I am sitting in my friend Andrew’s, or Ziggy as he was known to everyone at school, bedroom looking through his record collection and pulled out The Stooges Raw Power. “Let’s play this, I’ve not heard it” said a 14 year old me with an Aladdin Sane haircut to my chum the school aficionado of cool which also meant all things Bowie in 1974…...

Having reviewed each album over the last six weeks just reaffirms what a great band they were. Yes, they could have done things better, but that’s easier to say in hindsight. This journey reconnected me with the excitement of discovering new music and being part of what became a global youth movement in its infancy.

When Cut The Crap arrived I was totally ambivalent towards it, Jones leaving was an issue to me…..but I hadn’t enjoyed his album. The cover was a real turn-off and looked like a cover from a cheap punk compilation complete with obligatory Mohican punk on the cover. So I never did buy this album, first time I heard it was a few months after it came out…..

Still working in the record shop I was really looking forward to the next Clash album and here it is, Combat Rock with another great cover.

Sandinista! Arrived in our record shop in December 1980, here it was in its black n red cover, a great picture of the band, yet again a brilliant album cover. A much-awaited recording, this time a triple album!!! So after we had done our first thing in the morning tidy up and made a cup of tea we put the first disc on the turn table……hey ho let’s go…..as someone once said!

The end of 1979, seems like a musical life time between the first album and the release of their third. By now I am working in a record shop in Soho, which gives me my own vinyl Spotify. All five people who work at the shop get to choose what comes out of the speakers so we have a cosmopolitan selection of New Wave, Gay disco, MOR and punk.

So by November 78 we were all keyed up waiting for the new Clash offering. There was a lot of negativity in the air before it’s release mainly due to Blue Oyster Clut’s Sandy Pearlman being shipped in to do the production. Despite the fact that the band had been issuing a series of brilliant seven inches since the last offering. Come the day I walked into Beggars Banquet record shop in Fulham and Alistair the shop manager had a copy on the turn table, as Joe’s voice blasted round the shop I left with my very brightly coloured LP off home to absorb the content.

So the next week off I went to my local record shop and there waiting for me was a copy of The Clash’s debut long player. I was like a dog with two willies on the bus home devouring every detail on the cover. The great punk picture on the front, three angry men staring defiantly at you, daring you to buy their disc. On the back was a scene from the riots, police on the move an indicator to the defiance within. Home, straight into my room putting the platter on to my portable music centre

Over the next couple of weeks I am going to have a retrospective on the library of Clash LPs. As the second most influential band of 77 to arguably the most influential group from 1978 to 83 does their out put stand the test of time?