The title of this disc has it exactly backwards: this album represents not the Clash-ification of dub, but rather the dubification of the Clash. Swiss neo-reggae stars Dub Spencer and Trance Hill take 12 classic Clash songs and reinterpret them as dubwise instrumental reggae; it's the kind of project that is liable to either succeed wildly or fall flat on its face. These guys have been doing stuff like this for a while now, and their taste and experience show. The most interesting problem for an album like this one lies in the fact that although the Clash experimented heavily with reggae throughout their career (covering Junior Murvin and Willi Williams while also writing apocalyptic reggae originals like "Guns of Brixton" and "Bankrobber"), most of their music had little or nothing to do with reggae. Dubbing up "Guns of Brixton" and "Police and Thieves" is easy, but what do you do with songs like "Lost in the Supermarket," "Train in Vain," and "London Calling"? The answer, apparently, is that you take them as raw material and have your way with them, and if you know what you're doing, you end up with something that demonstrates respect for the original versions but comes off sounding completely new. That's what happens here with "Lost in the Supermarket" (which emerges as nearly unrecognizable but deeply cool, with its spacy ambience and spaghetti western guitar) and "Train in Vain" (which, against all reason, swings mightily). There is exactly one misstep on this album: "Rock the Casbah"'s tensile energy is completely sapped in this band's languid, one-drop arrangement, and the resulting version comes across as enervated rather than renovated. But everything else is a solid pleasure.© Rick Anderson /TiVo

Somewhere in England had a troubled birth, for when Harrison originally submitted it for release in November 1980, Warner Bros. rejected it, claiming that four songs -- "Flying Hour," "Lay His Head," "Sat Singing," and "Tears of the World" (once available on the bootleg "Ohnothimagen") -- were not worthy of being issued. Harrison was forced to go back into the studio to cut four new tunes, delivering a bitterly barbed thrust at his record label in "Blood from a Clone" (which they did release) and a tune originally meant for Ringo Starr but rewritten as a remembrance after John Lennon's assassination ("All Those Years Ago"), as well as "Teardrops" and "That Which I Have Lost." As a result, the most compelling issue of this album is the contest of wills between the artist and the suits. Now how do the four deleted tunes stack up against the ones that replaced them? The four missing tunes are of generally even quality, even similar in sound, although "Tears of the World" is a strident attack against corporate and political masters that probably unnerved the executives the most. Actually, the six tunes that Warner Bros. spared should have been more likely candidates for the hook, including the curious covers of two Hoagy Carmichael songs, "Baltimore Oriole" and "Hong Kong Blues." Yet in general, the new ones are indeed superior and more varied, with more of a punch than the ones they replaced. The bouncy "All Those Years Ago" is a definite gain, being the most heartfelt song on the record as well as a de facto Beatles reunion (Starr plays drums and Paul and Linda McCartney overdubbed backing vocals), and it was justly rewarded with a number two showing on the singles charts. The official release is slightly preferable over the bootlegs of the original.© Richard S. Ginell /TiVo

This CD includes all ten of the demos on the Legendary Lost Recordings album, and adds three songs from somewhat later that feature ex-Pretty Things guitarist Gordon Edwards and some session players. It retains Pete Makowski's Legendary Lost Recordings liner notes, but adds additional notes by England's Glory drummer Jon Newey. This material marks Perrett as the most obsessed, and accurate, Lou Reed imitator ever captured on tape. No doubt the result of endless hours spent kneeling at Reed's 1972 Transformer album as it was spinning round the turntable, Perrett didn't miss a trick in emulating his hero of the moment. Tuneful power chords, sluggish keyboards, vulnerable-to-the-point-of-shaking love songs, and tossed-off, sing-speak vocals -- it's all here, such an uncanny imitation that it could easily fool unwary listeners into believing they've stumbled on a stash of early-'70s Reed outtakes. No, it's not original, but it is pretty good -- not as good as Berlin, but certainly better than some of Transformer, if not up to that album's best songs. Imagine Reed's 1972-1973 work without the orchestration or anonymous session musicians, and you get the picture. Perrett isn't as good a singer or as direct a lyricist as Reed. But looking past the obvious imitation, Reed fans could do worse than check this out, and Only Ones fans will find this a fascinating glimpse into Perrett's beginnings. The three new cuts are consistent with the quality of the ten previously circulated demos, and are perhaps a tad more polished in production; none of the songs were included in different versions on Legendary Lost Recordings.© Richie Unterberger /TiVo

Dwight Twilley's first album, Sincerely, opens with "I'm on Fire," a pop tune so unstoppable that it became a Top 20 single even though Twilley and his partner Phil Seymour didn't have an album to go with it when it hit radio in the spring of 1975. It would be close to a year before Sincerely finally emerged, after sessions at London's Trident Studio were scrapped in favor of material recorded in Twilley's hometown of Tulsa, OK. Commercially, the decision was nearly fatal to Twilley's career momentum, but it's hard to argue with what he and Seymour came up with; with the two handling nearly all the vocals and instruments themselves, they crafted a power pop masterpiece, one that merged their Anglophile leanings with the Southern roots of rock & roll better than any of their contemporaries (including Big Star, who never seemed as comfortable with Memphis soul as they were with Liverpool pop). While nothing on the album quite matches the genius of "I'm on Fire" (what does?), the rest of the album is a consistently impressive, nodding towards a number of rock & roll touchstones while sounding confidently original at all times; the Raspberries-on-downs glide of "Baby, Let's Cruise," the loping updated rockabilly of "T.V.," the funky groove of "Feeling in the Dark," the Searchers-esque jangle of "Three Persons," and the broken-hearted melancholy of "I'm Losing You" could each be the work of a different band, but the strength of Twilley's songwriting and Seymour's versatile vocal chops bring a welcome unity to these many shades of pop perfection. While Twilley and Seymour would both enjoy long careers with a certain degree of success, neither ever made an album quite as good as Sincerely -- though they came close.© Mark Deming /TiVo

The Cribs' self-titled debut album was a bracing blast of post-Britpop alternative rock that turned the young trio into the toast of the scene; The New Fellas is both more of the same and a little extra. It has all the noisy, almost manic energy of that record, but with the help of producer Edwyn Collins, they focus some of the excess and deliver an album that slices their contemporaries to tatters, both with the angularity of the guitars, the power of the rhythm section, and the biting nature of the lyrics. Both "Hey Scenesters!," "Martel," and "Mirror Kissers" are an amazingly unsparing trio of takedowns of the scene and the bands in it, played and sung with malevolent, gimlet-eyed glee. All three are also hooky enough to be hits, something that makes them just that much sweeter. Here, and on the rest of the album, Collins' no-frills production captures the band in all their energetic glory, the album coming across like a particularly heated live show minus any spilled beer or unruly shoving. Almost every song is lodged firmly in the red, with the brothers pushing their vocals to the limits while they hit the strings and skins like they were taking out some long overdue revenge. The title track and the spoken word-heavy "The Wrong Way to Be" and the jaunty Strokes-in-Blighty "Things Aren't Gonna Change" are fine examples of how the trio and Collins come up with a thrilling update of melodic punk, scathing indie rock, and good old rock & roll that sounds instantly familiar and impossible not to love. The band aren't a one trick pony though as on a handful of tracks they take it a little easier and focus more on melody instead of the punch. "We No Longer Can Cheat" sneaks merrily over to the funkier side of the tracks (near where Franz Ferdinand live,) "Haunted" forgoes electricity in full as it captures some nice campfire vibes, and "It Was Only Love" rambles along unsteadily like a classic Ronnie Lane song, but dressed in leather instead of scarves. These interludes are a fine balance to the powerful racket the rest of the album unleashes. It's a fine follow up to their impressive debut, and if it loses a little bit of the wandering weirdness that album provided, it makes up for it in hooks, sweat and energy. © Tim Sendra /TiVo