I appreciate that Clash for what they are. The reggae angle was interesting. To me, though, the Damned (and even the Stranglers) veered away from punk in a different direction and really embraced styles and their own techniques that made their music age better and with less "the only band that matters" hype. The Damned spawned stuff like the Replacements. Bob Stinson admitted to wanting to lift a bunch of Captain Sensible riffs. And the Stranglers were stubbornly uninterested in doing anything that categorized them with the other bands of that era, which to me is attractive. This pretty much sums up why I love the Stranglers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gfIgA-PYyQ I'm glad that the Clash had the success they did. They deserved it. But as time marches on, I am far more likely to put on "Strawberries" or "Machine Gun Etiquette" than I am to put on "Combat Rock". And I wish Strummer was still around. He seemed like a genuinely warm and nice guy.
