(FORTUNE Magazine) – The Clash Live: From Here to Eternity (Epic/Sony)

I was lucky enough to see the Clash at the Hollywood Palladium when I was 15. And yet I was cursed: For the rest of my life, no other live band would ever measure up. It's way too easy to slip into gasbag geezerisms when you're talking about this legendary squadron of English punks--"In the old days, Sonny, you should've seen the Clash!"--but it's a plain fact of history that only a smattering of acts (Bruce Springsteen, James Brown, Nirvana) have ever come close to topping their clenched, feral, fuse-blowing, vein-popping, windpipe-ripping sense of urgency in front of a crowd.

The Clash performed like that bus in Speed, as if cooling down or slacking off--even for a second--would blast the whole operation to smithereens. For anyone who's detected a distinct lack of righteous passion in MTV's current batch of choreographed corporate pawns, listening to From Here to Eternity feels like coming across an extra Dead Sea Scroll stuck in the middle of this morning's Internet spam. It captures the Clash between

1978 and 1982, roaring through their best songs ("Complete Control," "What's My Name," "White Man in Hammersmith Palais," "The Guns of Brixton," "Know Your Rights," and "Career Opportunities") in the white-hot glare of their prime years. The only catch is that Eternity does not, in fact, last forever: Like the Clash's career, the album's too damn short.

--Jeff Gordinier