Ras da mon


Host: "Okay - ah, we're back again, of course you're listening to WBAI in New York, this program is Labbrish; my name is Habte Selassie and we're speaking with Babo - maybe Ras Babo..."
Caller: "Could I give a message?"
Host: "N-n-n - go ahead, man..."
Caller: "Yeah, I'd just like to say, let's have some music now, huh?"
Host: "Okay, okay, thank you"
Guest: "You're right..."
ScottLahti 2 minutes ago

That spoken interstitial preceding "Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)", Side Three, Track One from the six-side, 36-track Sandinista! (1980) by The Clash (my review, and also of London Calling from 1979), came to mind when on the first book-reviews page at the Guardian this morning I saw this:

Ros Barber, The Marlowe Papers

The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber

Andrew Motion: This unsettling mix of poetry and fictional biography is either commendably ambitious or pointlessly elaborate

Ras Babo, Ros Barber - hey, didn't Sandinista! itself, in all its triplicate sprawl*

*Joe Strummer, fall 1989, to a fan in the crowd who yelled "Play Sandinista!" at the show of his I and a friend attended at the 9:30 Club, Washington, DC : "You want me to play all thirty-six tracks?"

get tagged as both "commendably ambitious" and "pointlessly elaborate"?

And if you've already seen lightning strike with the gang on Pastrami Row courtesy Track One of Side Three, you might as well from the ensuing storm take refuge, however compromised by the squalor depicted, in the towering buildings of the beatific "Up In Heaven (Not Only Here)", also revved up like a deuce by a Swedish Clash cover band blinded by the light of the original bolt out of its original get-outta-here-Sven, shoo-Swede blues:

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