This Is Radio Clash

Album: The Essential Clash (1981)
Charted: 47
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  • Interrupting all programs

    This is radio clash from pirate satellite

    Orbiting your living room,
    Cashing in the bill of rights
    Cuban army surplus or refusing all third lights
    This is radio clash on pirate satellite

    This sound does not subscribe
    To the international plan
    In the psycho shadow of the white right hand
    Then that see ghettology as an urban Vietnam
    Giving deadly exhibitions of murder by napalm

    This is radio clash tearing up the seven veils
    This is radio clash please save us, not the whales
    This is radio clash underneath a mushroom cloud
    This is radio clash
    You don't need that funeral shroud

    Forces have been looting
    My humanity
    Curfews have been curbing
    The end of liberty

    Hands of law have sorted through
    My identity
    But now this sound is brave
    And wants to be free - anyway to be free

    This is Radio clash on pirate satellite
    This is not free Europe
    Not an armed force network
    This is Radio Clash using audio ammunition
    This is Radio Clash can we get that world to listen?
    This is Radio Clash using aural ammunition
    This is Radio Clash can we get that world to listen?
    This is Radio Clash on pirate satellite
    Orbiting your living room,
    Cashing in the bill of rights
    This is radio Clash on pirate satellite
    This is radio Clash everybody hold on tight

    A-riggy diggy dig dang dang

    Go back to urban 'nam Writer/s: JOE STRUMMER, MICK JONES, PAUL SIMONON, TOPPER HEADON
    Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
    Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 1

  • Anonymous Rebel Anti-fascist from The WorldYears ago, I picked up a book about a clandestine radio station that beamed from “the mountain tops” in El Salvador during that country’s civil war. In the book, they talk about the idea originating in Nicaragua, so I wonder how much Joe Strummer knew about this effort (they had just had their “Sandinista!” Album released the year before). I think it’s interesting that Joe Strummer seemed to be interested in Guerrillas fighting in Central America (hence the name “Sandinista”) and he writes a song about a Rebel Radio Station the same year this radio station launched. I wonder if this was truly the influence for Joe Strummer to write the song, once you learn about “Radio Venceremos” the lyrics to Radio Clash make a lot of sense (especially when you learn that the line “beaming from the mountain tops” was removed from the main single that was played on the radio).
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