Really superb three-cd box-set career retrospective of The Clash. Can't think of a bad thing to say about it. The one slight negative is there isn't quite enough from "Sandinista!", but that's probably worth buying by itself.
What you DO get are a whopping booklet, practically the whole of the first album, about half of "London Calling", just about all the big single "hits", a few of the group's oddity releases and three unreleased tracks. (Which seemed very acceptable.) There's also about half of "Give 'Em Enough Rope" (including a live version of "English Civil War"), and a decent chunk of "Combat Rock". A couple of tracks are as edits, whilst "Straight To Hell" comes in an unedited form.
Do the maths! This box-set basically replaces the first album and/or any of the normal compilations. It would only be necessary, i think, to have "London Calling" and "Sandinista!" in addition to this. (Just possibly "Super Black Market Clash" as well, for the hardcore fans, but about half of that release is also featured.)
Excellent value-for-money, with a very thoughtful track selection. My congratulations to the compilers for having done such a good job.
