More of The Clash

• Sandinista! debuts on the site with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on all SIX sides of these early UK import pressings
• Sides one, two and four were sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
• We shot out a number of other imports and this one had the midrange presence, bass, and dynamics that were missing from most other copies we played
• If you want to hear this music explode out of the speakers and come to life the way The Clash wanted you to hear it, these records will do the trick
• Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
• “…there are a number of classic Clash songs that rank among the band’s best, including ‘Police on My Back,’ ‘The Call Up,’ ‘Somebody Got Murdered,’ ‘Charlie Don’t Surf,’ ‘Hitsville U.K.,’ and ‘Lightning Strikes (Not Once but Twice)’…” – AllMusic

These vintage CBS import pressings have the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, these are the records for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Sandinista! Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes even as late as 1980
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing these records is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find pressing that sound as good as these three do.

Pop and Rock Shootouts

What are the sonic qualities by which a Pop or Rock record — any Pop or Rock record — should be judged?

Pretty much the ones we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings: energy, vocal presence, frequency extension (on both ends), transparency, spaciousness, harmonic textures (freedom from smear is key), rhythmic drive, tonal correctness, fullness, richness, three-dimensionality, and on and on down the list.

When we can get a number of these qualities to come together on the side we’re playing, we provisionally give it a ballpark Hot Stamper grade, a grade that is often revised during the shootout as we hear what the other copies are doing, both good and bad.

Once we’ve been through all the side ones, we play the best of the best against each other and arrive at a winner for that side. Other copies from earlier in the shootout will frequently have their grades raised or lowered based on how they sounded compared to the eventual shootout winner. If we’re not sure about any pressing, perhaps because we played it early on in the shootout before we had learned what to listen for, we take the time to play it again.

Repeat the process for side two and the shootout is officially over. All that’s left is to see how the sides of each pressing match up.

It may not be rocket science, but it’s a science of a kind, one with strict protocols that we’ve developed over the course of many years to insure that the results we arrive at are as accurate as we can make them.

The result of all our work speaks for itself, on this very record in fact. We guarantee you have never heard this music sound better than it does on our Hot Stamper pressing — or your money back.

What We’re Listening For On Sandinista!

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Side One

The Magnificent Seven
Hitsville U.K.
Junco Partner
Ivan Meets G.I. Joe
The Leader
Something About England
Rebel Waltz

Side Two

Look Here
The Crooked Beat
Somebody Got Murdered
One More Time
One More Dub
Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)

Side Three

Up In Heaven (Not Only Here)
Corner Soul
Lets Go Crazy
If Music Could Talk
The Sound Of Sinners
Police On My Back

Side Four

Midnight Log
The Equaliser
The Call Up
Washington Bullets
Broadway
Blowing In The Guns Of Brixton

Side Five

Lose This Skin
Charlie Don’t Surf
Mensforth Hill
Junkie Slip
Kingston Advice
The Street Parade

Side Six

Version City
Living In Fame
Silicone On Sapphire
Version Pardner
Career Opportunities
Shepherds Delight

About the Album

Sandinista! is the fourth studio album by the English band the Clash. It was released on 12 December 1980 as a triple album containing 36 tracks, with 6 songs on each side. Anticipating the “world music” trend of the 1980s, it features funk, reggae, jazz, gospel, rockabilly, folk, dub, rhythm and blues, calypso, disco, and rap. For the first time, the band’s traditional songwriting credits of Strummer and Jones were replaced by a generic credit to the Clash, and the band agreed to a decrease in album royalties in order to release the 3-LP at a low price.

The title refers to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and its catalogue number, ‘FSLN1’, refers to the abbreviation of the party’s Spanish name, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional.

Critical Reception

John Piccarella, in a review for Rolling Stone headlined “The Clash Drop the Big One,” argued that in effect, the band said “to hell with Clash style, there’s a world out there.” Some critics have argued that the album would have worked better as a less ambitious, smaller project, while Piccarella (in his Rolling Stone review) and others think of the album as a breakthrough that deserves comparison to the Beatles’ “White Album.” Robert Christgau wrote in The Village Voice, “If this is their worst—which it is, I think—they must be, er, the world’s greatest rock and roll band.”

The triple album was included in several “best of the year” critics’ polls in 1981. It was voted first place in The Village Voice’s 1981 Pazz & Jop critics’ poll. According to CMJ, Sandinista! was the second most-played album of 1981 on American college radio. Dave Marsh noted that it was a record whose topic was as many years ahead of its time as its sound. Alternative Press included Sandinista! on its 2000 list of the “10 Essential Political-Revolution Albums.” In 2018, Sandinista! was ranked at number 144 on Pitchfork’s list of the 200 best albums of the 1980s. In 2020, the album was ranked at number 323 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

-Wikipedia