Mark’s Pick of the Week This Is Big Audio Dynamite by Big Audio Dynamite

           As many of you know, on our Peabody Nominated series Summer Psychosis the Clash were eliminated……Sigh.  Give me a minute…Okay, okay.  Anyway, I’m still a bit upset about it.  So I decided to write to make me feel better. 

            Big Audio Dynamite (or BAD for all you hip kids reading this) was Mick Jones’ brainchild after he left the Clash.  Mick and Joe never exactly saw eye to eye with the musical direction of the band because their influences and ambitions were a bit diverging.  This disparity lead to some of the most diverse and innovative music of the decade, but as all good things must end.  The tension was a bit much for the band to keep recording music together.  Joe went to do his thing and Mick started BAD with director/musician/all around interesting guy Don Letts (seriously I can’t stress how both these guys are very influential and interesting). 

            The music these guys made was nothing like what the Clash was making (unless you count their newer stuff).  It fused dance, reggae dub, hip-hop, and funk as well as sampling a lot of other musical styles.  These guys were one of (but certainly not the first) popular groups to sample heavily in their music.  Their first few albums really gained some traction in the UK, but for the most part they were a bit unknown in the states. 

            Take the opening track from their self-titled, the song that started it all.  It samples from 3 spaghetti westerns including two of the Dollars trilogy movies (some of the best westerns ever) (fun fact: Mick and Joe were both huge fans of American westerns, Joe even started in one.)  The beat is still really catchy, and as fun to dance to as it was in 1984.  The subject matter of the song is that of…well a medicine show.  The singer is pedaling a “miracle cure-all concoction” suggesting it can do all types of amazing things.  It’s very witty if you can actually make out what he’s saying, but if you can’t the music should be enough.

            E=mc² is really great to with a fantastic horn part, and samples from the film Performance (staring Mick Jagger?)  All in all his release has some solid club hits with some pretty interesting sounds peppered in there.  If you pick it up it a lot of fun listening for them, and appreciating how much more challenging this would be to make in 1984 where nothing was digital, and there wasn’t even Youtube to look up stuff to sample.

            They actually still tour, and you can check them out on their myspace and facebook.