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Big Audio Dynamite
This is Big Audio Dynamite
By George A. Paul
After getting kicked out of the Clash in 1983, singer-guitarist Mick Jones continued his trailblazing ways two years later with Big Audio Dynamite. Back then, sampling was still rare, so beatboxing, dance floor grooves, rap breaks and English rock guitars interspersed with film dialogue snippets (The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Fistful of Dollars, Performance, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, etc.) sounded fresh. In many ways, the band’s melting pot aesthetic was a continuation of the Clash’s latter day experimentalism. Last year, Jones told a British music magazine that B.A.D. sought to “play rock ’n’ roll and fit that into dance music… we were a paint splattered picture.”
Three melodic singles off This is Big Audio Dynamite (“Medicine Show,” “E=MC2,” “The Bottom Line”) received major play in U.S. dance clubs and on college/alt-rock radio. This two-disc 25th Anniversary Legacy Edition (also available digitally) features the re-mastered debut, unpublished photos and notes from all original members. Disc two clocks in at 70-minutes and includes five previously unreleased tracks (diehard fans will be particularly interested in outtake “Electric Vandal”), single B-sides, dub and vocoder versions, plus 12” vinyl mixes and remixes (Rick Rubin tackles “The Bottom Line”). Although Jones and Clash mate Joe Strummer would later work together again on B.A.D.’s less memorable 1986 follow up, No. 10, Upping St., and the group went onto bigger success Stateside with 1991’s The Globe, its first effort was a groundbreaking introduction.
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