Nothing could have helped get me through the unreal mass depression—the mourning ten years too late for the death of the Sixties and the Beatles that grew out of the grief over John Lennon's murder—than the release of the Clash's Sandinista! a few days later. Its three records—thirty-six tracks to get lost in—ask and answer some of the right questions about violence and nonviolence, history and the future, crime and the law, revolution and fascism, worldwide angst and hope.

If the Clash, by insisting on their own heroism, continue their willingness to gamble it all away and still keep winning, they may yet inspire a viable rock-culture politics. Last year's standard-setting—and standard-bearing—London Calling was a bold show of strength that doubled the stakes in bravado…. Sandinista! is an everywhere-you-turn guerrilla raid of vision and virtuosity…. [The] new LP is a sprawling, scattered...