I don’t think I’ve ever anticipated an album as eagerly as I awaited the first Clash album.

I bought it the day it came out in April 1977 and couldn’t wait to get home and put it on my deck.

From the opening salvo of Janie Jones and Remote Control, it was a string of hits to my ears. And it was a treat to hear them live for the first time when The Clash supported John Cale at The Roundhouse that same month (supported by Subway Sect and The Boys).

For me, one of the highlights of their set was always their cover of Junior Murvin’s reggae classic Police And Thieves, a kind of breather between the frantic fury of the other songs.

I particularly love the way it sounds on the album, especially the way the guitars slash out of alternate speakers to create an air of disorientation that captures the paranoia of the lyric.

The appeal of the original is all about the contrast between Murvin’s impossibly sweet falsetto and the cautionary tale he tells of trouble on the streets of Kingston: “Police and thieves on the street / Scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition.”

In the hands of The Clash, it becomes angry and violent, the guitars of Strummer and Jones duelling while Simonon and Headon/Chimes (was Terry still there at The Roundhouse, or had Topper taken over?) created a bottom end that hit you in the gut… then that sweet solo by Mick Jones.

Unlike Murvin, Strummer spits out the words, spinning it into a story that seems to relocate the action to the band’s home territory beneath the Westway in Notting Hill at Carnival time.

It’s not reggae, but it has the same syncopated rhythm, and The Clash would prove themselves adept assimilators of Jamaican music, tackling other tunes like Armagideon Time, Bank Robber and Guns Of Brixton and fusing them with the fury of punk.