"Dynamite." Record Mirror, 26 Oct. 1985, p. 4.

Dynamite LP

Big Audio Dynamite release their debut album This Is Big Audio Dynamite on November 1, and they've also lined up a tour. They kick off at Leeds Warehouse on November 14, followed by Manchester International on the 15th, Leicester Polytechnic on the 16th, Birmingham Triangle on the 17th, Nottingham Rock City on the 21st, Sheffield Leadmill on the 23rd, and Kentish Town Forum on the 28th.

There have been some developments in the Mick Jones vs Clash legal story. Mick and his lawyer are denying they’re trying to stop The Clash using the name The Clash. Instead, they’re just trying to sort out some money problems.

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Reid, Jim. “Big Audio Dynamite: This Is Big Audio Dynamite.” Herald Express, 23 Dec. 1985, p. 9.

BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE – This Is Big Audio Dynamite (CBS 26714)

By Jim Reid – Herald Express, 23 December 1985

If anyone needed confirmation that it was Mick Jones who pulled the deftest strokes in The Clash, a straight stand-off between this, Big Audio Dynamite’s debut LP, and last week’s Cut The Crap should suffice.

It’s not that BAD are smashing down the frontiers of rock or anything, but they are at least of the year 1985. This Is Big Audio Dynamite is an album that acknowledges the more interesting developments of the last five years (all things electroed, rapped ’n’ scratched) and makes far more contemporary rock out of them than The Clash do — or, for that matter, U2, Echo, and so on — are capable of, which is something.

So are the songs – “The Bottom Line” (OK, a White Lines ripper), “Medicine Show” (multi-layered The Good, The Bad And The Ugly to a lazy melody), “E=MC²” and “BAD”. That’s half an album and it’s cast iron.

Jones always had a talent for fusing the hardest black music with The Clash’s rock polemic, and here, with his film track cut-ups and electro and funk affectations, he’s anchored his production to a smart mix of old and new.

The only trouble is, halfway through he seems to run out of ideas. The half-rapped, half-sung stream of punkishness becomes as tired as the continuous Spaghetti Western motifs.

Mick’s voice — part Anthony Newley, part Neil Tennant, part (I swear) Gaz Numan — gets hard to take at times, too.

In the final analysis, BAD have all the right ideas, but they’ve spread them a little too thin. Still, it’s early in the game. As a first dispatch, this’ll do nicely.

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By John McCready – NME, 16 November 1985, p. 33

Phew! Max Heaviosity

BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE – This Is Big Audio Dynamite (CBS 26714)

They always did remind me of Ted and Spike, Hi-De-Hi's hapless chalet mates. Jones walks in, wearing his funny Ghetto Blaster. He expects encouragement. Instead, Ted Strummer shakes his head in disbelief.

"No, no, Spike, you've got no reality. The First Rule of Comedy is: You Must Have Reality." Jones leaves in a huff and Joe's sense of comic reality leads him back to the garage, where he attempts to jump-start a nine-year-old rustbucket. But hey Joe, you can't drive a car with square wheels.

Jones takes his Funny Ghetto Blaster down to Ladbroke Grove, where he gets some big laughs. Chortling loudest is Super-Eight punk historian Don Letts. The chuma collaborate on some Serious Words which they then paste to the boniest of melodies. And all the time, Letts conceals a video camera in his hat. He is making a film that Jones knows nothing about. The film will be called Bloody. Awful. Documentary.

But in the meantime, what have we got for entertainment?

B.A.D. is an occasionally engaging mess which consists of eight dub-singed middle eights, stretched, at times, to transparency.

Jones the Guitar is surprisingly reticent and is assigned the task of plotting a route along which the tech tricks trickle. During tracks like “E=MC²” and the opening “Medicine Show”, it provides the illusion of songs being performed and masks the sound of switches being flicked.

Jones the Voice is all-pervading, mopping up even the biggest bleeping mess with an endearing tunelessness.

Letts adds soundtracks, scratches, and snatches of film dialogue, which often come in handy as matchsticks for keeping tired ears open. Leo Williams, Greg Roberts, and Dan Donovan (bass, drums, and keyboards) help prevent the whole thing from breaking into hundreds of indulgent pieces and give BAD a sturdy, contemporary edge.

BAD will sound just dandy on Saturday Superstore, for it’s in the lyric department that the sleeves have really been rolled up. We see Mick, arriving at an International Trouble Spot. He makes a few notes along the lines of “cor blimey, wot a rotten world” and rides off into the sunset, his Walkman firmly back in place.

At times, this BAD travelogue turns the world and its problems into a well-meaning pop video script with “I’ve been everywhere, man” observations on South Africa (“A Party”), Japan (“Sony”), and The World In General (“The Bottom Line”). Back home, the AIDS scare gets some clumsy attention with lines like:

“No time for social kissing, you’ll hardly raise a smile / When you think what you’ve been missing, iron undies back in style…”

I hope we’re meant to laugh...

Big Audio Dynamite — sad, not bad.

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Roberts, Chris. “Big Audio Dynamite: This Is Big Audio Dynamite.” Melody Maker, late 1985, p. [unknown].

BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE – This Is Big Audio Dynamite (CBS 26714) ★★★¾

By Chris Roberts – Melody Maker, late 1985

For better or worse (I’m indecisive), this isn’t just England. The world set to muzak, east and west over rap ’n’ roll, a big, big, big culture clash. It’s not a bad idea at all, and the execution is strong, fast and clean.

Politics/polemic/polygraphy aside, BAD music is “Best Of The Raspberries” courting “Aah... The Name Is Bootsy, Baby!” It inspires legs and hips to narcissism and its sharp sense of humour negates the antipathy we “flash little twerps” tend to feel towards stern Clash-associated product.

“Stone Thames” proclaims:

“Now that sex is death / Better lead a boring life.”

Mick Jones seems (and to seem is probably enough here) well stocked-up on ideas and post-wild style.

“The Magnificent Seven” is a strident four, Don Letts finds a new (happy) medium, spaghetti westerns are viewed in 3D, the guitar knows its place — it’s funky and basic beneath the alternately jolly and cloying effects.

The lyrics throughout are prime cut-ups. “Medicine Show” beats the door down, but the outstanding equation is “E=MC².” A tribute to the mental jungleland of Nic Roeg, it’s an irresistible and subversively slinky chant/stomp, with voyeuristic perceptions of amusing clarity. If it’s never a single, someone, somewhere is stupid.

Maybe not the biggest bang in history, but BAD have succeeded in coasting over deep waters without excessive pageantry. Side two tails off, but I’ll be grinning to “E=MC²” for months.

Cut the rap — the (work) horses are on the track. They’re getting there.

BAD: High Noon in Hillingdon

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Smith, Will. “Big Audio Dynamite – This Is Big Audio Dynamite.” [Unknown publication], late 1985, p. [unknown].

BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE – This Is Big Audio Dynamite (CBS)

By Will Smith – late 1985

It is, of course, nothing of the sort. But those of us who’d been expecting the very worst example of preconceived, pretentious bombast are pleasantly surprised.

Who would have blamed us, judging by the dubious pose of the press photos and album cover, on which Jones stands, legs astride, stetson tilted over forehead, threateningly clutching a few sticks of the explosive stuff like a long-lost member of The Dirty Dozen. It’s too ridiculous to be entirely serious and, to my relief, Jones hasn’t decided to take on Mike Peters as meat-headed mercenary.

Instead, what we’re actually treated to directly contradicts the image and doesn’t even attempt to be the magniloquent, gluttonous vacuum for every instrumental device available that it suggests. I mean — there’s not even a trace of brass.

In fact, I’d never have believed Jones was capable of such a composed, impassive record. Juggling with all manner of demanding rhythm tracks, percussion, a healthy dose of keyboards, and the merest hint of guitar, this remarkably temperate workout in soft funk, rap and reggae provides the back-beat for too many clever audio effects.

The opening “Medicine Show” is a sprawling reggaefied rap featuring some wonderfully amusing bum-notes, gun-firing effects, and snatches of a baffling voice-over bearing no immediately apparent relevance to a song that ridicules a world of gullible hypochondriacs.

Jones is obviously attempting to move on (and certainly up from the feeble reminder of a Clash album that was Combat Rock), but he still vaguely refers to the more progressive Clash in “Ghetto Defendant” and “Death Is A Star.”

Clap-tracks, beat-boxes and mechanical keyboards litter the eight tracks, but the funk mobility of “Sony”, for example, is still so slow, it’s impossible to dance to “The Magnificent Seven” at half speed.

Lyrically, B.A.D. is exhaustive (the average length of each track works out at approximately 52 minutes, and there’s few instrumental breaks), and far more impressive.

Jones has a theory, you see, that life is but a spaghetti western, and, with tongue planted firmly in cheek and sense of irony intact, the humour — something The Clash were never given a great deal of credit for — is gently mocking.

Depicting life as a real comedy of errors, “Bad” broadcasts just how unfortunate it can be, and pursues an amusing rhyming pattern along the way:

“How come that everything you see is bad? / But before I realised / Hit by a truck and paralysed — that’s bad / A golden opportunity — claim my insurance policy... / Cop on wheels is Ironside / Eat, sleep, work 9 to 5 / Reagan won in a landslide / Which brings us back to Rawhide.”

Mick Jones hasn’t come up with the breast-beating chant of an album I expected — and for that, I’m thankful.

There’s no preaching here, no rabble-rousing calls for revolution, just some tidy little observations sent our way in a distinct cloak of humour.

Although Big Audio Dynamite aren’t about to bring down the Houses of Parliament, they’re nonetheless interesting, and definitely worth 45 minutes of your time.

— Will Smith

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