Big Audio Dynamite [1995] Planet BAD - Greatest Hits

[01] The Bottom Line
[02] E=MC2
[03] Medicine Show
[04] C'mon Every Beatbox
[05] V. Thirteen
[06] Sightsee M.C.!
[07] Just Play Music!
[08] Other 99
[09] Contact
[10] Free
[11] Rush
[12] The Globe
[13] Looking For A Song
[14] Harrow Road
[15] I Turned Out A Punk



amg: Culling together tracks chosen from a decade's (and seven albums') worth of material, Planet BAD serves as a focused, well-chosen compilation of Mick Jones' post-Clash outfit. Although neither as critically or commercially successful as the Clash, Big Audio Dynamite's blend of rock and dance music, with a generous dose of samples, was a fixture on college radio in the mid- to late '80s with tracks like "E=MC2," "The Bottom Line," and "C'mon Every Beatbox" (all included here). The band even managed to make a foray onto the U.S. Top 40 charts in 1992 with the infectious "Rush." With his place already secure in rock annals, Jones' work with BAD was much more lighthearted, but it cannily anticipated the influence electronics and technology would have on music. Despite the dated feel of some of Planet BAD, it's also undeniable that the band was a more interesting venture than it was sometimes given credit.
(amg 9/10)

Big Audio Dynamite [1991] The Globe

[01] Rush
[02] Can't Wait - Live
[03] I Don't Know
[04] The Globe
[05] Innocent Child
[06] Green Grass
[07] Kool-Aid
[08] In My Dreams
[09] When The Time Comes
[10] The Tea Party



amg: The Globe marked the beginning of the second chapter in Mick Jones' Big Audio Dynamite venture and their biggest commercial success in the U.S. With Jones the only member remaining onboard, The Globe is the sound of a reinvigorated BAD, with the engaging "Rush" becoming a surprise Top 40 hit. There are plenty more worthy tracks, including the buoyant "Can't Wait/Live," the title song (which also charted), and the poignant "Innocent Child," which makes good use of a sample from Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight." The songwriting is some of Jones' strongest in some time, and The Globe was possibly the strongest effort of Big Audio Dynamite (in any incarnation) and certainly their best work since their debut.
(amg 8/10)

Big Audio Dynamite [1985] This Is Big Audio Dynamite

[01] Medicine Show
[02] Sony
[03] E=MC2
[04] The Bottom Line
[05] A Party
[06] Sudden Impact!
[07] Stone Thames
[08] Bad



amg: Elbowed out of the Clash, Mick Jones responded forcefully with Big Audio Dynamite, a modernist audio-terrorist outfit whose 1985 debut, This Is Big Audio Dynamite, seemed all the more futuristic when compared to Joe Strummer’s reductionist retro rejiggering of the Clash on Cut the Crap. Strummer may have been intent on shedding every experimental element of the Clash’s prime, but Jones, in collaboration with longtime friend filmmaker Don Letts, picked up where Sandinista! left off, anchoring BAD in dance and rap, building the group’s debut on layers of samples and drum machines. As is often the case, what was once forward-looking seems inextricably tied to its time in retrospect and the clanking electro rhythms, Sergio Leone samples, chicken-scratch guitars, bleating synths, and six-minute songs of This Is Big Audio Dynamite evoke 1985 in a way few other records do. Nevertheless, BAD’s boldness remains impressive, even visionary, pointing toward the cut-n-paste masterpieces of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and since Jones did not abandon his innate gift for hooks — if anything, he found ways to create rhythmic hooks as well as melodic ones — it’s quite accessible for an album that is, at its core, avant-rock. [Legacy’s 2010 double-disc expansion of This Is Big Audio Dynamite remasters the original eight-track LP and adds a second 12-track CD. Befitting BAD’s futuristic dance bent, almost all of these are 12" remixes of the album’s singles — “Medicine Show,” “E=MC2,” and “The Bottom Line” — including no less than four previously unreleased mixes — and there’s also the outtake “Electric Vandal,” plus the B-sides “Albert Einstein Meets the Human Beatbox” and “This is Big Audio Dynamite,” with every last one of these 12 songs extending the modernist sampledelia of the album proper.]
(amg 8/10)