The Clash, “Rock the Casbah”

by Alexandra Molotkow

When I was 12 I auditioned for a part in a movie called Sugar, in which “troubled suburban teen Cliff hooks up with a hustler from the streets of Toronto’s gay ghetto,” based on short stories by Bruce LaBruce and ultimately starring Brendan Fehr. I was trying for the protagonist’s younger sister, Cookie, who, in the lines I read from (if memory serves), talks about her period, bags a dead squirrel, and throws it in the air, yelling, “Frisbee!”

I wore an oversized Our Lady Peace shirt and, I think, blue lipstick. I was nervous and flubbed my lines, but the kind, pitying producers gave me a callback, which I flubbed by sniffling loudly throughout the reading, a nervous tic I’ve never had before or since (also by not being any good). I remember sitting in the waiting room, studying my lines and the more theatrical “Cookie” across from me, who had brought along a rambunctious ferret with a bell affixed to its collar. And I remember listening to “Rock the Casbah” on repeat the whole drive there and back, because it just got me in the zone.

“Rock the Casbah” is #186 on Pitchfork’s 200 Best Songs of the ’80s but I really think it belongs at #4. It’s sleazy and tasteless and sexy, as tasteless sleaze is, and it is definitely the best Clash song.