Friday double download: Too Much Joy and the Clash

Too Much Joy revered the Clash and never made any bones about it.  (The “Too Much Joy Theme Song” calls the band “a great idea when we were smashed/turning anger into cash”, which even if it doesn’t say anything about Burton suits still should have earned them their own lawsuit from Strummer/Jones.)  Neither did they make any bones about wanting to be the Clash, but they were never going to.  They were never going to be even the Replacements, no matter how many lines about being pathetic fuck-ups they inserted into the songs.  (How ‘mats-level dysfunctional can you be when your singer graduated from Stanford and your drummer has a day job as a beat cop?)  Sad fact is the good ol’ boring U.S. of A. wouldn’t produce a band truly Clash-errific until Rancid.

I only diss the Joy freely because I hold them so dear.  There was a time when their Loser Rock said everything I felt about my life but couldn't put into words let alone music - "Poison Your Mind" from their 1996 got-kicked-off-our-label-how-cool-is-that ...finally is one of my faves in this regard - and I'm forever indebted for that.

Free download: Too Much Joy, Poison Your Mind (4:08)
Buy ...finally here.  Also available on eMusic.

None of the above has much to do with the question: why did the Clash hate “Remote Control” so much?  It was the cause of their first major battle with CBS (providing fodder for the later single “Complete Control”) and has been left off pretty much every post-mortem collection starting with On Broadway.  More of a mystery because as a song it’s not so bad, pretty good stuff in fact if you overlook that the intro and outro sound kinda like three-year-olds playing pattycake.  But wait: Wikipedia says: The band had already told Melody Maker magazine that their next single would be Janie Jones, and were irate that CBS had undermined them and made a decision to release Remote Control instead without the band's permission. To the band, the song became a symbol of everything they were fighting against. Which to my mind makes the ensuing disavowal seem a baby-and-bathwater deal.  From a historical perspective it looks pretty stupid but in 77 the reference points weren’t so clear.

Free download: The Clash, Remote Control (3:02) (link expires in 7 days)
Buy The Clash (U.S. version) here.