The Clash's first album is at last being released in the States. If you can legitimately refer to it as their first album, that is. Despite the identical cover … ["The Clash"] is a very different album from the one released over here in the summer of '77 as punk took hold and the rebellion seemed real.

Their debut was, as far as I'm concerned, the punk album—a classic, even if it's more dated (because it was so relevant at the time) than other contemporaneous classics such as, say, [Bruce Springsteen's] "Born To Run". It emerged at a time when everyone (well, everyone with some wit) was trying to understand what punk was saying, and when some of us, already excited by the youth and the music, were fervently hoping that the rebellion would turn out to have direction and meaning beyond the mere replacement of wrinkled superstars...