2/5 last week, 32/60…1300/1000 thus far.

Army v. #23 Navy 3:00 PM in Phillie. Army are 11 point dogs and cover this spread.

Also, Satuday marks the 40th anniversary release of The Clash, London Calling. It’s one of my top 5s.

London Calling has since been considered by many critics to be one of the greatest rock albums of all time,[67] including AllMusic’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine, who said that it sounded more purposeful than “most albums, let alone double albums”.[21] In Christgau’s Record Guide: The ’80s (1990), Christgau called it the best double album since the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. (1972) and said it expanded upon, rather than compromised, the Clash’s driving guitar sound in a “warm, angry, and thoughtful, confident, melodic, and hard-rocking” showcase of their musical abilities.[60] According to the English music writer Dave Thompson, London Calling established the Clash as more than “a simple punk band” with a “potent” album of neurotic post-punk, despite its amalgam of disparate and occasionally disjointed musical influences.[68] Don McLeese from the Chicago Sun-Times regarded it as their best album and “punk’s finest hour”, as it found the band broadening their artistry without compromising their original vigor and immediacy.[59] PopMatters critic Sal Ciolfi called it a “big, loud, beautiful collection of hurt, anger, restless thought, and above all hope” that still sounds “relevant and vibrant”.[25] In a review of its 25th anniversary reissue, Uncut wrote that the songs and characters in the lyrics cross-referenced each other because of the album’s exceptional sequencing, adding that “The Vanilla Tapes” bonus disc enhanced what was already a “masterpiece”.[69]

According to Acclaimed Music, London Calling is the sixth most highly ranked record on critics’ lists of the all-time greatest albums.[70] In 1987, Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times named it the fourth-best album of the previous 10 years and said, while the Clash’s debut was a punk masterpiece, London Calling marked the genre’s “coming of age” as the band led the way into “fertile post-punk territory”.[71] In 1989, Rolling Stone ranked the 1980 American release as the best album of the 1980s.[72] In the 1994 All Time Top 1000 Albums, Colin Larkin named it the second-greatest punk album;[73] it was also voted number 37 in Larkin’s All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000).[74] In 1999, Q magazine named London Calling the fourth-greatest British album of all time,[75] and wrote that it is “the best Clash album and therefore among the very best albums ever recorded”.[63] The magazine later ranked it 20th on its list of the 100 Greatest Albums Ever.[76] It has also been ranked as the sixth-greatest album of the 1970s by NME,[77] and the second-best in a similar list by Pitchfork,[78] whose reviewer Amanda Petrusich said that it was the Clash’s “creative apex” as a “rock band” rather than as a punk band.[79] In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked it eighth on their list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,[4] maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list.[80] Entertainment Weekly’s Tom Sinclair declared it the “Best Album of All Time” in his headline for a 2004 article on the album.[81] In 2007, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a collection of recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance.[82] In 2009, the album was included in the BBC Radio 1 Masterpieces Series, denoting one of the most influential albums of all time.[83]