Description: On their debut, The Clash famously claimed to be "bored with the USA, +? but The Clash wasn't a parochial record. Mick Jones' licks on songs such as "Hate and War+? were heavily influenced by classic American rock and roll, and the cover of Junior Murvin's reggae hit "Police and Thieves+? showed that the band's musical influences were already wide-ranging. Later albums such as Sandinista! and Combat Rock saw them experimenting with a huge range of musical genres, lyrical themes and visual aesthetics. The Clash Takes on the World explores the transnational aspects of The Clash's music, lyrics and politics, and it does so from a truly transnational perspective. It brings together literary scholars, historians, media theorists, musicologists, social activists and geographers from Europe and the US, and applies a range of critical approaches to The Clash's work in order to tackle a number of key questions: How should we interpret their negotiations with reggae music and culture? How did The Clash respond to the specific socio-political issues of their time, such as the economic recession, the Reagan-Thatcher era and burgeoning neoliberalism, and international conflicts in Nicaragua and the Falkland Islands? How did they reconcile their anti-capitalist stance with their own success and status as a global commodity? And how did their avowedly inclusive, multicultural stance, reflected in their musical diversity, square with the experience of watching the band in performance? The Clash Takes on the World is essential reading for scholars, students and general readers interested in a band whose popularity endures.
Brief description: Samuel Cohen is Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri, Columbia, USA. He is the author of After the End of History: American Fiction in the 1990s and co-editor of The Legacy of David Foster Wallace. He is also Series Editor of the New American Canon: The Iowa Series in Contemporary Literature and Culture, co-editor of JMMLA, and author of Fifty Essays: A Portable Anthology and Literature: The Human Experience.
Review Quotes: A world of "takes+? on The Clash awaits the reader of The Clash Takes on the World. Not satisfied with the the facile dismissal of The Clash's real political commitments that permeates so much of the criticism, these writers take seriously the band's engagement on the transnational stage, and do so from an impressive array of disciplinary positions. The best of the essays combine meticulous close analysis with ambitious theoretical bravado to produce a collection both admirably deep and dazzlingly wide. What's more, The Clash is always a band in these analyses, not merely odd jobbers propping up charismatic frontman Joe Strummer. The Clash Takes on the World remaps our understanding of "the only band that matters+? in productive, exciting, and often surprising ways. An American reader, at least, must put down the volume in a mood of real desperation: "Where are they now when we need them most?+?
Kevin Dettmar, W. M. Keck Professor of English, Pomona College, USA