The Clash: Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg

I'm not usually much for bootlegs or unreleased/demo kinda stuff, but I'm really digging this. It's a demo version of Combat Rock that was floating around when it was intended to be a more extended 2 LP set with a much more laid back vibe and lots of heavy dub overtones. There's about 4-5 songs not on the official Combat Rock (all but one of which has been released somewhere by now in some version or another) and pretty much everything is remixed. The real slow stuff off side two of Combat Rock isn't quite so sparse here with extra sound effects and instrumentation filling out some of them and the more rockin' side one tracks are often slowed down here. As a whole it sounds much more like what you would expect to have followed Sandinista than what was eventually released.

I read Mick Jones mixed this version before songs were dropped and everything was remixed for a tighter more traditional rock feel for most songs. The sound quality on the version floating around is pretty good for a boot, but it was originally taken from cassette so not exactly hi-fi. I'd really love to see this whole mix given a proper release. The reason I'm not usually one for bootlegs and demos is that usually they seem to me lesser material and would have done well to stay in the vault. But, in this case, I personally think this version surpasses the released version by a good margin.