There are fewer things more ponderously laborious than a self-styled music nerd haughtily asserting the time he or she’d spent lauding a band before they were popular, but here I go doing it again.
I was fortunate enough to be clued into The Clash from very early on, thanks to an overly cited crate of records (which I only recently re-invoked here) from my then-London-based father in the summer of 1977 (arguably the only really decent thing he ever did for us, to my mind). When my older sister and I pulled out The Clash’s debut LP (British edition, no less) from that crate and stared at the stark depiction of Messrs. Simonon, Strummer and Jones – all drainpipe trousers, white socks, spikey hair and armbands -- standing like a trio of futuristic muggers in a narrow London alley – I snapped it right up. It sounds ridiculous now, but that first spin of “Janie Jones” was a genuine revelation. I mean, next to the music of the day (the big-charting records of that summer were by The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and a live album by fuckin’ Barry Manilow), it sounded positively feral, thinly rehearsed, rudimentary, hastily produced and, well, wrong. I remember my mother walking into the living room, exclaiming “What’s wrong with them?”
I loved it.
I adored that first LP, with “Complete Control,” “White Riot” and “I’m So Bored with the USA” being my go-to tracks. By the time their magnum opus, the undeniable London Calling, arrived two years later (I didn’t actually pick up their second record, Give’em Enough Rope until way after the fact, I feel remiss to concede), I almost started to write them off as over. I remember playing the “hidden track” (technically a last-minute addition too late to be amended on the cover art) “Train in Vain,” one afternoon, and my mother – the same woman who’d inferred the band’s collective cognitive impairment two short years earlier – came dancing into my room, giddily expressing, “now THIS I like!!!” That might as well have been the kiss of death.
Then I heard “Police on My Back.”
Not even a proper single off 1980’s Sandinista!, the sprawling triple-LP that spawned it, “Police on My Back” packed everything I loved about the band into one, single, incendiary song. It was all there … relentlessly clanging guitars, an urgent riff, a vague renunciation of the local constabulary, a rousing chorus … it was all fucking perfect. Of course, I’d later learn that much as with comparable Clash anthems like “I Fought the Law,” “Police & Thieves,” and “Armagiddeon Time,” they didn’t even write it. The track was originally penned as a pop single by The Equals, who counted future “Electric Avenue” singer, Eddie Grant, in its ranks.
But in the Clash’s hands, “Police on My Back” is positively set on fire. It’s probably considered heresy to suggest as much, but not only is “Police on My Back” my favorite song by The Clash, it’s also a song I’d cite as a quintessential Punk Rock song. Not everyone will agree, but whatever … start your own blog.
Upon the advent of the era of ringtones, I raged against them (you can read this bit of curmudgeonly idiocy here), but when I got my first smartphone, I gave in and, sure enough, made “Police on My Back” my ringtone. Where in that earlier post, I worried that incessant repetition of that ringtone might unwittingly forge a negative association with the song, whenever I hear “Police on My Back” now, I immediately assume my laundry’s done (my ringtone also acts as the alarm sound on my iPhone’s timer). Honestly speaking, “Police on My Back” has been my ringtone for so long that I don’t even know if I still know how to change it.
This all brings me to the video below, which initially came up in a random YouTube search for Other Music, the since-vanished music shop on East 4th Street. This clip features comedian Fred Armisen doing a cover of “Police on My Back” within the confines of the shop back in, good lord, 2011.
Now, yes, Fred Armisen can be both funny and alternately cloying, but I was impressed by this. Like his contemporary Jimmy Fallon, Armisen is always quick to assert his fandom for music, although I’d suggest he does so with considerably more taste and authority than Fallon, who is ultimately just a fawning fanboy. Prior to his career in comedy, Armisen was indeed a musician, playing drums in the Chicago band, Trenchmouth. Armisen was a rock guy first and a funny guy later.
Using loops in a comparable manner of cats like Reggie Watts and Marc Rebillet, here Armisen builds “Police on My Back” up from its isolated ingredients to more or less faithfully replicate the full song, although he does kinda fail with the vocals.
Check it out…
But, seriously, accept no substitute….
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