Line #48 Music/Sandinista


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sandinista_198.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:''Sandinista!'']]
3
4	->''As the smoke of our hopes rose high from the field\
5	My eyes played tricks through the moon and the trees\
6	I slept as I dreamt, I saw the army rise\
7	A voice began to call, "Stand 'til you fall"\
8	The tune was an old rebel one''\
9
10	-->--'''"Rebel Waltz"'''
11
12	''Sandinista!'' is the fourth studio album by English PostPunk band Music/TheClash, released in 1980. A [[NewSoundAlbum huge departure from the group's original sound]], the record took the approach of ''Music/LondonCalling'' and escalated it tenfold, spanning a whopping three [=LPs=] and experimenting in a variety of styles and genres influenced by Black culture. In particular, the opening track, "The Magnificent Seven", served as the TropeMaker for RapRock alongside Music/{{Blondie\|Band}}'s "Rapture" that same year, blending the band's reggae-punk mix with the sound and style of the growing HipHop movement.
13
14	Having already engaged in some fierce LoopholeAbuse to get ''Music/LondonCalling'' released as a double album ''and'' at a sharp discount, the band asked their label, [[Creator/ColumbiaRecords CBS Records]], to sell their triple LP for the price of only one. Once again, the label protested, but ultimately made good on the Clash's wishes. However, they only did so after the band agreed to an equally dramatic reduction in royalties, forfeiting all money made from the first 200,000 copies sold and surrendering 50% of royalties for all later sales of the album. This situation would ultimately motivate the more commercially-inclined direction of the band's next album, ''Combat Rock''.
15
16	''Sandinista!'' was supported by three singles: "The Call Up", "Hitsville U.K.", and "The Magnificent Seven". Another track from the sessions, "Bankrobber", would see release as a non-album single during the promotional cycle for ''Sandinista!''; among the people attending the recording of this song were Ian Brown and Pete Garner, who would go on to become two of the five founding members of Music/TheStoneRoses.
17
18	----
19	!! Tracklist:
20	!!!LP One
21	[[AC:Side One]]
22	# "The Magnificent Seven" (5:28)
23	# "Hitsville U.K." (4:20)
24	# "Junco Partner" (4:53)
25	# "Ivan Meets G.I. Joe" (3:05)
26	# "The Leader" (1:41)
27	# "Something About England" (3:42)
28
29	[[AC:Side Two]]
30	# "Rebel Waltz" (3:25)
31	# "Look Here" (2:44)
32	# "The Crooked Beat" (5:29)
33	# "Somebody Got Murdered" (3:34)
34	# "One More Time" (3:32)
35	# "One More Dub" (3:34)
36
37	!!!LP Two
38	[[AC:Side Three]]
39	# "Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)" (4:51)
40	# "Up In Heaven (Not Only Here)" (4:31)
41	# "Corner Soul" (2:43)
42	# "Let's Go Crazy" (4:25)
43	# "If Music Could Talk" (4:36)
44	# "The Sound Of Sinners" (4:00)
45
46	[[AC:Side Four]]
47	# "Police On My Back" (3:15)
48	# "Midnight Log" (2:11)
49	# "The Equaliser" (5:47)
50	# "The Call Up" (5:25)
51	# "Washington Bullets" (3:51)
52	# "Broadway" (5:45)
53
54	!!!LP Three
55	[[AC:Side Five]]
56	# "Lose This Skin" (5:07)
57	# "Charlie Don't Surf" (4:55)
58	# "Mensforth Hill" (3:42)
59	# "Junkie Slip" (2:48)
60	# "Kingston Advice" (2:36)
61	# "The Street Parade" (3:26)
62
63	[[AC:Side Six]]
64	# "Version City" (4:23)
65	# "Living In Fame" (4:36)
66	# "Silicone On Sapphire" (4:32)
67	# "Version Pardner" (5:22)
68	# "Career Opportunities" (2:30)
69	# "Shepherds Delight" (3:25)
70
71	[-Note: Most CD releases are across two discs; CD one contains sides 1-3, while CD two contains sides 4-6. A 2004 Japanese mini-LP CD reissue and the 2013 deluxe edition, meanwhile, package the album as a three-disc set, with each CD corresponding to one of the three records in the original vinyl release.-]
72
73	----
74	!!Principal Members:
75
76	* Topper Headon - drums, backing and lead vocals
77	* Mick Jones - guitar, lead vocals, piano, keyboard, sound effects
78	* Paul Simonon - bass, percussion, backing and lead vocals
79	* Joe Strummer - lead vocals, guitar, piano
80
81	----
82	!! Something About Troping:
83
84	* AccentUponTheWrongSyllable: "Washington Bullets"
85	-->When they had a revolution in [[UsefulNotes/{{Nicaragua}} Nic-a-RAG-you-uh]].
86	* AmericaTakesOverTheWorld: "Washington Bullets" criticises America's imperialism and involvement in the Cuban Revolution (1959), the UsefulNotes/BayOfPigsInvasion (1961), and the coup of UsefulNotes/AugustoPinochet in UsefulNotes/{{Chile}} (1973). Yet near the end it also criticises Communist China for its treatment of pacifist Buddhist monks in Tibet and the Soviet Union for the 1979 war in Afghanistan. "Charlie Don't Surf" has the same message told from the perspective of a Vietcong soldier.
87	* BystanderSyndrome: "Somebody Got Murdered", about a murder nobody but ApatheticCitizens pays attention to.
88	* CherubicChoir: "Career Opportunities" and the version of "The Guns Of Brixton" at the end of "Broadway"
89	* UsefulNotes/ColdWar: "Ivan Meets G.I. Joe" has the USSR and US involved in a disco dance competition.
90	* CoverVersion: "Junco Partner" (a blues song by James Waynes), "Look Here" (originally by Mose Allison), "Police On My Back" (written by Eddy Grant and first recorded by his early band The Equals).
91	* DeliberatelyMonochrome: The album cover is in black-and-white.
92	* {{Dogfaces}}: The liner notes are formatted like an issue of the fictitious newspaper "The Armegideon Times". All the pictures in this paper are of dog-faced anthro characters, rather than humans.
93	* EpicInstrumentalOpener: The guitar/keyboard minuet that opens "Rebel Waltz"
94	* FaceOnTheCover: The band, seen from a distance.
95	* GenreRoulette and GenreMashup:
96	** "The Magnificent Seven" is a rap song, one of the first attempts by a rock group to do one, along with Music/{{Blondie\|Band}}'s "Rapture".
97	** "Washington Bullets" is {{Reggae}}.
98	** "Living In Fame'" "Silicone On Sapphire" and "Version Pardner" are dub.
99	** "Ivan Meets G.I. Joe" is a {{Disco}} song.
100	** "The Sound Of Sinners" is uptempo gospel.
101	* GodIsLoveSongs: "The Sound Of Sinners".
102	--> ''After all this time''
103	--> ''To believe in Jesus''
104	--> ''After all these drugs''
105	--> ''I thought I was Him''
106	--> ''After all my lying and crying''
107	--> ''And the suffering''
108	--> ''I ain't good enough''
109	--> ''I ain't clean enough''
110	--> ''To be Him, no, no''
111	* {{Instrumental}}: "Mensforth Hill" and "Shepherds Delight".
112	* LetsDuet: "Hitsville U.K."
113	* LightningCanDoAnything: "Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)".
114	* MinisculeRocking: 'The Leader' is 1:41 minutes long.
115	* MusicIsPolitics: Down to the album title!
116	* MyCountryTisOfTheeThatISting: "Career Opportunities" criticises the political and economic situation in England, especially the lack of employment. "Something About England" criticises racism and the English class system that despite two world wars and industrial revolution hasn't changed much for the lower classes.
117	* NotSoDifferentRemark: After spending most of "Washington Bullets" denouncing US intervention in Latin America, the final verse takes swipes at the UsefulNotes/SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan and China's occupation of UsefulNotes/{{Tibet}}, making the point that Communist countries can also be guilty of imperialism. Then it finishes off by noting that the UK also has unclean hands, from importing arms to other countries.
118	* OneWordTitle: "Sandinista!"
119	* PoliceBrutality: "Police On My Back".
120	--> ''Well I'm running police on my back''
121	--> ''I've been hiding police on my back''
122	--> ''There was a shooting police on my back''
123	--> ''And the victim well he wont come back''
124	** Also, "Let's Go Crazy" deals with relations between the police and black communities in the UK.
125	-->''The lawful force are here of course''
126	-->''For special offenders for the special court''
127	-->''But the young men know when the sun has set''
128	-->''Darkness comes to settle the debt''
129	-->''Owed by a year of S.U.S. and suspect''
130	-->''Indiscriminate use of the power of arrest''
131	-->''They're waiting for the sun to set''
132	* ProtestSong: Most tracks.
133	* PunBasedTitle: "Hitsville U.K.", a pun on Creator/{{Motown}}'s nickname "Hitsville U.S.A."
134	** "Washington Bullets" is often assumed to be a play on the name of the DC-based [[UsefulNotes/{{Basketball}} NBA]] team, who later changed their name to the Washington Wizards, but Joe Strummer claimed he never heard of the team.
135	* RapRock: Together with Music/{{Blondie\|Band}}'s "Rapture" that same year, "The Magnificent Seven" was the TropeMaker.
136	* ReCut: The US promotional sampler ''[[https://www.discogs.com/master/1221586-The-Clash-Sandinista-Now Sandinista Now!]]'' truncates the triple-LP down to a single disc and rearranges the track order to accommodate, among other things moving "The Magnificent Seven" from track one to track eight.
137	* RepurposedPopSong: The song "Career Opportunities" had appeared earlier on The Clash's debut album from 1977, but in a different arrangement.
138	* RippedFromTheHeadlines: The album title was inspired by the then very recent (1979) coup by the Sandinista guerrilla movement in UsefulNotes/{{Nicaragua}}. Many other songs criticize the government's policies involving warfare.
139	* ShoutOut:
140	** The title "Sandinista" refers to the Sandinistas, the socialist guerrillas who overthrew the authoritarian US-backed dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in UsefulNotes/{{Nicaragua}} in 1979. Their catalogue number 'F S L N 1' refers to the abbreviation of the party's Spanish name: "Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional".
141	** "The Magnificent Seven" refers to [[Film/TheMagnificentSeven1960 the western of the same name]]. It also places historical figures like Creator/KarlMarx, Friedrich Engels, Martin Luther King, UsefulNotes/MahatmaGandhi, UsefulNotes/RichardNixon and Creator/{{Socrates}} in modern America, before asking in a sarcastic voice "whether Creator/{{Plato}} the Greek or Rin Tin Tin is more famous to the masses?"
142	** "Hitsville U.K." is a love-letter to the then-new independent label music scene, and it name checks a couple of the big players: Rough Trade, Creator/{{Factory\|Records}}, Small Wonder and Fast Product.
143	** "If Music Could Talk" name-drops Joe Ely, Creator/ErrolFlynn, Music/BoDiddley, Music/BuddyHolly, [[Music/TheDoors Jim Morrison]] and Music/ElvisPresley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"
144	** "Ivan Meets G.I. Joe" refers to "Franchise/GIJoe".
145	** The title of "Charlie Don't Surf" is a reference to a famous quote from the anti war movie ''Film/ApocalypseNow''. The line "Everybody wants to rule the world" would later be used by Music/TearsForFears as the title of one of their hit songs. When Strummer once saw Roland Orzabal from Tears For Fears in a restaurant he effectively told him: "You owe me a fiver", and Orzabal did pay him!
146	** "Washington Bullets" name-checks [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Víctor_Jara Víctor Jara]].
147	* SpecialGuest: Mick Gallagher and Norman Watt-Roy from Music/IanDuryAndTheBlockheads played on the album (apparently, they were promised co-writing credit on "The Magnificent Seven" but never actually got it). Reggae singer Mikey Dread did some of the dub versions and toasting on the reggae songs. "Police On My Back" was written by Eddy Grant (later known for "Electric Avenue") and performed by The Equals. Ellen Foley, best known for singing with Music/MeatLoaf on "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" and Mick Jones' partner at the time, also sings along. The Voidoids guitarist Ivan Julian, Eddie and the Hot Rods member Lew Lewis and musical collaborator Tymon Dogg are also present. Gallagher's children, Luke, Ben and Maria also have a guest spot. Creator/TimCurry does the church announcements at the end of "The Sound Of Sinners". Even drummer Topper's dog can be heard during "Somebody Got Murdered".
148	* StepUpToTheMicrophone: Topper Headon sings lead vocals on "Ivan Meets G.I. Joe". Paul Simonon sings lead vocals on "The Crooked Beat". Joe Strummer's frequent collaborator Tymon Dogg sings lead on "Lose This Skin" (which he also wrote).
149	* TitleDrop: In "Washington Bullets".
150	--> ''Que?''\
151	''Sandinista!''
152	* WarIsHell: "The Call Up", "Washington Bullets", "Charlie Don't Surf", "Something About England",... all criticize war and especially involvement of US and UK involvement in foreign countries.

Context Music / Sandinista