from Berkeley to New York, stirring up waters that flow far too free and easy. "American audiences like music to keep you happy," observes Drummer Nicky ("Topper") Headon. "It's music for you to drive home by." "It's the most dreadful thing," Lead Guitarist Mick Jones declares scornfully. "The Aerosmiths, the Foghats, the Bostons—they've kind of signed themselves out."

All around London, the Clash sings straight to—and, in a sense, even speaks for—a generation of working-class kids not only cut off from the social mainstream but disaffected from the smug, cushy sounds of most contemporary pop. Stateside, the audience is different: students, trendy punks, artists and camp followers who cruise the punk periphery like tourists looking to score a season box for the apocalypse. No wonder that, after only the first American date, Joe Strummer was already sounding a little homesick.

In England, the lashing, defiant sound of the Clash has scored well on the charts. Their songs drive hard and mean business. Just the titles give a taste of the action: Last Gang in Town, Guns on the Roof, Drug-Stabbing Time. In the U.S., air play is scarce. Easy enough to figure that stations programmed for the lulling sounds of California rock or the dull throb of disco might not take to a Clash tune like Tommy Gun. There is even some civic concern about violence at the concerts, to which Strummer replies, "There's as much violence at our concerts as any bar" —or, he might have added, at your run-of-the-mill Aerosmith concert. Even with this uncertainty and resistance, the new album has sold upwards of 50,000 copies so far, indicating that there is still an audience for the kind of challenging, combustible music that has not been matched since the Stones or the Who.