You jack the music section’s custom-made umbrella, and we reward you with a Payback Time T-shirt and two CDs off the Straight’s Top 50. Here’s this week’s winning whine.

Dear Payback Time: Mike Usinger—Why do you never miss a chance to slag Sandinista!? Oddly, in the same issue of the Straight (specifically, your Clash boxed-set review), you seem to applaud the Clash’s later-career, forward-thinking work, but then in the Sublime boxed-set review you term Strummer and company’s wonderfully vibrant, beautifully flawed three-disc masterpiece “for the worst”, dubwise. Get yer head out of the ’80s, man! Was being the first white rappers, and introducing hotly politicized dub, toasting, and DJ-style to rock music, not enough for one band to accomplish in one record? I know it has some maudlin tracks, and a few complete throwaways, but that was always the Clash’s style: aim higher and do more than anyone else. Go back and listen to it again, buddy, without your pat pet convictions.

> Greg Robison

Mike Usinger replies: Dearest Greg—First of all, I’d like to apologize for taking a month to respond to your Payback letter. It somehow got lost in the 342 penis-enlargement spams (“ha ha buddy—why your ramrod so small?”) currently clogging my in box. I’m going to be honest here—I’ve never been fully convinced that the Clash is The Only Band That Matters. At the risk of committing heresy, I’ll argue that Side 4 of London Calling blows just as bad as Big Audio Dynamite II. Yes, I dance in my living room every time “Rock the Casbah” shuffles up on the iPod but wonder what in the hell the band was smoking when it came up with “Red Angel Dragnet”. Joe Strummer himself admitted he had a cannabis problem during the recording of the unfocused mess that is Sandinista!. I’ll happily give you this: “Police on My Back” and “The Call Up” are two of the finest songs the Clash ever produced. As for the rest of the record, Blondie did white-people rap first (and better) with “Rapture”, and I’d sooner eat a stack of Public Image Ltd. albums than suffer through the meandering dub wankery that mars most of Sandinista!. But really, what’s my opinion worth? After all, I actually like “This Is England”, and if that’s not fucking sacrilege, I don’t know what is.

For taking the time to abuse us, Greg Robison takes home Tenacious D’s The Pick of Destiny and Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury. You can voice your impotent rage by snail mail or by sending an e-mail to payback@straight.com .