This peer review discussion has been closed. |
Toolbox |
---|
This is the second punk album I bought, aged 15, in 1987. Its critically maligned, but not as bad as you'd think and with at least, to my mind, three of the best songs the band recorded (Dirty Punk, We Are The Clash, This is England). Its production was fraught with inter-band line up changes, intrigue and significant drama, and thus is a story worth telling. I would like to eventually take this to FAC, but would like pointers and advice at this stage. No need to pull punches :) Ceoil ( talk) 11:51, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
I've started looking it over, mostly keeping it minor so far—lots of tidying up references and little formatting things, plus some actual copyediting as I go. Here's a running log of some things that I thought should be commented on beyond the confines of an edit summary:
"Catastrophic event"is something Wikipedia house style and its NPOV couldn't say, but in this case it's true, and it would be irresponsible to avoid expressing just how bad this record's rep is. Ditto for
"one of the most disastrous ever released by a major artist and a complete failure artistically and commercially", and the use of a second line about the critical consensus helps reenforce that this was a widely shared perception at the time, and not just one writer's interpretation of events. Lastly,
"designed to sound hip and modern — '80s style!"is perfectly soaked with sarcasm and cuts to the heart of what was up with the sound faster and better than a dry Wikipedia rendition could provide. Each of those quotations seems apt, well-selected, well-considered within the structure of the lead and the unfolding of information; I wouldn't cut or reword any of them.
"The rehearsals were eventually abandoned ... [a paragraph break and a sentence or two pass] ... Not long into rehearsals, in late August or early September, Strummer fired Jones."New rehearsals, or the same? Maybe needs to be reordered, or have it spelled out that sessions were resumed/new sessions started later.
"The latter took the name Vince White after Simonon refused to play in a band with someone named 'Greg'".First off, this is an amazing and outrageously funny detail. Especially considering the man continues to go by Vince to this day. "Name me one cool guy called Greg"—c'mon Paul, you could have let him be the first, or at least let him try to be!
"that he was planning to tour"— can't put my finger on it precisely but something about this phrasing feels slightly off. I think "planned to tour" or "was making plans to tour" would be better. These are apparently small adjustments, but I think it has to do with the (un)seriousness of Jones's intentions here. This sentence would probably also benefit from the addition of a clear signal (within the bounds of reasonable NPOV/accuracy considerations) that Jones intended these plans as vindictive/spiteful act. Or at least, he intended his communication with Graham to be vindictive/spiteful, since it sounds like he was never truly serious about these plans but was only trying to fuck with his erstwhile bandmates. His plans for a tour never materialized right?
"We didn't think... [and believe] 'Anyone can write a punk song!' That was our mistake"— I reworded this to:
"We didn't think... [we believed] 'Anyone can write a punk song!' That was our mistake."I'm not sure what was cut/paraphrased from the quote so I had to go with what was there; and I'm sure it could be further improved/clarified from what I substituted. My concern was that the original wording could be read as "We didn't think and we didn't believe 'Anyone can write a punk song!' That was our mistake", which would seem contradictory and lose the meaning. I assumed the underlying meaning was essentially "We weren't thinking, and as a result unfortunately we believed 'Anyone can write a punk song!' That was our mistake."
"Rhodes enlisted engineer Micheal Fayne due to his prior experience with programmed drum machines"— but why did they want to work with drum machines? They hadn't before right? Worth spelling out. But maybe this is answered by
"Neither Strummer nor Rhodes had experience in producing records, and both sought radical ideas, including replacing live musicians with synthetic sounds"...
"Rhodes changed the line-up of the band."— This maybe downplays the unilateral nature of the decision. Also unclear (in conjunction with the sentences that follow): were they cut from the band more or less at the outset, or did they record for the album but were edited out/overdubbed with someone else?
"Pete Howard is similarly absent from the album, although an adept drummer."— Is there a clear tie between the two parts of these sentences? This jumped out at me because I'm not intimately familiar with the line-up history of the Clash but, certainly from the Clash records I've heard, Simonon is absolutely an adept bassist—yet he isn't similarly defended on this basis. So my initial reaction to this sentence was: why, when discussing the replacements on the album, are we turning to Howard's skills, but not Simonon's?
"Due to the terms of his recording contract, Strummer was unable to stop Rhodes."— Why? Do we know what it was it about the terms? The concept of "final cut" is familiar in the film context, was something like that going on here? I'm assuming the parties to the contract were the Clash and the label. Rhodes has a kind of unusual dual role here as manager and musical (ahem) "collaborator", and there's a thread through a lot of the article suggesting this dual role was a kind of conflict of interest. But it's not obvious what that dual role would have to do with the Clash's contract with their label. I would imagine that a label wouldn't ordinarily want to take sides between a manager and a band, given that it might usually be expected for those forces to be aligned in interest against the label, rather than in conflict with each other. So it's not obvious why the contract would give the upper hand to a manager/hijacking-collaborator in this context. (Forgive me, my perverse interest in musty contractual matters is likely a side effect of my lawyerly training.)
"Writer Gary Jucha maintained that the chanted choruses were a poor substitute for Mick Jones's backing vocals on earlier recordings, the Clash has used choruses to dramatic effect in recordings such as "The Magnificent Seven" and the "The Call Up", in their album Sandinista!.Somewhere in the underlined portion something happens that I can't quite untangle, can't figure out how/where to split/rewrite the sentence. It's the kind of error that is quite easily mendable once it's seen so I'm not too worried about it, I think I know what you were getting at but you would know best. — BLZ · talk 09:45, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
"while in 2017, Vulture ranked it at number 136 in its "All 139 the Clash Songs, Ranked From Worst to Best" survey."— true, but 139th on the list was "We Are the Clash", also from Cut the Crap. It might be better to single out "We Are the Clash" as the very worst, and/or to draw attention to the album's generally bad ranking since the bottom seven are all taken from Cut the Crap.
Here's a handful of articles from Rock's Backpages that mention Cut the Crap:
Just found something else: We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered, an in-depth (400-page!) book on "The Clash Mark II". The general thesis is that post-Jones, post-Headon Clash has been tremendously underrated, and that while Cut the Crap is not as bad as its rep, it was hijacked by Rhodes and fails to capture the qualities of the live band at this time. The Google Preview is reasonably good, but frustratingly omits page numbers. Amazon has a preview but only in Kindle format—so again, no page numbers. It's also available in its entirety with a subscription via Scribd; I have a Scribd subscription, so I can read and search the entire book, but again it's in a custom ebook format without proper page numbers. It looks like Cut the Crap comes up in the introduction (which can be seen in Google Books), plus in Chapters 9 & 10. — BLZ · talk 20:34, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
I checked the news database in WestLaw and found some additional newspaper reviews and articles, mostly American (one Canadian). There's a spectrum of usefulness here but I erred on the side of inclusion. Since these are offline without a subscription, I've copy-pasted the text of the articles then hidden them in the code under each bullet point. — BLZ · talk 23:42, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
Okay so I've walked through the article, copyediting as I go. It's certainly an interesting story, in the same way I suppose that an air crash investigation is interesting... I mean I even find their inspiration for the title to be trite, given "cut the crap" is a phrase that surely wasn't unique or original in Mad Max 2...
A couple of other things while I think of them...
Ian, these are all very helpful, correct, and am working through...slowly. The publishers thing is done, and a few others also. Will update soon. I also don't really hold the the Clash in my top, uh, 30, but this album is close to me; you could not buy many Punk albums in IRE in 1986, and also Joe's singing / commitment is just mind blowing, esp considering the relatively weak raw material. Anyway Txs. Ceoil ( talk) 09:40, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
More comments to follow soon. Moisejp ( talk) 00:39, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
I enjoyed reading this article. Moisejp ( talk) 04:28, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Yo! I'm working my way through the article again, making edits and I'll post comments here as they come up.
I just copyedited the reception section; please revert anything I screwed up. Generally the section looks clean and well-written, and I don't think you need much advice from WP:RECEPTION. However, like Ian I wonder if there are more sources out there. A search at www.rocksbackpages.com/Library finds a Jon Young article in Musician in 1986, and an NME interview with Joe Strummer from 26 July 1986; those might be worth looking at though I can't be sure as I don't have a subscription. I would think there are contemporary NME, Melody Maker, and Sounds reviews that would be useful; between them, if my memory is correct, those three were the only important general rock newspapers of the era. Is there a way to search those archives?
A couple of specific points from this section:
lead single "This Is England" received further negative reviews on its release-- up to this point no negative reviews have been mentioned; we've just said "disappointed", which I suppose implies poor reviews. But you follow it with
At the time, critics viewed the album in a generally negative light; how about reversing the order, to something like this: 'The album sold poorly compared to earlier Clash releases, reaching just no. 16 in the UK charts, and no. 88 in the US.[55] Contemporary critics viewed the album in a generally negative light, and lead single "This Is England" received further negative reviews on its release.'
Critic Dave Marsh later nominated the track as one of the top 1001 rock singles of all time.I assume this refers to "This Is England", but it's not really clear. Since Marsh's opinion is not contemporary, it might make sense to move this to the last paragraph anyway.
Other than those points I think it's in good shape; I would just want to see more sources -- particularly for the original release I think they must be out there somewhere. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 13:27, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
This peer review discussion has been closed. |
Toolbox |
---|
This is the second punk album I bought, aged 15, in 1987. Its critically maligned, but not as bad as you'd think and with at least, to my mind, three of the best songs the band recorded (Dirty Punk, We Are The Clash, This is England). Its production was fraught with inter-band line up changes, intrigue and significant drama, and thus is a story worth telling. I would like to eventually take this to FAC, but would like pointers and advice at this stage. No need to pull punches :) Ceoil ( talk) 11:51, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
I've started looking it over, mostly keeping it minor so far—lots of tidying up references and little formatting things, plus some actual copyediting as I go. Here's a running log of some things that I thought should be commented on beyond the confines of an edit summary:
"Catastrophic event"is something Wikipedia house style and its NPOV couldn't say, but in this case it's true, and it would be irresponsible to avoid expressing just how bad this record's rep is. Ditto for
"one of the most disastrous ever released by a major artist and a complete failure artistically and commercially", and the use of a second line about the critical consensus helps reenforce that this was a widely shared perception at the time, and not just one writer's interpretation of events. Lastly,
"designed to sound hip and modern — '80s style!"is perfectly soaked with sarcasm and cuts to the heart of what was up with the sound faster and better than a dry Wikipedia rendition could provide. Each of those quotations seems apt, well-selected, well-considered within the structure of the lead and the unfolding of information; I wouldn't cut or reword any of them.
"The rehearsals were eventually abandoned ... [a paragraph break and a sentence or two pass] ... Not long into rehearsals, in late August or early September, Strummer fired Jones."New rehearsals, or the same? Maybe needs to be reordered, or have it spelled out that sessions were resumed/new sessions started later.
"The latter took the name Vince White after Simonon refused to play in a band with someone named 'Greg'".First off, this is an amazing and outrageously funny detail. Especially considering the man continues to go by Vince to this day. "Name me one cool guy called Greg"—c'mon Paul, you could have let him be the first, or at least let him try to be!
"that he was planning to tour"— can't put my finger on it precisely but something about this phrasing feels slightly off. I think "planned to tour" or "was making plans to tour" would be better. These are apparently small adjustments, but I think it has to do with the (un)seriousness of Jones's intentions here. This sentence would probably also benefit from the addition of a clear signal (within the bounds of reasonable NPOV/accuracy considerations) that Jones intended these plans as vindictive/spiteful act. Or at least, he intended his communication with Graham to be vindictive/spiteful, since it sounds like he was never truly serious about these plans but was only trying to fuck with his erstwhile bandmates. His plans for a tour never materialized right?
"We didn't think... [and believe] 'Anyone can write a punk song!' That was our mistake"— I reworded this to:
"We didn't think... [we believed] 'Anyone can write a punk song!' That was our mistake."I'm not sure what was cut/paraphrased from the quote so I had to go with what was there; and I'm sure it could be further improved/clarified from what I substituted. My concern was that the original wording could be read as "We didn't think and we didn't believe 'Anyone can write a punk song!' That was our mistake", which would seem contradictory and lose the meaning. I assumed the underlying meaning was essentially "We weren't thinking, and as a result unfortunately we believed 'Anyone can write a punk song!' That was our mistake."
"Rhodes enlisted engineer Micheal Fayne due to his prior experience with programmed drum machines"— but why did they want to work with drum machines? They hadn't before right? Worth spelling out. But maybe this is answered by
"Neither Strummer nor Rhodes had experience in producing records, and both sought radical ideas, including replacing live musicians with synthetic sounds"...
"Rhodes changed the line-up of the band."— This maybe downplays the unilateral nature of the decision. Also unclear (in conjunction with the sentences that follow): were they cut from the band more or less at the outset, or did they record for the album but were edited out/overdubbed with someone else?
"Pete Howard is similarly absent from the album, although an adept drummer."— Is there a clear tie between the two parts of these sentences? This jumped out at me because I'm not intimately familiar with the line-up history of the Clash but, certainly from the Clash records I've heard, Simonon is absolutely an adept bassist—yet he isn't similarly defended on this basis. So my initial reaction to this sentence was: why, when discussing the replacements on the album, are we turning to Howard's skills, but not Simonon's?
"Due to the terms of his recording contract, Strummer was unable to stop Rhodes."— Why? Do we know what it was it about the terms? The concept of "final cut" is familiar in the film context, was something like that going on here? I'm assuming the parties to the contract were the Clash and the label. Rhodes has a kind of unusual dual role here as manager and musical (ahem) "collaborator", and there's a thread through a lot of the article suggesting this dual role was a kind of conflict of interest. But it's not obvious what that dual role would have to do with the Clash's contract with their label. I would imagine that a label wouldn't ordinarily want to take sides between a manager and a band, given that it might usually be expected for those forces to be aligned in interest against the label, rather than in conflict with each other. So it's not obvious why the contract would give the upper hand to a manager/hijacking-collaborator in this context. (Forgive me, my perverse interest in musty contractual matters is likely a side effect of my lawyerly training.)
"Writer Gary Jucha maintained that the chanted choruses were a poor substitute for Mick Jones's backing vocals on earlier recordings, the Clash has used choruses to dramatic effect in recordings such as "The Magnificent Seven" and the "The Call Up", in their album Sandinista!.Somewhere in the underlined portion something happens that I can't quite untangle, can't figure out how/where to split/rewrite the sentence. It's the kind of error that is quite easily mendable once it's seen so I'm not too worried about it, I think I know what you were getting at but you would know best. — BLZ · talk 09:45, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
"while in 2017, Vulture ranked it at number 136 in its "All 139 the Clash Songs, Ranked From Worst to Best" survey."— true, but 139th on the list was "We Are the Clash", also from Cut the Crap. It might be better to single out "We Are the Clash" as the very worst, and/or to draw attention to the album's generally bad ranking since the bottom seven are all taken from Cut the Crap.
Here's a handful of articles from Rock's Backpages that mention Cut the Crap:
Just found something else: We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered, an in-depth (400-page!) book on "The Clash Mark II". The general thesis is that post-Jones, post-Headon Clash has been tremendously underrated, and that while Cut the Crap is not as bad as its rep, it was hijacked by Rhodes and fails to capture the qualities of the live band at this time. The Google Preview is reasonably good, but frustratingly omits page numbers. Amazon has a preview but only in Kindle format—so again, no page numbers. It's also available in its entirety with a subscription via Scribd; I have a Scribd subscription, so I can read and search the entire book, but again it's in a custom ebook format without proper page numbers. It looks like Cut the Crap comes up in the introduction (which can be seen in Google Books), plus in Chapters 9 & 10. — BLZ · talk 20:34, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
I checked the news database in WestLaw and found some additional newspaper reviews and articles, mostly American (one Canadian). There's a spectrum of usefulness here but I erred on the side of inclusion. Since these are offline without a subscription, I've copy-pasted the text of the articles then hidden them in the code under each bullet point. — BLZ · talk 23:42, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
Okay so I've walked through the article, copyediting as I go. It's certainly an interesting story, in the same way I suppose that an air crash investigation is interesting... I mean I even find their inspiration for the title to be trite, given "cut the crap" is a phrase that surely wasn't unique or original in Mad Max 2...
A couple of other things while I think of them...
Ian, these are all very helpful, correct, and am working through...slowly. The publishers thing is done, and a few others also. Will update soon. I also don't really hold the the Clash in my top, uh, 30, but this album is close to me; you could not buy many Punk albums in IRE in 1986, and also Joe's singing / commitment is just mind blowing, esp considering the relatively weak raw material. Anyway Txs. Ceoil ( talk) 09:40, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
More comments to follow soon. Moisejp ( talk) 00:39, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
I enjoyed reading this article. Moisejp ( talk) 04:28, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Yo! I'm working my way through the article again, making edits and I'll post comments here as they come up.
I just copyedited the reception section; please revert anything I screwed up. Generally the section looks clean and well-written, and I don't think you need much advice from WP:RECEPTION. However, like Ian I wonder if there are more sources out there. A search at www.rocksbackpages.com/Library finds a Jon Young article in Musician in 1986, and an NME interview with Joe Strummer from 26 July 1986; those might be worth looking at though I can't be sure as I don't have a subscription. I would think there are contemporary NME, Melody Maker, and Sounds reviews that would be useful; between them, if my memory is correct, those three were the only important general rock newspapers of the era. Is there a way to search those archives?
A couple of specific points from this section:
lead single "This Is England" received further negative reviews on its release-- up to this point no negative reviews have been mentioned; we've just said "disappointed", which I suppose implies poor reviews. But you follow it with
At the time, critics viewed the album in a generally negative light; how about reversing the order, to something like this: 'The album sold poorly compared to earlier Clash releases, reaching just no. 16 in the UK charts, and no. 88 in the US.[55] Contemporary critics viewed the album in a generally negative light, and lead single "This Is England" received further negative reviews on its release.'
Critic Dave Marsh later nominated the track as one of the top 1001 rock singles of all time.I assume this refers to "This Is England", but it's not really clear. Since Marsh's opinion is not contemporary, it might make sense to move this to the last paragraph anyway.
Other than those points I think it's in good shape; I would just want to see more sources -- particularly for the original release I think they must be out there somewhere. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 13:27, 20 April 2019 (UTC)