12. The ClashSandinista!
Sandinista! on shuffle is a radio station. I remember when it came out, I was more of a Smash Hits reader than NME at the time. I don’t know if I really heard the whole thing, but we’d be around people’s houses, and you listened to it in dribs and drabs. Sure, it’s kind of flawed. You’re like, "What the fuck’s this?" But it wasn’t until the CD issue in the nineties where you could put it on shuffle. Even then, there are a few tracks that aren’t going to float everybody’s boat, but I just love the fact that they’re just flying out there, again not giving a shit, really, and just doing all this material. There are a lot of beautiful songs hidden in there. Make sure you set up the shuffle beforehand and then press play. You don’t know where it’s going to land, that’s the wonderful thing about this record.
There’s this dub stuff in there, but the thing that really turned around in my mind is a track called ‘Lose This Skin’ that’s sung by Tymon Dogg, I think he was part of Joe Strummer’s pre-punk squatting scene then he brought him back in and he’s playing the violin. It was the one I’d skip, but one day I liked it conceptually – it’s about wanting to lose this skin, to change completely. If you go back three years to the first Clash album, there’s maybe only one person on that who’s on this song because the drummer’s changed, it’s Topper [Headon] by this point. Paul [Simonon]’s not on that one. And it’s like they’ve transformed themselves, they’ve lost the skin. I appreciate the change.
I also like the fact that it pisses a lot of people off because it is refusing to be pigeonholed. The fact that they even gave up some of their royalties to have it as a triple album because of what the label thought, I think it’s great! Even ‘Career Opportunities’ sung by the kids. I mean, what could be more poignant? "The only job they offer you is to keep you out of the dock."
