keepers 4
keeper avg .333
Maybe it doesn't seem like an album from a band labeled as 'the only band that matters' but still a few solid additions to the greatest hits. The goofily sarcastic monologue "Know Your Rights"**** includes blackly humorous plays on western society's inalienable rights, such as "You have the right to free Speech - as long as you're not Dumb enough to actually try it". The strong first side also includes the heavily syncopated "Car Jamming"****, big single "Rock The Casbah"***** and the somber but heartfelt Vietnam war critique "Straight To Hell". Another strange monologue "Red Angel Dragnet"**** heavily borrows lines from the film Taxi Driver, but includes some head-scratchers as "For the same reason no one ever pointed a telescope at the sun" so it's an interesting listen. In the middle of this political maelstrom, Mick Jones' annoying superhit "Should I Stay or Should I Go" sticks out like a sore thumb, but it's a good side. Second side on the other hand includes the robotic disco of "Overpowered By Funk", funk via Miami Sound Machine, passable "Atom Tan", and "Lost In the Supermarket"-like "Inoculated City", while stylistic experiments "Sean Flynn", "Ghetto Defendant", and "Death Is A Star" barely register as songs. Q Magazine described Combat Rock as 'their biggest seller, but the beginning of the end', and I can see why.
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