The same adjectives keep cropping up when talking of Sandinista!, The Clash’s 1980 project: “sprawling”, “selfindulgent”, “ambitious”. Nothing’s changed here, where 36 acts offer their versions of the six-LP set that polarised opinion way back when.
The label itself on which this is released refers, of course, to a lyric in Hitsville UK, and the profits from the album (if there are any) are to be split between Amnesty International, the Joe Strummer Memorial Forest (yes, really), and the performers on this oddity. Inevitably, the results are patchy, just like the original, but with contributors ranging from Camper Van Beethoven (Kingston Advice), Willie Nile (Police On My Back) to Katrina (…& The Waves) Leskanich (Hitsville UK), there’s much fun – and no doubt arguments – to be had for anyone familiar with the album proper.
Given that the general feeling is often that Sandinista! would have been a very good double album or an excellent single one, it’s entirely fitting that this LP of loads more versions than anyone could ever need has been released, a pleasing irony for a daft project from start to finish.
