To commemorate International Clash Day on February 7, a global celebration of the impact of The Clash on culture and music, the non-profit arts and production company Shared Medium has released a compilation of the band’s music on Hearts & Minds & Crooked Beats.
Available on vinyl and as a digital download, the album was curated by Shared Medium and mastered by Ted Jensen (Eagles, Green Day, Alice in Chains), and features a collection of nine classic songs by The Clash covered by The Dandy Warhols, Seán Barna, Warren Dunes, The Gotobeds, Mirah, Labasheeda, The Rust & The Fury, Smokey Brights, and Big League. Montreal band TEKE::TEKE also shares their psychedelic rendition of The Clash’s 1980 single “Bankrobber” as a digital bonus track.
“The Clash has been an everpresent, omnipresent force in all of our lives, throughout our lives,” said Kim West of the Seattle rock band Smokey Brights, who delivered a heartland-brewed cover of The Clash’s 1979 London Calling track “Train in Vain” on the album. “I joke that it was played over the hospital PA when we were born.”
Julia Massey, vocalist of Warren Dunes, who covers The Clash’s anthemic “Rock the Casbah,” which peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982, added, “They were the masters of playfulness, alongside a message. And they did it in such a thoughtful and captivating way that you can’t help but be inspired by it.”
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The punk ethos of “anyone can create” a three-minute song with three or four chords is what struck Australian rocker Travis Velthoven and his band Big League. “The idea that … ‘I can give that go.’ That is probably the biggest influence on my writing that The Clash has had.”
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For Seán Barna, The Clash’s music and humanistic messages mirror his outspokenness as a queer artist. “Every thread, every strand of DNA in my body is emanated by music,” said Barna, “and ‘Hitsville UK,’ I think, captures that spirit, and what music can do, what it can mean, and how it can bring us together.”
Released on The Clash’s fourth album Sandinista! in 1980, the song was an homage to Hitsville USA, the original headquarters of Motown in Detroit, Michigan, and was sung by guitarist Mick Jones and then-girlfriend Ellen Foley—also known for her duet with Meat Loaf on “Paradise By the Dashboard Light.” The song was written by The Clash in reverence to the original Hitsville and the indie music scene that was developing in the UK during the late 1970s through the early ’80s.
“This whole compilation is to benefit refugees,” said West of Smokey Brights. “We are all going to be climate refugees if we don’t shape up and start taking care of each other and taking care of this planet that we desperately rely on. And if all are going to be refugees we better start giving a shit about each other, because all you have is people.”
West added, “The only constant is humans and the need to take care of each other.”
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Released on International Clash Day, proceeds from the sale of Hearts & Minds & Crooked Beats will also benefit the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a global organization dedicated to responding to crises due to conflict by providing shelter and clean water, health care, education, and more life-saving resources and assistance to those in need. The IRC has aided people in more than 26 U.S. cities and 40 countries and recently partnered with Shared Medium to raise funds for Palestinian civilians.
“And so now I’d like to say, people can change anything they want to—and that means everything in the world,” said Clash foreman Joe Strummer during one of his final interviews in 2002 with MTV News, months before his death in December of that year at the age of 50. “People are running about following their little tracks. I am one of them. But we’ve all got to stop just following our own little mouse trail.”
Strummer continued, “People can do anything. This is something that I’m beginning to learn.
People are out there doing bad things to each other. That’s because they’ve been dehumanized.
It’s time to take the humanity back into the center of the ring and follow that for a time. Greed, it
ain’t going anywhere. They should have that on a big billboard across Times Square. Without
people you’re nothing. That’s my spiel.”
‘Hearts and Minds & Crooked Beats’ Tracklist:
“Straight To Hell,” The Dandy Warhols
“I’m Not Down,” Mirah
“Guns of Brixton,” The Rust & The Fury
“Deny,” Labasheeda
“Train In Vain (Stand By Me),” Smokey Brights
“Hitsville U.K.,” Seán Barna
“I’m So Bored with the USA,” The GoToBeds
“Rock The Casbah,” Warren Dunes
“Lost In The Supermarket,” Big League
*”Bankrobber,” Teke::Teke (digital bonus track)
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
