I was originally doing some light research about another Clash song ("Ghetto Defendant") for this blog, when I came across this performance of "Magnificent Seven". It, too, has been on my mind lately as I wrote a short screenplay a few months ago that used it in a scene. But this live version is so, um, alive that I decided to write about it instead -- especially because it nicely bookends the other song from 1981 I wrote about the other day.
"Magnificent Seven" was apparently the first rock/hip-hop song recorded and released, beating out "Rapture" by a few months. The lyrics were a stream of consciousness doing by Joe Strummer, and in that the song is pretty amazing by itself. The recorded version on Sandanista! is a great dancey-punk number, and I suppose the funky bass and beat were the first to hook me on it.
In this live version, recorded for the Tom Snyder Show in 1981, many more themes and influences play out. There's a heavy dub flavor with the guitars. The lyrics are delivered with more of a punk growl. It's less night club-oriented and more rock-club oriented. Above all, this is a rock band, and they could/should (have) give(n) lessons on TV performance.
But addressing the lyrical content: this song is about the post-modern urban rat race.
Ring! ring! its 7:00 a.m.!
Move yourself to go again
Cold water in the face
Brings you back to this awful place
Knuckle merchants and you bankers, too
Must get up an learn those rules
Weather man and the crazy chief
One says sun and one says sleet.
It's about consumerism, superficiality, and the silent toil of the masses. And then there's a little economics lesson about opportunity costs:
Wave bub-bub-bub-bye to the boss
Its our profit, its his loss
But anyway lunch bells ring
Take one hour and do your thaanng!
Cheese-boigah!
But ultimately, it is not rich versus poor. It attacks what lurks for all of us. After it describes the hollowness of the salary man, it preaches about the emptiness of the workingman:
So get back to work and sweat some more
The sun will sink and we'll get out the door
It's no good for man to work in cages
Hits the town, he drinks his wages
You're frettin', you're sweatin'
But did you notice you ain't gettin' anywhere?
There's also a video for the ensuing interview, but it's a little disappointing. They are all kinda nervous without guitars in their hands, and for the first two thirds they resort to Sex Pistols-style rhetoric.
2 comments:
Tom Snyder plus punk rock always equals fun. (You guys have surely seen the Public Image Limited interview.)
I am a huge Clash fan. However. This song--I don't know. It is one of the interesting oddities on that oddity of an album, Sandinista. i think this live version works better than the album version. like you say, he really punks it up, which is what he does best. And by the end of the verses, the song starts to cook. but i still kind of think it's a really terrible song by a great performer.
but it is hard to imagine the Clash without brilliant failures like The Magnificent Seven. they were what they were, and the world a better place for it.
Pretty rad all around.
Funny, I've been listening to the Clash since I was 14 or so (22 years? yikes) and have never seen any video footage. Sort of surprising to see them moving. This is a good performance. I've never got into Sandinista particularly but now I think I'll need to go back & find out what I've been missing...
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