Some interesting news on the Clash website and I copy this from the Guardian for ease. I am not at all sure that this will be a worthwhile addition to the Clash output. Certainly the £120 pricetack for the box set will raise some eyebrows! Clash hits back is a waste of money I would suggest.
"The Clash are to release two new compilations in September – including a box set designed by bassist Paul Simonon to replicate an 80s boombox. Sound System will contain remasters of the band's first five albums, from The Clash to Combat Rock, plus three CDs of singles, rarities and demos, and a DVD containing previously unseen footage, plus reprints and a new edition of the band's Armagideon Time fanzine.
"The concept of the whole thing is: best box set ever," Clash guitarist Mick Jones – who oversaw the remastering – told the Guardian. "Remastering's a really amazing thing. That was the musical point of it all, because there's so much there that you wouldn't have heard before. It was like discovering stuff, because the advances in mastering are so immense since the last time [the Clash catalogue] was remastered in the 90s."
All the music has been remastered from the original tapes, Jones said. "We had to bake the tapes beforehand – the oxide on them is where the music is, so if you don't put them in the oven and bake them, that all falls off, because they're so old."
Bassist Simonon highlighted a guitar line on Safe European Home, from the band's second album Give 'Em Enough Rope, saying he'd never even heard it before. "It's probably some session musician, while I was asleep," Jones joked.
Sound System is accompanied by The Clash Hits Back, a 33-track, two-CD best-of sequenced to copy the set played by the band at the Brixton Fair Deal – now the Academy – on 19 July 1982, rounded out with big numbers that failed to make the set that night.
The Fair Deal was a special venue for the Clash, Simonon told the Guardian, because of the memories the venue held as the cinema he and Jones went to as children. "It's actually where I saw my first ever pop show," Simonon said. "We all turned up as 10-year-olds, and they said: 'Right, boys and girls, we've got a special surprise for you - we're not going to show you a film!' So everyone was: 'Booooo.' 'No. we've got a special surprise – we have Sandie Shaw!' And Sandie Shaw came on, and she was going on about not having any shoes. So we had an hour set from her, and that was my first pop concert."
The traditional wisdom is that this album was sandwiched between two classic punk / new wave albums in "The Clash" and "London Calling" and there is some merit in this point of view. However that has led to what I think is an absolute classic album to be More or less completely overlooked, certainly as far as most casual listeners are concerned and there appears little in the way of a re-visit in the way some of the other Clash material has been.
The album was released in November 1978 followed very quickly by the lead single Tommy Gun and within a year the Clash had peaked (?) releasing The Cost of Living ep and were about to unleash the magnificent London Calling lp.
The album was recorded after a particularly hair raising experience for the group in Jamaica and
tensions in the studio were obviously channeled out positively into the songs, and they emerge spitting fire and defiance, refusing to lie down.
This would be a 5 star album if the Classic-Clash triumvirate of 'White Man (in Hammersmith Palais)', 'Complete Control' and 'Clash City Rockers' had been originally included (some of the greatest music the UK has ever produced!) but that's being greedy. It stands up just fine without outsiders and is only slightly a lesser cousin to The Clash and London Calling. 'Safe European Home', 'Tommy Gun' 'Cheapskates' and the corny Mick Jones ballad 'Stay Free' all tick the classic Brit-Rock boxes.
