London Calling

by David L. Ulin

London Calling was a grown-up record. The Clash explored their place in the world, and flexed their muscles in the process, challenging punk dogma and ruling circles at the same time. Rock believers have debated the impact and influence of cultural heroes who preach from the pulpit for generations, and clash fans and foes have had plenty to say. 30 years down the road, the band's music continues to fuel politically charged debate. London Calling, was the band's masterwork, and demands a place in Western culture that's occupied by Picasso's Guernica, Tony Kushner's Angels In America, and the films of Costa-Gravas. London Calling was a smart, tough album. Its grim, sometimes apocalyptic vision is no less relevant today than it was in 1980.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

David L. Ulin is book critic, and former book editor, of the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, Labyrinth, and The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, selected as a best book of 2004 by the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle.

He is also the editor of three anthologies: Another City: Writing from Los Angeles, Cape Cod Noir, and the Library of America's Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a 2002 California Book Award. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Black Clock, Columbia Journalism Review, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

Ulin teaches at USC, and in the low residency MFA in creative writing program at the University of California, Riverside’s Palm Desert Graduate Center. In 2010, he was awarded a Southern California Independent Booksellers Association/Glenn Goldman Book Award for his work on Los Angeles: Portrait of a City.