The Giant Panther

A friend of mine comes over my place from time to time and likes to call it "Mantown." I laugh every time he says it. Why does he call it "Mantown?" Because everywhere you look there are framed rock posters. Led Zeppelin, Robert Johnson, Nirvana, The Who, Nine Inch Nails, Peter Gabriel, The Rolling Stones, U2, New Order, Dave Mason, The Clash, Bob Dylan, Gov't Mule, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, She Wants Revenge, AC/DC, Bruce Springsteen, The White Stripes, Radiohead, John Hiatt and a Chicago blues bar called "Blue Chicago" all have prominent wall space in my crib. It's only a 1500 square foot condo or I'd have more stuff up there. It's my own little personal Rock & Roll Hall of Fame I guess, but in the absence of anyone telling me what to do for the moment it just sorta happened. My friend's been married and divorced twice so the implication, even as he now cohabitates with yet a third female, is that if I was presently living with a woman this kind of thing would not stand. Maybe he's right, but at least they are all tastefully framed and not slapped up on the wall with thumbtacks right? That's gotta count for something don't it? I love horrible grammar sometimes, don't you?

One of the posters I had framed is an oversized picture of the cover of The Clash's London Calling. The poster is bigger than anything else I own and it's so big I couldn't fit it in my Volkswagen Passat when I went to pick it up. It was quite hilarious until then. I had to put it back in the store and dig up a friend's truck to move the thing the twenty miles (I had it done near work) from the framing store to my wall. Hanging the thing was a major bear as well. Putting one of those three pronged, three nail required thingamajigs in the beautiful brand new pristine wall (this was about three years ago now) was painful enough (but not nearly as painful as watching them cut a hole in my wall to brace my new flat screen on the cantilever arm...that was pretty wild for a new condo owner...they had to thread the wires through the wall so there was no getting around that one), but I ended up solo hanging the thing and that was pretty hairy. Although the worst, by far, hanging story is when I hung my oversized The Song Remains The Same Poster (it came with the release of the DVD a couple of years back if you mailed in for it) over my stairwell that leads up to the master bedroom. It's so high in the air you needed a ladder, which I promptly went out and bought. The thing was, the stairs were relatively steep with no carpet to brace the ladder on and the art of getting behind such a high space combined with the length of the poster had the ladder nearly perpendicular. Naturally I was soloing the task so there were some very precarious moments involved. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so stupid. It looks beautiful today, but I may never be able to get it down.

Where was I? Oh yeah, The Clash. Over my kitchen table hangs the biggest Clash poster I have ever seen. It's not that unusual or anything, but it's big. It creaks every now and then I'm always waiting for the worst. I bought a corner hutch about a year later so I had move the thing over four inches on the wall. Glad it's still there is all I can say. I'll sell the place before those old holes are exposed for all to see. London Calling was released way back in December of 1979 just in time for the stocking stuffing masses. I was just reading a Classic Rock Magazine reprint of an article that originally appeared in the NME (New Music Express) that same month. It was about a Mod DJ turned producer named Guy Stevens. Guy was a bit of a badass, but he was famous for producing bands like Free and Spooky Tooth while serving as the first house producer for Island Records. He claims to have invented Mott The Hoople (at least making sure that the name Mott The Hoople, taken from a book by Willard Manus, was used as the name of a band he was involved with at some level) and to have introduced Keith Reid to Procol Harum. He then allegedly failed to sign Procol Harum to Island and watched them sell over 90 million copies of "Whiter Shade of Pale" for someone else.

His legend also included making tapes of his fearsome record collection he mostly mail ordered from America for groups like The Who so they had something to cover inbetween originals. But his real Calling, pardon the obvious bad pun, was that he discovered The Clash by happenstance as he was visiting someone across the street from where they were rehearsing. He allegedly heard the Clash song "White Riot" and set off to reclaim his sagging career. Apparently the disappointment of being abandoned by Mott The Hoople after producing their first five Island records and losing out on untold millions via the Procol Harum fiasco set off the usual alcoholic haze...only this one lasted nearly seven years. When The Clash told CBS Records they were going to use Guy Stevens the label pushed back. They didn't like him. Good thing they buckled.

Guy Stevens produced the fabulous London Calling album and regained his place as the Phil Spector of the UK in the process. As a youngster of 19 in 1979 I was still getting used to being on my own and still had a record collection full of Supertramp, The Cars, Boston, Cheap Trick, The Beatles & The Stones, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Heart and Steve Miller (not that there's anything wrong with that); I just wasn't yet prepared for the onslaught that was The Clash. You're going to laugh, but you know when it really hit me that these guys might be pretty good (let alone the only band that really mattered)? It was about three in morning somewhere around 1980. I had just got off my shift as a line cook at TGI Fridays and about 12 of us headed back to someone's apartment in the Fenway here in Boston. Someone put on a copy of "Magnificent Seven" from The Clash's Sandinista! and the girls all started dancing. Funny how you come upon certain points in your life and attach them to bands and the memory sticks as a result. I know I had heard London Calling prior to this. My college roommate must have played "Brand New Cadillac" about eight gazillion times. I liked it fine, but I didn't yet love it. All of the sudden I was a Clash fan. "Julie's Been Working For The Drug Squad" mad for this "new" band called The Clash. I didn't get a Mohawk, but I can remember going to Strawberries when Combat Rock hit the streets. They were all but done by them, but I didn't know that. I was just getting started! I even bought Cut The Crap and thought "This is England" rocked!

OK, my post is way too long now. London Calling was voted the #8 record in the latest Rolling Stone Top 500 Records of all Time poll. It's fitting. It's a double album with nary a weak cut. Sandinista!, by comparison, is a triple album that could have been a great double album. None of us could afford it back it the day even though I think it sold for a respectable $11.99 (don't quote me!). It had fantastic songs on it, but there was a lot of filler for my money. No filler on London Calling. Everyone knows the title track and the unlisted smash hit "Train in Vain," but there are great songs mixed in there. My personal favorite is The Guns of Brixton, but Death or Glory is always right behind it. Most folks know "Lost in The Supermarket" and "Clampdown" because they were played ad nauseum on AOR radio, but songs like "Revolution Rock, Rudie Can't Fail, Spanish Bombs, Jimmy Jazz, Lover's Rock and The Card Cheat" are fantastic. It's a must own. But for me, the Paul Simonon penned track "The Guns of Brixton" just does it for me. It's fitting because it's Simonon that is the Clash member that is about to do serious harm to his instrument on the cover of London Calling.