#421/1056
October 1985
Big Audio Dynamite
This is...Big Audio Dynamite
Genre: Post Punk
5 out of 5
Highlights:
Medicine Show
E=MC2
The Bottom Line
Sudden Impact
Annnnnnd…..
Punk is dead.
When I was a kid I loved the early Clash albums. The first self titled was a roar. The follow up, Give ‘em Enough Rope was a worthy successor and London Calling was, well, maybe one of the best of the decade. It was no secret that London punks were hanging around clubs, listening to DJ Don Letts spin reggae records and incorporating that sound into their music. Sandinista had a ton of it as did the predecessor EP, Black Market Clash. “Armagideon Time” was spun non-stop in my room for an entire summer. “Bankrobber/Robber Dub”, “Pressure Drop”…and then their breakthrough smash hit, “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”. It really should have been no surprise that Mick Jones would hook up with Letts and form a musical project.
This is that project.
It is The Clash, Phase 2. Strummer was out of step with the times at this point.
I write this like I knew it at the time and am just a reporter but that’s not the case.
Quite the opposite, really. I felt abandoned by The Clash with Combat Rock. I missed “Career Opportunities”, “Clash City Rockers”, “White Riot” but I also loved “Wrong ‘em Boyo” and the aforementioned Black Market. For some reason the MTV hits were a bridge too far.
Looking back on it, though, this is as revelatory, revolutionary as Duck Rock or Stop Making Sense. it’s the logical next step in the evolution of punk.
A pissed off punk, angry that his preferred rage-fueled group had gone completely soft rejected this out of hand. But I was wrong. It was the 15 year old younger brother who got it. And that kid would grow up to be the first generation to embrace rap and hip hop and send that into the stratosphere.
They were correct.
Punk had run it’s course. “Please Kill Me” illustrates that in sad and stark terms.
But that book just ends where punk ends. It doesn’t explain that punk transformed, that it HAD to transform as all things do to survive. It had to become something different.
Among other things, it became this.
And this is excellent.
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