The Big Green House

Friday, October 24, 2003

 

Nothing stands the pressure of the Clash City Rockers!

I purchased the new Joe Strummer album the other day. It�s very good, by the way; much more rock&roll and less world music than the previous one. I defy anyone who ever liked Joe in any capacity to listen to his cover of �Before I Grow Too Old� and not puddle up. And if any white man could pull off a cover of �Redemption Song� (a doubtful proposition at best), Joe would be it. The originals are pretty rockin�, as well.

But that�s not where I�m going today. When I mentioned to Science Girl that I had picked up the CD, she said that she�d awakened that very morning with �Clash City Rockers� in her head. If you�re unfamiliar with the tune, it appeared on the US version of the first Clash album. When the dimwits at Epic decided to re-release band�s catalog they just re-released the two albums separately, rather than combining all the songs originally released on the US and UK versions of The Clash, which would have made much more sense. They make more money this way, I guess.

She very much wanted to hear the actual song itself, but her tape of it is buried somewhere in one of the moving boxes at The Big Green House. Being the devoted fianc�e that I am, I decided to pick up a copy of the CD for her on my way over to Science Manor that day. Tower Records is right on the way, so I figured I�d just pop in there, grab it, and be on my merry way.

Way back in the early Mesozoic, when I worked at Tower�s main office/warehouse complex, they were very proud of the fact that they carried just about everything. My, how times have changed. They last few times I�ve attempted to buy something at Tower, I�ve either been driven off by the price or the miniscule amount of stock they keep on hand these days. This time was no different. They had one copy of London Calling, and a few copies of Essential Clash - which does have the song in question on it, but we already have most of the other albums on CD already, so buying a Greatest Hits two-disc set for one song would have been kinda silly. And I didn�t have time to go anywhere else to look for it that day, of course, so I had to show up empty handed

But I wasn�t gonna just let this thing drop. I loves my SG & want at all time to make her happy. I went out today in search of the US version of The Clash. It�s a fairly basic album, nothing obscure by any means. So why did it take me an hour and a half and visits to four different stores to track it down?

I ended up having to go to the mall, fer crissakes! How pathetic is that? I mean, yeah, it�s great that everybody else had the UK version if they had it at all. (I�m not gonna get into the relative merits of the two versions; they both have their good points.) But if you�re gonna have one, you gotta have the other. I just wish Epic would pull their collective head out of their collective ass and issue a compilation of the two. I�m sure they could get the whole enchilada on one disc. I�d even be willing to pay a little extra for it, as I�m sure a lot of other music geeks my age would, too.

While I was in the mall, I noticed a store called something like Hollister Surf Shop; I think it�s the real-world equivalent of this. It was the same kinda young men�s clothes, sub-Abercrombie & Fitch. Remember when those guys used to sell sporting goods? Me neither.

Anyway, what set me off was their feeble attempt to tie the town of Hollister in with surfing. Last time I checked, Hollister was an inland farming community. I haven�t been there in something like fifteen years or so, but I don�t recall a lot of surfing going on. It�s gonna take the long-rumored Big Earthquake to pull that off.

No, it�s just another ignorant attempt by some coke-addled executive back East to sell some half-witted fantasy to quarter-witted mall-rat boys. Listen up, rest of the world: most of the inhabitants of California DO NOT SURF. I myself lived there for 33 years and never touched a surfboard. Not even once.

And while we�re at it, there is much more to the state than LA. In a perfect world, the state would be divided in two, somewhere around Monterey. Then we could saw off the southern portion and let it float out to sea.

bmarkey 10/24/2003 06:44:00 PM