I was down in the dumps all day,
but I just got news that my friend Chris has come through his heart surgery
successfully, so that puts a happier glow on everything.
It is not great to be of an age where
your friends have heart conditions (Chris is the third of us and I’m sure there’ll
be more) but pretty great to live in an age where doctors can open up your
ribcage and fix it.
Disc 712 is…. Planet BAD: Greatest Hits
Artist: Big Audio
Dynamite
Year of Release: 1995 but with music
from 1985 to 1994
What’s up with the Cover? A classically bad
nineties album cover, this one features many different images that together remind me
of my cat’s barf when he’s been eating things he shouldn’t.
How I Came To Know It: I was in my clubbing phase in the
early nineties, and at the more mainstream joints a couple of Big Audio
Dynamite (BAD) songs (“The Globe” and
“Rush”) got fairly regular play and
were fun to dance to. I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan of this kind of music but I
liked those songs enough to buy them on a Greatest Hits package, and here it
is.
How It Stacks Up: This is the only BAD album I have and it is not
actually bad. However, it is also a greatest hits album, so even if I had more
of them it wouldn’t stack up. Greatest hits packages don’t get ranked on the CD
Odyssey, jerky!
Rating: Like I said, no ranking for a
greatest hits album.
Good news, musicians: you can still reinvent yourself after your massively
popular band falls apart. So it is with Big Audio Dynamite (or BAD for those of
us who’ve been typing words for a living all day). BAD features guitarist Mick
Jones, who left the Clash in 1983 as well as a bunch of other guys that weren’t
in the Clash.
Joe Strummer was also involved in BAD, but as a writer and producer,
rather than a band member. I think he adds a lot in both capacities, but in
terms of the band it was just Mick and the (other) guys. Sorry, other guys.
I was actually surprised just how successful BAD was for years without
me knowing. I was prepared to mock them for putting out a greatest hits album
after only releasing a couple of studio records. I was therefore shocked to
discover the boys had released seven records by the time this package came out.
I guess I just don’t know my British club-pop, but I suppose you would know
that by just scrolling down the right hand side of this blog.
If you think of the Clash at their catchiest, and then add a club beat,
you’ve got a good approximation of BAD. Mick Jones takes on singing duties in
addition to his guitar talents, and does very well, although these songs don’t
require vocal gymnastics.
The music is catchy and inoffensive except for one major problem – the excessive
use of movie dialogue samples. The album is packed with these, including “E=MC2” and “Medicine Show.” Both would have been very cool groove tracks if it
weren’t for the inexplicable decision to throw movie dialogue into them.
And I don’t mean a little bit of dialogue, either, I mean so often that
it becomes pervasive and disruptive to my listening enjoyment. “Medicine Show” is a song about travelling
snake-oil salesmen, yet in the middle of it there is a huge piece of dialogue
pulled right out of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” It is the section where
Tuco’s crimes are being listed before he is to be hanged. The list is pretty
exhaustive, but nowhere does it mention “bilking locals with snake oil,” so don’t
put it in the damned song.
The band tries to do their own version of a mash-up as well, such as on “C’mon Every Beat Box” that combines
samples from James Brown’s “Superbad”
with the wholesale rip-off of “Summertime
Blues’” melody. I don’t know why they did this, but it doesn’t work.
Fortunately, the two songs I bought the album for are still as awesome
as I remember them, minus my youthful dance moves and all the women I showed them
off to during my club days.
“Rush” and “The Globe” (both off of 1991’s “The
Globe”) are classic pop ear-worms that are fun to sing along to, and fun to
dance to. Hell, they are fun to just walk to work to now that I’m a
forty-something office worker. “Rush”
is a crazy mix of musical styles (at one point it sounded like they were channeling
the synthesizer from “Baba O’Riley”)
that all work together.
“The Globe” has a similar vibe
which advises you to dim the lights, switch on the strobe and have a ball (in
that order). It is replete with girlish shrieks of delight, a bizarre saxophone
solo for a bridge and then more shrieks and grooves. Again, it all works.
I may be a bit older now but these songs still make me want to show off
my dance moves, such as they are.
Best
tracks: The
Bottom Line, Free, Rush, The Globe, I Was Born a Punk
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