Mike Monteiro On The First Time I Heard The Clash"

The first time I heard The Clash was the worst time I heard The Clash. Or, rather, it was the worst time to be introduced to The Clash. Unless, of course, it was the best time to be introduced to The Clash. I was a fifteen-year-old, still pretty fresh from an eight year stint in Catholic school, and trying to find my place in high school without much luck. I knew I wasn’t one of them, whoever them might be, so there was a lot of running away from things, but I had nothing to run towards. Which sounds like a pretty standard description of being fifteen.

The previous Christmas my parents had bought me a small TV to put in my room. A small little 13” black and white thing. This was right around the time that MTV was blowing up and kids were starting to beg their parents for cable so they could watch music videos. But we were still a few years away from that. So I was stuck with whatever stations floated through the air in Philadelphia. This meant watching a lot of Creature Feature on Channel 17 on Saturdays, Doctor Who on PBS, and the occasional jazzercise show under the blankets. This is an incredibly sad slate of shows for even a fifteen year old. Luckily, this was also the time that local stations were trying to duplicate MTV’s success by doing their own music video shows, usually hosted by some sad fourth-rate local cool dude.

So this one particular night, after a particularly shitty day at school, and after wincing through an argument between my parents at dinner, that’s what I’m watching. The local music video show. They’re going through the usual rotation; J. Geils’ CENTERFOLD, Men at Work’s WHO CAN IT BE NOW, A Flock of Seagulls’ I RAN, and I’m trying to decide whether I liked this stuff, or more honestly — whether liking this stuff would make other people like me. Then the host introduces a new song. And there’s a Middle Eastern looking dude climbing a hill? A bunch of skinny white dudes playing in front of an oil rig? An armadillo crossing a street? An Orthodox Jew driving a Cadillac? Cut back to the skinny dudes, and the lead singer has a mohawk and he’s singing angry. And I’m like, hold on… I know I like this!

The next day I took the bus downtown to Sam Goody and picked up a copy of Combat Rock for $7.98. The nice price. In time, I’d realize this was The Clash’s worst album (CUT THE CRAP is not a Clash album.) but for the next year or so it was in constant rotation, and it opened the door to a lot of good things, including SANDANISTA, which I’m listening to right now.

| Mike Monteiro is the Design Director of Mule Design Studio. He is also an author.