Hippies vs. Punks: The Clash's Combat Rock, Pt. 2, "Should I Stay or Should I Go"

It has been a while since Hippies vs. Punks has been a regular Friday feature of this page. I think what happened is that the coup in Ukraine took over my attention at the beginning of this year.

I had a certain routine that I would follow for a Hippies vs. Punks post. During the work week I would immerse myself in spotlighted recording(s) I felt somehow illuminated the "why" and the "how" of the eclipse of the Hippies by the Punks.

The hypothesis we're dealing with here is that the eclipse -- understanding the toppling of the Hippie by the Punk, coinciding as it does with the dawn of the neoliberal age -- will provide essential insight into our current exhausted and disintegrating cultural paradigm.

A sonic immersion is no easy feat. Listening to an album or possibly two or three albums by the same artist repeatedly over a five to six day stretch requires a triumph of the will. But to truly understand music I don't think there is any other way. Interesting effects begin to multiple. One of the things I realized is that almost always after listening repeatedly to an album, even if it is one previously considered poor, you come to appreciate it. This has been my experience, particularly, for instance, with Penelope Houston's solo debut, Birdboys (1988).

To go along with the sonic immersion, I would print out what I could find online about the particular album and artist, and I would study that on the train ride home at night.

All in all, the Hippies vs. Punks posts, meager as they are, required a significant time commitment, one that has obviously gone by the wayside.

Today we're going to return with a remembrance of the popular culture zenith of First Wave UK Punk band The Clash.

In May I remembered Combat Rock's "Straight To Hell." Today, through the prism of a moment shared with Ron Rivera, we will approach "Should I Stay or Should I Go."

The month was October. The year was 1982. Ron Rivera, who is now the head coach of the Carolina Panthers, who the Seattle Seahawks travel cross country to play on Sunday in a game that will decide the rest of their season, was seated across from me on a bench in Dwinelle Plaza one morning.

Ron Rivera was a junior, a big man on campus, the star linebacker on the Golden Bears football team. He wore a pink Oxford shirt (very au courant), cargo shorts and a pair of white K-Swiss sneakers (which were also au courant).

Rivera greeted well-wishers as they strolled by prior to 10 o'clock class. I looked on from a bench not more than five-feet away. I was invisible, a freshman, nameless, faceless. The sun was shining its orange California rays.

And what seared this episode in my memory all these years is the song that Rivera was singing to himself.

That fall of 1982 you could not go anywhere without hearing "Should I Stay or Should I Go." It played on transistor radios (people still carried those around in 1982; this was prior to the Sony Walkman), could be heard at cafes and bars and coming out of dormitory windows as well as on the lips of gridiron stars.

It is hard today to understand what that feels like. I was reading an article yesterday on the train home about nervousness in the record industry about Taylor Swift's new album, 1989. Swift is the only contemporary artist who has proven able to sell more than a million albums in the first week of release, which must be some important industry benchmark. Overall album sales are down 14% from last year. People are not buying CDs like they used to; apparently people are not even purchasing music by download like they used to. The trend is toward music streaming sites like Spotify. The nervousness about 1989 is that it is a straight pop album. Usually Swift pitches her songs to the reliable and industry-leading Country market.

Music is dying, or at least the delivery system for music. Music can never die even if the Salafis' wildest dreams were to come true and the caliphate stretched to all corners of the globe.

But as the media continues to atomize and newspapers and television and record labels shrink, there is also a corresponding shriveling of popular consciousness.

October 1982 when we were all singing along with Mick Jones and thinking at the same time, "If I go there will be trouble/And if I stay it will double" -- so immaculately true in all its plebeian, quotidianness -- is as close as the Punks, Ron Rivera and all the rest of us came to apotheosis.