Release
In January 2000, the album, along with the rest of The Clash's catalogue, was remastered and re-released.
According to author Marcus Gray, the song "Red Angel Dragnet" was inspired by the January 1982 shooting death of Frank Melvin, a New York member of the Guardian Angels. The song contains extensive quotes from the 1976 movie Taxi Driver's main character Travis Bickle, delivered by Kosmo Vinyl. Bickle sports a mohawk in the later part of the film and that hairstyle was adopted by Joe Strummer during the album promotion.
The song, "Ghetto Defendant", features beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who performed the song on stage with the band during the New York shows on their tour in support of the album. At the end of the song he can be heard reciting the Heart Sutra, a popular Buddhist mantra. Original U.S. pressings of the album had the full length track "Inoculated City" lasting 2:43. This version contained an unauthorized audio sample from a U.S. television commercial for a toilet bowl cleaner called "2000 Flushes". After the maker of the product complained of copyright infringement the audio sample was removed reducing the track length to 2:11. Approximately 100,000 copies of the first version were pressed with custom designed record labels. The majority of copies sold had the edited track and were re-issued on the standard dark blue Epic Records label. The full length "Inoculated City" also appeared on the B-side of the US "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" single. Early US CD copies of the album had the edited track. When the album was released as a remastered CD in 2000 the full length track was restored, though no mention of this was included on the CD packaging.
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Famous quotes containing the word release:
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the
great recoil,
And the sea grows red with the blood of the dead and reaches for his spoil—
But not till the foe has gone below or turns his prow and runs,
Shall the voice of peace bring sweet release to the men behind the
guns!”
—John Jerome Rooney (1866–1934)