Straight to Hell – BAD: Tighten Up Vol. 88
Page 32-New Musical Express 2nd July, 1988
BAD Tighten Up, Volume 88 (CBS/LP/Cassette/CD)

EDITED BY ALAN JACKSON
ILLUSTRATION Clifford Harper

The Big Audio Marking System

10 Upping Street

9 A Party

8 Sudden Impact

7 E=Mc²

6 Medicine Show

5 Dial a Hit Man

4 Stay Home

3 Beyond the Pale

2 BAD

1 The Bottom Line

Long Play - STRAIGHT TO HELL

IT ISN'T easy listening to someone you admire growing old. It's even more difficult when they're ageing with such grace as Mick Jones, when they seem happy to stop struggling and to sink into the contented indulgence of the middle-aged musician. I suppose it's true that the young revolutionary eventually becomes everything he orginally stood against, and that time has come as far as Jones is concerned. 'Tighten Up...'is rife with the sort of muso rubbish he and his contemporaries threatened to wipe off the face of the earth for ever. BAD's new attitude is summed up in the in the first and last tracks of the record: the first is full of rocking-all-night-longism's; the latter the awful 'Just Play Music', a musicians cop-out if ever there was one.

At least BAD have achieved a consistency of tone that eluded them throughout 'No 10 Upping St', though the sometimes erratic nature of what they choose to play with still survives. 'The Battle Of All Saints Road' takes a traditional banjo-plucking protest song, adapts it to every day life in modern London and includes a few hip-hop references and some reggae toastin'. The aural collage that BAD sometimes erratic nature construct from found dialogue, cinema and whatever other sources come their way always always makes for interesting listening, but here the experimentation is used almost as an end in itself. Around plain songs a few sonic diversions are built, but it doesn't disguise the uniformity that sits underneath and can't distract from the resigned traditionalsim of newly-Bim of newly-discovered confor discovered conformity.

OK OK, so there's a sense of self awareness about this change. The title of course is one of the oldest muso-clichés in the book, and 'Other 99' is both an explanation and an apology for pology for Jones' faults: Won't say Won't say I'm the best That you ever had/But the bit that has been good/Sure outweighs the bad.

By now he's obviously used to getting mauled by the critics whenever he puts his head out of the door, but he could try growing old disgracefully instead of apoligising for being the new Eric Clapton. After lounging in the doldrums for a couple of years Strummer's got his act together: Jones' is falling falli apart around his ears.

It's ironic that this former punk figurehead should fall so readily into the habits of his inglorious predecessors. But the inspired zealot who stalked The Clash, the innovative einnovative shamen of 'E-Mc², or the street-wise rhythm stealer of 'C'mon Every Beatbox', that Mr Jones, he dead. (6).

John Tague

THE SUNDAY TRIBUNE, 10 JULY 1988 Page 19 ARTS
ROCK/BP FALLON gives the thumbs up to the new LPs by Big Audio

Heartbreaker – Johnny Thunders, Patti Palladin & BAD

Dynamite and Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin.

THERE'S new and there's old and you mix 'em up and come up with a new concoction. Well, that's the plan when it n it works and it does s here here on the latest albums by a couple of the founders of the punk revolution.

Johnny Thunders first gave people a fright when he was the lead guitarist and wicked boy of the New York Dolls, the Noo York glamour queens of the early Seventies who stirred their tinsel in the gutter. Like Iggy and the Stooges, the Dolls were ikons to the new 1976 punksters. And like Iggy and the Stooges, the Dolls fell apart in a mess of blues, drugs, drink and ego.

Johnny came to England with his powerful group the Heartbreakers, and they toured on the ill-fated package with the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned. It was a time of newness, of youth rockin' against the rails of conformity. Johnny got his hair cut. The Heartbreakers wobbled on. They nearly had a hit with their self-explanatory song of self destructiveness, Chin Chinese Rocks Stupid. Too much junkie business they used to sing.

I met Johnny in New York in the middle of the night at a dentist's surgery. He was a Doll then. When the Heartbreakers conked out, I became Johnny's manager awhile. Bloody hard w work, often heartbreaking, trying to look after this great guitar player who sang from the slums of his heart. Johnny was a star, see, still is, a true real one, but he would insist on... well, he was too out of it, dangerously I put together Johnny's first solo album and, by Johnny's reckoning, his best one. It was called So Alone but he wasn't, not usually. Friends came in to play on the record, to play with this dark hero, people like Steve Jones and Paul Cook from the Sex Pistols, Phil Lynott, bless him, Steve Steve Marriott Marriott from m the Small all Faces. The producer was a young chap startin' off called Steve Lillywhite. He was horrified at the madness but he did an excellent job. Chrissie Hynde was one of the folk who came in to do backing vocals. Another was another American lady, the most mysterious of people and the siren of promise, Patti Palladin. Great great voice, had Patti, like all the Ronettes rolled into one. On So Alone backed by various Sex Pistols and Heartbreakers, Johnny and Patti perform the Shangri La's nugget 'Give Him A Great Big Kiss. Hey, as they mixed it in with their Johnny, what colour are her eyes Patti coos like she's chewed more gum than any other girl in America, and Johnny, all street-smart, answers with a casual I dunno. She's always wearing shades. Classic stuff.

There are more classics on the new Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin LP Copy Cats (Jungle Records), a triumph of a record produced and directed by Patti. What we've got is a dozen old songs reinterpreted with all the sass, verve and love that Johnny and Patti pour over 'em.

There's songs first d songs first done by Elvis Presley (the New Orleans-flavoured 'Crawfish' from King Creole) to the psychotic mid-Sixties American garage band the Seeds (Can't Seem To Make You Mine') to Screaming Jay Hawkins ('Alligator Wine', hoodoo voodoo gumbo from the swamps) to the there's-no-bizness-like-showbizness song 'Let Me Entertain You' that Natalie Wood sang in the movie Gypsy in between taking off her clothes.

On Copy Cats there are players from the Only Ones and the early bands of Hugh Police, from the bands of Hugh Masekela and Gil Scott-Heron, plus the Heartbreakers and people from the London Philharmonic Orchestra to Anthony Thistlethwaite of the Waterboys. Johnny Thunder plays lead guitar that turns gold into dust and vocalises with the voice who dines on poisoned snakes. Producer Patti has done great in puttin' it all together, and she sings like an angel with mascara on her wings. Check out the old Shirelles tear maker 'Baby It's You'. The version here is up with those done by the Beatles and Elvis Costello with Nick Lowe. "It's not the way you smile that touched my heart Patti sings in her voice of velvet soaked in broken dreams, and Chrissie Hynde goes Sha la la la la, all beautiful and sad and hopeful.

Masterful

MICK Jones isn't doing too bad, either. Johnny Thunders used to be one of his guitar heroes, along with Keith Richards and Mick Ronson from Bowie's Spiders From Mars. Then came punk and 1976 and all that, Mick formed the Clash. They could've ruled the world and they nearly did. They made tremendous records, Mick Jones and Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon and Topper Headon, the fab four of pokey songs like 'White Riot' and 'London's Calling to leather-clad rockers like Vince Taylor's 'Brand New Cadillac'. It was music with its head down and charging, one finger stuck up, a battering ram against the mush of the Moody Blues and Yes. The Clash had flash and they had venom and they had fun.

Joe Strummer has returned full-frontal again now, his spells re-tuned with his shakin' new combo Latina Rockabilly War. Live, they mix in everything from, yes, Latin music to straight ahead rockin' to rockabillied reading of the Pogues' 'If I Should Fall From Grace With God' They even do the BAD song written by the reunited Strummer and Jones, Thirteen'.

And Mick? He and his group Big Audio Dynamite, who are currently touring Ireland, are into their third LP, the enchanting Tighten Up, Vol 88 (CBS Records). Right now I can't think of a better British group LP this year. The cover steers towards the vibe: friendly, a painting by former Clash bass player Paul Simeonon of partytime near the Westway in Notting Hill Gate. People are dancing. smiling, ignoring the ominous dreary dark tower blocks behind them. In the window of the Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street, London, there's a huge version of Simeonon's artwork, the size of a wall. It's a display for BAD's album. Mick told me he hopes to get hold of the blow up, and give it to Paul.

Big Audio Dynamite one of the first English groups to fully explore sampling from other records and films, to go mad with computers, rock'n'roll and reggae and pop music whimsy. Now Mick Jones asks you rhetorically Why do you think that they call what computers have they call what computers s have 'software? Because it's not hard, is it? This is the man who raves about his holiday in Nashville, where he saw country music pioneer Roy Acuff at The Grand Ole Opry, where he visited the Sun Records studio where Elvis and Jerry Lee and Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash cut their primal stuff, where he checked out Hank Williams' old house, where he visited Graceland. It was a pilgrimage, yeah Mick says.

Mick's leanings are reflected in BAD's LP. With his partner in rhyme, toaster Don Letts, Tighten Up, Vol 88 named after the series of Tighten Up' reggae and ska LPs on Trojan -is brimful of songs of reflection, humour and exhortations to dance. It's simpler than before, more rootsy. Mick Jones music makes you like on him, which is fine. Because he's a lovely geezer, and his music is honest. And like Mick, it's charming.

We're gonna rock till we we drop- drop all night long Mick sings in his dry airy voice all the way through to the last track and its proven message 'Just Play Music! No bulsh. In between, there's a song about Patric Walke a who does the horoscopes in the London Evening Standard ('Mr Walker Said') to a rockin' tribûte to Esquirita, the wild blues-screamer who before he died could out-shout Little Richard and had hair piled twice as high. Out-shout and outrageous. I guess the Georgia Peach came a little too late the Mick notes in this song.

MICK JONES: tightening up

And then there's the L.P's goldenest moment, the track The Battle of Al Saints Road'. It's about the rockers and the dreads partying in Ladbroke Grove until we fired our guns and the coppers kept a-coming... Yup, it' based on the old traditional song The Battle of New Orleans', and there's a fat helping of 'Duelling Banjos' too, with Don Letts adding the most insinuatingly ridiculous and attractive gibberish singing since the Rivingtons did 'Papa Oo Mow Mow. Bwoi bwol bwoi mwoi mwoi mwoi" Don sings. Poetry.

BAD play the final date of their Irish tour tonight, in Cork at Sir Henry's.

Photo: The Clash: like Big Audio Dynamite 'bloody noisy and dynamic'.

REBELLIOUS old punks will never die. But ex-Clash guitarist Mick Jones won't even fade away.

Mean and moody Jones may have taken on a new role as husband and father. But he is still causing trouble. He and his fellow rockers in Big Audio Dynamite call themselves as outlaws. Just call them BAD.

They got on the wrong side of the police in Brazil over the song Sam-Badromo about a robber called Jose Carlos de Reis Encina.

This violent criminal, who has since been killed, provided food and medicine to the needy and became a folk hero to the poor people in the rich city of Rio.

One picture left in a Rio paper showed the police flushing a BAD album down the toilet. But the band played to huge adoring crowds in the city.

Band member Don Letts said: "The guy was a Robin Hood type folk hero. We did a kind of documentary song about him."

Letts was hotly reconciled: "I just became an old softie about four months ago trying to stop."

BAD's next stop is the Newcastle Mayfair on July 17 to promote their latest album and upcoming album Tight Up volume 88.

Letts, along with fellow black member Leo 'Easy Kill' Williams used to call the band the black and Deadly when it formed three years ago.

But the white members didn't agree: "Because it didn't mention them," said Letts.

So they settled on BAD. They decided the name, like that of The Clash, described the music: "Bloody noisy and dynamic."

And Jones has not slung the heavy weight of the Clash albatross off his neck so easily.

He patched up his much publicised differences with Joe Strummer and they worked together on the last album.

Former Clash fans still come to BAD concerts in the hope of hearing just a snatch of I Fought the Law or Ca$hback Rock.

But BAD is different. The music is a mixture of rock, reggae and hip-hop. It is as representative of the 80s as The Clash was of the 70s.

The earlier songs told stories of major riots, vandalism and trigger happy heroes.

The latest tracks are not quite as depressing but they are just as rebellious.

It is about a spirit of adventure with a little bit of risk," said Letts.

"We think it is a healthy alternative to all the safe, boring chart's right now," he said.

BAD have not got the looks of Bros. or the pop appeal of Wet Wet Wet. But be refused to name names.

Letts stresses the name BAD is as popular and global. "Even Michael Jackson, Prince and Derek B all sing along the baddest".

But Letts said: "We were about three years before Michael Jackson thought of it. Although we appreciate him using our name."

"Michael may be bigger and Derek B is louder but we are certainly far event," he said.

BAD wince at the mention of songs with heavy political messages: "Messages are for postmen," said Letts.

The band considers its position on authority seriously. One of their most moving tracks is refugees who committed murder after being partly motivated by music.

"Musicians have a responsibility. You are sort of making a sound track for people's lives," said Letts.

Lately B.A.D. serve the music press's flavour of the moment. Their pictures were plastered over major music magazines and everyone was scrambling to get interviews with them.

Their recent tour with U2 brought down the house with a bang. But anyone who can play to a stadium of 100,000 chanting Bono fans and make them listen must have a future.

BAD's latest album is creeping into the top 30 but the band is still waiting to make its fortune.

Letts sums up their success so far: "All cred and no bread."

NEW YORK (AP) - A case of chicken pox made Mick Jones cancel this fall's "Big Audio Dynamite" tour. But Jones vows to come back. "Tighten Up Vol. 88" is the band's latest album and "Just Play Music," the first single, is receiving radio play in the United States. With the group planning to resume touring after the new year, Jones is anxious to regain its previous momentum. I think it's a growing thing, a matter of getting people to listen, changing the way they think. I just want to communicate and play music, said the 33-year-old guitarist and songwriter, who recovered sufficiently to give a recent interview in midtown Manhattan. I was getting into the mood where the group was unstoppable, he said, before cancelling the tour. We were ravaged by the critics, but the music wasn't for them. It was for more - it was music with a reason, with something to say. You can put us on page 13 of your paper, but you can't ignore us because the other stuff is going to whither and die.

That touch of drama should be no surprise coming from Jones, who help lead the British punk movement with The Clash a decade ago. Jones was born in London in 1955. A fan of such groups as the Animals and the Kinks, he considered rock 'n' roll the most exciting thing around. But in the 1970s, he and many other fans grew disillusioned with the direction of rock. Punk groups began to appear as a response to the complacency and indifference of mainstream rock and society in general. Like the Sex Pistols, The Clash were crude, loud, angry and threatening. In short everything they thought rock 'n' roll should be. It needed to happen, said Jones. We needed it at that time.

Punk wasn't simply a kind of music, it was an attitude. Jones, like many who grew up in England in the '60s and '70s, felt that the more established rock bands had turned their backs on the fans. The music's just as much about the fans, he said. They're very important. They don't want go to the show and just have their wallet emptied. They've got T-shirts, but they're not anywhere. You need to take it to the next place.

Jones and bassist Paul Simonon were in the punk group London SS before forming The Clash in 1976 with singer-guitarist Joe Strummer, previously a member of the 101ers. At the time I was just expressing myself the only way I could, Jones said. We looked at it as if we had a foot in the door and we were going to go in that door. There has never been anything like it since. Their self-titled debut album came out in 1977 and contained some of the most ferocious music ever recorded. As one reviewer noted, it was music that never stops snarling. It's always threatening to blow up in your face. Jones, who ironically once worked as an inspector of suspected letter bombs, readily agreed with that assessment. It was quite a rush, he said. It sounded beautiful to us. Music should explode, it shouldn't be contained and well behaved and do what it's told.

Although The Clash went on to record classic albums such as Give 'Em Enough Rope and London Calling, the members of the band started feuding and by 1984, the group had broken up. In the end, we ended up writing our own things and sort of handing them over. It wasn't as much fun. So Jones decided to start fresh. He wasn't interested in forming a "Mick Jones Project"; he wanted prospective bandmates to think of themselves as equals. Ideas was the main word. I wanted to have people with good ideas and fresh ideas, he said. I was a good enough musician by that time. I looked for people who had personality. I didn't want it to just be me. But Jones couldn't deny who would emerge as the band's leader. It's a dictatorship, he said, smiling, but a benevolent dictatorship. I wanted to make it a more democratic thing. I try and listen to the others.

Jones pieced together a new group; starting with his friend and ex-Clash video director Don Letts (credited with "FX and Vocals"). He added bassist Leo "E-Zee Kill" Williams. Drummer Greg Roberts was hired through a newspaper ad, and Jones then brought in keyboardist Dan Donovan who originally came to photograph the band. The group was named Big Audio Dynamite (B.A.D.), and drew on a variety of musical styles, notably reggae. The first record, This Is Big Audio Dynamite, was released in 1985, and eventually went gold in Britain. Strummer briefly reunited with Jones to co-write and coproduce B.A.D.'s next record, No. 10 Upping Street, with its hit single, V. Thirteen.

Word Count: 1023.

BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE: SCIENCE FICTION ROCK ’N’ ROLL

"Clash, Clash, Clash," Moans Don

ON A HOT NIGHT one year ago, and I bump into Mick Jones, who is being typically secretive about his new group, called Bad 626.

I hand him my cloakroom ticket—also Red 626, for luck—but he reveals the name anyway. They get to Europe, the words somehow don’t sound right, so they shorten it to BAD.

A year later, to the day, I meet the rest: Big Audio Dynamite. A bonfire is burning.

Good enough to be successful once.
And repeat that with your second album? It barely comes off.

“Oh, they usually fail, don’t they?” quips Mick Jones, happily. “It’s really, really funny.”

And he treats me to a daft, cheeky grin that shows just how terribly unworried he is about the whole thing.

PUTTING THE ATOM BACK TOGETHER

Inventor of Big Audio Dynamite—an ambitious-sounding project, two and a half years in the making—Mick Jones has created one of the last outposts of musical science: stitching sound back together.

Plenty of people make great dance music, they say. Lots write great lyrics—but not many bands do both. Not in the same song.

Big Audio Dynamite succeed where others get their fingers burnt? Read on.

Later, Mick swaps his cowboy hat and intense glare for a tracksuit ("jogging keeps you fit") and a Yankee baseball cap that rarely leaves his head. He is, in many ways, just like the songs—quirky, unselfconscious. Very charming.

The word “sweet” springs to mind. He also giggles more than is seemly for a guitar hero.

Next to him, fellow BAD spokesman Don Letts—*former DJ, one-time Basement 5 singer, now BAD’s ‘Effects Man’*—has thrown open the doors for a marathon day of press.

A third member, Dan Donovan, reclines on a couch lined with fur that looks suspiciously like an endangered species. Dan (not to be confused with Don) is a choreographer, new to bands but already mastering the tricky bit of the technique: watching children’s TV with the sound down.

(The Musicians’ Union would not approve.)

"CLASH, CLASH, CLASH"

Their press officer wheels me in; the previous reporter vanishes, presumably through a hidden trapdoor.

Mick: “I felt sick for a little while when we started,” admits Mick.

Do you tell everyone the same things?

Mick: “We try to say something different, but it’s hard—they ask the same questions. How did you get the group together? What’s the point of all this sampling? Is there any truth in the rumour you’ve either got a contract out on The Clash—or are rejoining them?”

And what do you say to that?

Mick pulls a very sad face—then giggles again. “Clash, Clash, Clash,” moans Don. “Everybody wants to wallow in the dirt. They ask, ‘What do you think of the Tory government? The riots?’” “They expect you to know stuff I don’t expect myself to know. They should be asking the government.”

Maybe they ask you because The Clash used to act like they had all the answers.

Mick: “Yeah, I used to know what to say—because that was it, wasn’t it? The Clash were involved in current affairs.”

Current affairs! I scribble this in my notebook with lots of stars next to it.

"OPTIMISM! YEAH! TAKE THE BALL AND RUN WITH IT!"

A lot of people like brown ale, explains Mick, weighing up the LP’s chances. Some prefer the acquired taste of esoteric music.

Mick: “Like all good things, it’ll take people a while to dig it.”

And what we’ll be digging—with any luck—is a vivid, pictorial record of 1985. A cosmopolitan album.

Mick: “Well, that’s what London is like,” insists Don. “Have you been down Queensway lately?”

The method—copious lyrics (from Roeg films to AIDS), plundering musical clichés—sometimes reminds me of Faustus. Any takers?

Mick: “Who? I don’t like the name,” says Mick, wrinkling his nose.

Mick: “No, I don’t want to hear that shit—slash-your-wrists music. I wake up happy.”

Don agrees.

Mick: “I like to get up and groove. I can’t deal with a morose record. I stick on Debbie Harry in the morning.”

Don: “I want groups that take me forwards. If they’re depressed, I don’t want to hear it.”

Mick: “Optimism! Yeah! Take the ball and run with it!”

HOW TO ASSEMBLE A BAND (BAD’S WAY)

Mick: “We put an ad in the paper. A load of drummers came—we picked Greggy because he was shouting ‘Have me!’ louder than the rest.”

Don: “Yeah, what a mistake that was.”

Mick: “Then Dan came to take our photo and said, ‘I play piano too.’ So I said, ‘Come look at my MSC digital sequencer—there’s a fuse loose.’ He fixed it, so I said, ‘Right, we’ll get you a special lead so you can take the photo and be in it at the same time.’”

Don: “The moral? If you ain’t got a plug, you can’t make the connection.”

Dan opens his mouth—but the words come out of Mick’s. (A very good trick.)

Mick: “Dan’s wormed his way up to musical director now.”

What does a musical director do?

Mick: “He keeps the band in shape. Goes to rehearsals and says, ‘This is how the conductor wants it.’”

ON A HOT NIGHT one year ago and I bump into Mick Jones who is being typically secretive about his group, called Bad 626.

I hand to him my cloakroom ticket, also red 626 for good luck, but he reveals the name of the band anyway. They get to Europe, the words somehow don’t sound right so they shorten it to BAD.
A year later to the day I meet the rest – Big Audio Dynamite, and a bonfire is burning.

Good enough to be successful once.

And repeat that with your second album—it barely comes off.
*“Oh, they usually fail, don’t they?” quips Mick Jones happily. “It’s really, really funny.”
And he treats me to a daft, cheeky grin that shows just how terribly, unworried he is about the whole thing.

Inventor of Big Audio Dynamite – an ambitious-sounding project, two and a half years in the making – Mick Jones has created one of the last remaining outposts of musical science: putting the atom back togather again. Plenty of people make great dance music, they say. Lots of people write great lyrics – not many bands do both. Not during the same song.

Big Audio Dynamite succeed while others only get their fingers burnt? Read on.

Later, Mick swaps his cowboy hat and intense glare for a tracksuit (jogging keeps you fit) and a Yankee Baseball cap that rarely leaves his head. He is, in many ways, just like the songs—quirky and unselfconscious. Very charming. The word “sweet” springs unprompted to mind. He also giggles more than is considered seemly for a guitar hero. Next to him, fellow BAD spokesman, Don Letts – *a* former DJ, one-time singer with Basement 5, now turning his chameleon talents to BAD’s ‘Effects Man’ – they have thrown open their doors for an intensive day of interviews to the press. A third BAD member is present, Dan Donovan, who reclines on *a* couch lined with fur that looks suspiciously like an endangered species. Dan (not to be confused with Don) is a choreographer and hasn’t been in a band before but has already mastered the tricky bit of the technique: watching children’s TV with the sound down. The Musicians Union would not approve.

Their press officer wheels me in and the previous reporter disappears, presumably through a hidden trapdoor. I ask if they’re sick of interviews yet.

“I felt sick for a little while when we started,” says Mick.

“Do you tell everyone the same things?”

“We try and say something different each time, but it’s hard because they ask the same questions. How did you get the group together? What’s the point of it – all this sampling? Is there any truth in the rumour that you’ve either got a contract out on The Clash or are rejoining The Clash? How did you feel when you were kicked out The Clash...”

And what do you say to that?

Mick pulls a very sad face and giggles again.

“Clash, Clash, Clash,” moans Don.

“Everybody wants to wallow in the dirt. They ask, what do you think of the Tory government, what do you think of the riots?”

Mick: “They expect you to know a lot of stuff that I don’t expect myself to know about. They’re not asking the right people. They should be asking the government.”

Maybe they ask you because The Clash used to act like they had all the answers.

“Yeah, I used to know what to say to those questions, because that was it, wasn’t it? The Clash were pretty much involved in current affairs.”

Current affairs! I write this in my notebook with lots of stars next to it.

A LOT OF people like brown ale, and some people like the acquired taste of esoteric music, explains Mick, weighing up the LP’s chances.

“Like all good things, it’s going to take people a little while to dig it.”

And what we’ll all be digging, with any luck, is a very alive, pictorial record of the year 1985. A very cosmopolitan album, I think.

“Well, that’s what London is like,” insists Don. “Have you been down Queensway lately?”

While the end product is vastly different, the method—of copious, relevant lyrics (from the films of Mick Roeg to AIDS), the plundering of musical clichés—reminds me at times of Faustus. Any takers?
“Who? I don’t like the name very much,” says Mick, wrinkling up his nose.

“No, I don’t want to hear that shit – slash your wrists music. I wake up a lot of days and I’m happy.” Don agrees.

Mick: “Yeah, I like to get up and groove about a bit. I can’t imagine having to deal with a morose record or whatever. I like to stick on Debbie Harry in the morning.”

Don: “I want to find groups that will take me forwards. If they’re depressed, I don’t want to hear about it.”
Mick: “Optimism! Yeah! Take the ball and run with it!”

BIOGRAPHY: Finding himself at a bit of a loose end, Mick Jones teams up with Leo ‘E-Zee Kill’ Williams – Basement 5 bass player and friend of Don Letts.

Mick: “Then we put an ad in the paper and a load of drummers came for the audition, and we picked Greggy (Roberts) because he was shouting ‘Have me!’ more than the rest of them, and he looked the nicest. I thought he was Richard Gere when we walked in.”
Don: “Yeah, what a mistake that was.”

“Then me and Tony James were out and Don and Leo were out, and I was saying, ‘Look, I gotta find someone, do you know anyone, Don?’ And he was going, ‘No.’ And we went, ‘Well, what about you?’ And he said, ‘Why didn’t you ever ask me before? This is what I’ve been waiting for.’ And I said, ‘OK, you can be in my group.’

“Then Dan came along to take our photo, and he said, ‘I play a bit of piano, too.’ And I said, ‘Do you? Come down and have a look at my MSC digital remote sequencer and Teas-Maid – there’s a fuse loose.’ And he said, ‘No trouble.’ So we came down and had a potter about on the Teas-Maid. And I said, ‘Right, we’re going to have to do something about this photo situation.’ And once we knew we could get him a special lead so he could take the photo and be in it at the same time, Dan had the job because he also looks very nice.”

Don: “The moral of this story is – if you ain’t got a plug, you can’t make the connection.”

So what do you think of all this, Dan?

Dan opens his mouth briefly, but the words come out of Mick’s mouth. This is a very good trick.
“Dan’s wormed his way up now to musical director,” says Mick, warming to his subject.

Shall I tell you about the musical director?

I have a feeling you will anyway.

“What a musical director does is, he keeps the band in shape, right? He goes to rehearsals and says, ‘This is how the conductor wants it.’

BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE

Kentish Town, Town and Country Club

Mick Jones ambles on stage in a pale blue denim jacket and tight red trousers. Hair slicked back, every inch a hero.

“I’ve heard The Clash have split up . . . it doesn’t matter anyway, they’re shit!”

Everyone, but everyone, cheers.

I remember a year or so ago, sitting with a friend, listening to some Radio One DJ announcing that one of The Clash had left. “I hope it’s Mick Jones,” we both said simultaneously. At that time, it was all too easy to interpret Jones’ swagger as mere rockist cliché, even if “Stay Free” was always the best Clash song. Now, of course, it’s glaringly obvious, solo projects sorting the wise men from the boot boys, that Mick Jones is the sexiest, most innovative, most exciting of the Clash constituents.

And so, Big Audio Dynamite provides him with his chance to prove it. The sound revolves unashamedly around Mick’s devilish mixture of voice and hips riding into town on a rocket ship, aided by a giggle of right-thinking gunslingers. It’s all a bit like the best bits of Sandinista! trimmed and shot through a bastard dance Crush Groove.

At times, it takes your breath away.

In front of an audience positively oozing with peers and pilgrims, the BAD sound shows itself ideally suited to live performance. Despite being boosted by backing tapes, the best things about the show are the moments where Mick’s voice, punctuated by guitar shards and spacey blips, leaps astride the wicked bass/drums rhythm and scuffles with Don Letts’ impeccable sense of what makes your hips wiggle.

“The Bottom Line” is firmly establishing itself as BAD’s anthem, if indeed such things are necessary—a crispy, uncluttered transformation of banality into the sublime. Anyone not dancing must be square.

There’s perhaps a tendency to tread water when the going gets tough, but most of the time, BAD are prepared to take enough chances to gain respect.
“Sorry,” “Medicine Show,” and “BAD” aren’t quite there yet, but, I tell you, there’s more fire, determination, and downright JOY here than in a thousand of Simonon and Strummer’s more recent efforts. It’s no wonder that Jones is scotching the reformation rumours as “a load of bollocks.”

The parting shot? Big Audio Dynamite do “1999” as an encore. For that alone, I’d give them the earth.

Birmingham

“I’VE HAD a lobotomy, I don’t remember anything before this band,” says Mick Jones, refusing to play any Clash material for an audience who aren’t quite sure at first how to react to a hero who leaves his past glories in the dressing room. Fair enough. Big Audio Dynamite are, after all, a new band with their own set of songs to be heard, considered, assessed. Comparisons with the past are both a millstone around their necks and an obstacle to our own enjoyment.

Having said that, though, it’s Mick Jones who has aroused the curiosity in this audience and brought them out on a freezing cold night. It’s Mick Jones whose ideas are being exhibited here. And it’s Mick Jones who is responsible for the success of the band so far. Through the sheer force of his personality, he makes you listen to and enjoy what is actually a fairly basic set of fairly ordinary pop-rock clichés.

Sure, there are bits and pieces to divert your attention away from just how simple the music is—such as pre-recorded tapes and sound-effects chucked in à la Paul Hardcastle. But at the end of the night, it’s only the overwhelmingly likeable presence of Mick Jones that saves BAD from becoming a damp squib. Whether or not that’s any basis on which to build a future is debatable.

All that’s certain is that when Big Audio Dynamite left the stage, no one was calling out for any raves from the grave of The Clash anymore. They were content simply to yell for:
MORE!

Big Audio Dynamite
Tighten Up Vol. '88
Columbia

Watching the individual members of the Clash pursue their separate destinies can be a confusing hobby, full of contradictions, leaps forward, steps backward and the occasional welcome crossing of paths. A decade on from "White Riot," "Stay Free" and "London's Burning," Mick Jones still sings about his Notting Hill home and his Brixton birthplace, but now with anger at seeing them overrun by yuppies. His ex-Clash stormtrooper-in-arms Joe Strummer opposes this invasion of wealth too, taking his band on an anarchist's club tour of the U.K. under the slogan "Rock Against the Rich." Jones merely confines his antagonism to his lyrics—happy otherwise to kit his band out in dinner jackets on the back sleeve of Tighten Up (the front, incidently, being a painting by Clash bassist Paul Simonon) and for the video of "Just Play Music," showing clips of B.A.D. in sports stadiums. Therein lies the root of why Strummer and Jones can never easily work together again, for while the former fights his wealth and success every inch of the way, the latter feels compelled to take his message to the largest audience possible.

Jones has more than just his Clash past to live up to. With their groundbreaking 1985 debut, This Is . . . , Big Audio Dynamite set a blueprint for the fusion between hip hop and rock.

For Tighten Up Vol. '88 Jones and Co. have abandoned much of the distinctive sampling and hip hop, favoring straightforward dance-floor rock while still grabbing at a hatful of influences, and have emerged with the kind of incomplete and completely inspired record one usually expects only from the likes of Prince.

Comparisons to the Purple One are not without justification. The production on Tighten Up is, by late '80s standards, sloppy: the voice buried back in the mix, the drums loud but unclear, the songs merging as though thrown together one stoned Sunday afternoon. And in that refusal to bow to the standards demanded by rock radio, B.A.D. have declared their independence and coveted their niche in a marketplace that badly needs them. Such an unfussed mix demands repeated listening before its qualities shine through. But when they do, it's like gold emerging from the mud. "Esquerita" is the fastest and most melodic. The nostalgic odes "The Battle of All Saints Road" and "Tighten Up Vol. '88" are the most varied, choosing to mix in reggae, calypso and even "Duelling Banjos" between them. In "Rock Non Stop (All Night Long)" and "Just Play Music!" Jones reserves his right to simplicity and, in the appalling lyrics to "2000 Shoes" and "Funny Names," abuses it.

I hope compact disc sales of Tighten Up Vol. '88 are low. It has nothing to do with musical clarity, high-tech or after-dinner debate; it has everything to do with a streetwise hybrid of styles and the naive rebel rock refusal to grow old. I look forward to hearing it pounding from ghettoblasters, competing against the sounds of the city, on streetcorners worldwide.

—Tony Fletcher