Big Audio Dynamite

With Big Audio Dynamite, Mick Jones took the mixing of styles he had experimented with in the Clash to adventurous extremes, creating a rock-reggae-house-hip-hop fusion ahead of its time. B.A.D. was one of the first British bands to sample and mix club and rock music, prefiguring such groups as EMF and the Farm.

Just over a year after he was kicked out of the Clash by Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon [see the Clash entry] because they wanted the band to return to its "punk roots," Jones bounced back with an unlikely combo featuring filmmaker/DJ Don Letts and former Basement 5 bassist Leo Williams. The group played a series of dates in 1984 in France, opening for U2 and the Alarm, before adding keyboardist Dan Donovan. On This Is Big Audio Dynamite, B.A.D. programmed a swirl of sound effects and audio vérité collage, including a running motif of dialogue from such movies as A Fistful of Dollars. Jones sang about the kind of political issues he had in the Clash on such songs as “Medicine Show,” “E=MC2,” and “The Bottom Line,” but the emphasis was on dancing and rocking. B.A.D. polished its hybrid further on No. 10 Upping St., which was produced and written by Jones with his old Clash mate Joe Strummer and featured the college radio hit “C’mon Every Beatbox.”

Tighten Up Vol. 88, featuring the single “Just Play Music,” had barely been released when Jones caught chicken pox in 1988 from his daughter and nearly died. He spent nine months recuperating. The acid-house-inspired Megatop Phoenix was a spiritual rebirth for Jones; the album was dedicated to his grandmother, whose death in 1989 was even more traumatic to the singer than his own brush with mortality. Jones had found in the rave scene a musical movement whose energy reminded him of punk. Unfortunately, the rest of the band wasn’t as interested in the new style, and they and Jones subsequently parted ways. Letts, Williams, and Roberts formed Screaming Target, while Donovan joined Sisters of Mercy.

Jones formed B.A.D. II in 1990 with three young musicians who shared his passion for raves and soccer, including former Sigue Sigue Sputnik drummer Chris Kavanagh. (Though DJ Zonka guested on 1991’s The Globe, he didn’t become an official member of the group until after its release.) In England they released an eight-song disc called Kool-Aid, as well as a live album, Ally Pally Paradiso, that was packaged like a bootleg DJ record, white label and all.

On The Globe B.A.D. II explored systems, techno, and ambient music. The album also featured an acoustic ballad, an orchestral reprise, and the single “Rush” (#32), a techno rocker that sampled the Who’s “Baba O’Riley.” The song was released as a B side to “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” when the Jones-penned Clash tune became a #1 U.K. single in 1991 after being used in a Levi’s ad. Touring heavily behind the album, including opening for U2 on the U.S. Zoo TV Tour and playing with PiL on the 1992 MTV 120 Minutes Tour, B.A.D. II mixed rock-concert staging with a clubby environment, playing extended versions of songs and highlighting DJ Zonka’s role. With the same lineup (plus keyboardist/coproducer Andre Shapps), the band returned as Big Audio in 1994, releasing Higher Power. The album also featured noted producer Arthur Baker (“Planet Rock”) on one track.

In 1995 Jones and company reassumed their original Big Audio Dynamite moniker, jumped record labels, and released F-Punk, an album that infused the group’s beat-wise sound with Clash-like guitar punk. The record also included a cover of David Bowie’s “Suffragette City.” The same year, Sony issued Planet B.A.D., a hits collection spanning the band’s entire career.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)