Review of Burning London: The Clash Tribute

Pulse
By Scott Schinder
May 1999

Various Artists
Burning London: The Clash Tribute
(Epic)

Tribute albums are a tricky propostition at best. But it's rare to run across one that misses the point as consistently as Burning London, which features contemporary acts every bit as limp as the mainstream fuddy-duddies the Clash were supposed to put out of business. Indeed, the contributions of the self-consciously punk-inspired acts--No Doubt, the Urge, Rancid, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, et al. -- are cluelessly lunkheaded and/or hopelessly literal. The most imaginative music here is made by the least likely candidates. Ice Cube and Mack 10's hip-hop reworking of "Should I Stay or Should I Go" turns that catchy throwaway into a bracing existential anthem, while the Indigo Girls' "Clampdown" righteously updates that song's political defiance, and Moby and Heather Nova's plaintive reading of "Straight to Hell" intensifies that tune's tragic subject matter. The only white make rockers who get it right are the Afghan Whigs, whose fucked-up take on "Lost in the Supermarket" does right by the original's paranoid pathos.

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