Being a teen in the early 1980s meant I was exposed to a wide variety of music. One of my favorite bands was The Clash. They were punk rockers out of Britain who were originally only heard in clubs and on alternative stations but managed to break through into the mainstream stations. They were another band that made some high-quality videos that received a lot of airplay on MTV. This allowed them to crossover into the top 40 stations, for better or worse depending on how you think of it. Personally, I never believed The Clash “sold out”.

The Clash were made up of Mick Jones, Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon, and Topper Headon. They weren’t afraid to get political in their music and advocated their leftist political views in their music as well as challenging authority. For this reason, they were embraced by the disenfranchised masses first in Britain and then later on in the United States.

The Essential Clash is a collection of videos by the band. Most of the images are of hard-driving live performances. It starts out with the trailer from The Clash on Broadway and then segues into a full-length video shot in and around New York City. It’s the summer of 1981 complete with a shot of the World Trade Center from under the Brooklyn Bridge. The backdrop of a canceled Clash concert (allegedly due to overcrowding) goes into a live video of London Calling. Radio Clash follows this with haunting scenes from New York and the world during this time. Images of the Guardian Angels on the subway and children in front of graffiti-covered buildings were the norm. I had forgotten just what New York was like back then, and these images were a vivid reminder.

What’s nice is that the band seems to be having a really good time. Joe Strummer is all grins throughout many of the staged pieces, including Complete Control and Bank Robber. The random images are a reminder of what videos were like in the early days of MTV. The live performances are powerful too showing just how hard-driving and almost angry the music was back then. One of my favorites here is Tommy Gun, if you can excuse the images of Strummer’s teeth.

My personal favorites were from the time I remember best and the first album by The Clash that I bought. Rock the Casbah was one of the videos from the early days of MTV (when they actually played videos). Think there was a message way back then with the band playing in front of an oil rig while two men, one of Arabic descent and one of Jewish descent, whoop it up? We didn’t get it then and 25 years later it seems we still don’t.

Should I Stay or Should I Go is something I still see on VH1 Classics, and I love telling my kids I was at the concert it was filmed at. The Clash opened for The Who at Shea Stadium and one night it poured, the night I was there and the night this was filmed. It’s a real testament to the popularity they achieved and the fact that a legendary band such as The Who chose them to open up this series of concerts.

The other material on the DVD isn’t as good. There’s a movie the band made together titled Hell W10. It’s a silent film in black and white complete with storyboards. It’s a gangster story and starts out really fun, but then drags on too long. There is also interviews and promotional clips, all worth watching if not terribly compelling.

The Essential Clash is good for fans who grew up in this time. Youg’uns today won’t really get a feel for the band and the times from this DVD. I enjoyed viewing it, but it’s not something I feel I have to have in my collection. It was very nice to reminisce, though.