Last Thursday's 1985 Big Audio Dynamite song- Sony from the debut album This Is Big Audio Dynamite- sent me back to the rest of that album and to the extras that came with the singles, the 12" mixes and B- sides. I remembered that the 2009 double CD re- issue came with a studio outtake, a song that didn't make This Is Big Audio Dynamite's final cut, Electric Vandal...
Don Letts on vocals, some lovely African highlife guitar lines, clattering drums and percussion and a la la la la la chorus part. It could have easily sat beside the songs on side two- A Party, Sudden Impact!, Stone Thames and BAD- without any problem and without causing an issue with vinyl running times. Maybe Mick didn't like it or maybe it was held back for a B-side and then never used. Who knows. Anyway, four decades later, it's a BAD deep cut worth hearing.
In 1990 Aztec Camera released their single Good Morning Britain, Roddy Frame's state of the nation address looking at the four corners of the UK after ten years of Thatcherism. The song was so like a BAD song in style that he told Mick, 'you will either want to sing on it or sue me'. The pair wrote it together within three hours of a conversation they had in the canteen of a London recording studio. Mick sings backing vox, the response lines to Roddy's calls. They must have had a go the other way round to because this version, unreleased officially, exists...
The four verses give a snapshot of the UK in 1990, Scotland and the Scots need for devolution, ten years of an English government they never voted for, Northern Ireland and the Troubles, Wales and population decrease and holiday homes, and then England...
'From the Tyne to where to the Thames does flow
My English brothers and sisters know
It’s not a case of where you go
It’s race and creed and color
From the police cell to the deep dark grave
On the underground’s just a stop away
Don’t be too black, don’t be too gay
Just get a little duller'
The 1990s and beyond would see progress in many areas of life- improved attitudes towards minorities, greater equality, much wider acceptance of homosexuality and disability. The backlash we've been going through since 20XX (when? 2012? 2016?) is in full swing, people emboldened to say things they wouldn't have even a few years ago, overt racism and discrimination once again a feature of public life. Depressing. Roddy's words don't even need an update in some ways, it's still 'race and creed and colour'. And Roddy's message in the chorus rings still true too, that these things are still worth standing up for- 'The past is steeped in shame/ But tomorrow's fair game/ For a life that's fit for living/ Good morning Britain'. It's the optimism of 1990 that has taken a battering.
Back in November 1985 Big Audio Dynamite released their debut album, This Is Big Audio Dynamite. It's a superb album, pioneering, progressive and modernist, Mick Jones and his new gang (Don Letts, Greg Dread, Leo Williams and Dan Donovan) embracing sampling and drum machines, synths and FX, Mick moving on from The Clash at the crest of a wave. It's only eight songs and the big three singles overshadow the rest a little- E=MC2, Medicine Show and The Bottom Line. Recently I've been playing this song a lot, the album's second song, something about it striking a chord in early 2026...
Ultra- modern, orchestral synth sounds and whooshes, keyboard stabs and clattering drum machine- it's very mid- 80s. Samples are dropped in and out- there are screeching sounds, horses whinnying, a snatch of opera, 808 percussion breakdowns and Mick's rapid fire lines and West London accent...
Sony is a celebration of Japan in the 80s, its culture and manufactured goods- 'Hi- tech sex and wireless sets...microchip and solid state'- and also Japan's relationship with the west- 'The West don't learn from history/ Doomed to repeat it endlessly/ We put the past onto Fuji/ And we erase it totally'. The part early on when Mick sings, 'Western girls at Lexington Queen/ Prettiest girls I've ever seen', refers to a Tokyo nightclub near the Ropponghi crossing, a hangout for Tokyo's rich, famous and glamorous citiznes, pop stars, models and aspiring celebrities.
Sony is a rush, B.A.D. totally on it, enjoying making music, free from pressure and in love with technology and possibility. They were also in love with remixes, extended mixes, versions and dubs...
Back in February as part of my Soundtrack Saturday series I wrote abut Joe Strummer and his songs for the soundtrack to the Alex Cox film Walker. Joe's soundtrack work in the 80s and 90s requires further posts- both Sid And Nancy and Permanent Record benefited from bespoke Strummer solo songs and Joe contributed to other soundtracks too, Grosse Pointe Blank in 1997 and Black Hawk Down in 2001.
But today's post isn't a Joe Strummer post, it's a Mick Jones post. Coincidentally, Mick celebrated his 70th birthday this week, two days on 26th June- belated happy birthday Mick!
After splitting from The Clash in 1983 Mick formed Big Audio Dynamite and Mick's love of film formed a big part of the B.A.D. sound and world- the Spaghetti Western samples in Medicine Show and the entire lyric to E = MC2 was a tribute to director Nic Roeg (see my post about Performance also from February this year). Don Letts and Mick Jones were film obsessives and film references pepper the B.A.D. back catalogue.
In 1990 the original Big Audio Dynamite line up of Mick, Don, Dan Donovan, Leo Williams and Greg Dread recorded their final song together, Free, for the soundtrack of a film called Flashback. I've seen Flashback, we rented it on VHS at some point on an evening with nothing to do in 1990. Flashback was directed by Frank Amurri and stars Dennis Hopper and Kiefer Sutherland. Hopper is a 60s anarchist/ hippie who has been on the run for twenty years, accused of disconnecting Republican Vice President Spiro Agnew's train carriage. Kiefer Sutherland plays an FBI agent who has apprehended Hopper and has to take him back across the USA for trial. It's an action/ adventure/ comedy. As the unlikely duo make their way back to Washington it becomes clear that Sutherland's FBI agent character was raised in a hippy commune and used to go under the name Free. Hopper is partly playing a reprisal of his character from Easy Rider but two decades down the line- I've only seen the film once and it seemed entertaining enough at the time and if anyone can play a 60s survivor with a screw loose in 1990 it's Dennis Hopper.
B.A.D.'s song Free was only available on the soundtrack to the film (until it appeared on a CD compilation called Planet B.A.D. in 1995). There are two versions...
The Club Mix is seven minutes long and filled with acid house enthusiasm, a sampled voice opening the track saying, 'it should be kickin' in about now. Synths, big 1990 Italo piano chords, stuttering voices, and then Mick's vocal. The Club Mix spirals on and on, more samples from the film, more synths and acid house and then Hopper's character Huey saying, 'once we get out of the 80s the 90s are gonna make the 60s look like the 50s'.
Free was a Jones/ Dan Donovan co- write. The LP Version is more song based, with extra verses and more flow.
Flashback's soundtrack contained a mix of 60s legends and late 80s/ dawn of the 90s artists- Edie Brickell and R.E.M. rub shoulders with Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, Flesh For Lulu with Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat and Steppenwolf. Dylan's version of People Get Ready, a Curtis Mayfield cover, hasn't appeared anywhere else. The film (but not the soundtrack) contained a two more Big Audio Dynamite songs- The Bottom Line and C'Mon Every Beatbox.
The Bottom Line is one of Mick Jones' best songs, one of B.A.D.'s best. It was remixed for the film, Mick's melody and invention remaining intact but in truth its not the equal of the 1985 version, the 12" mix being the definitive take of the song.
After the original B.A.D. line up split, Mick carried on recruiting a new band and renaming them B.A.D. II. They re- recorded Free as Kickin' In for their Kool Aid album which was later reworked and re- released as The Globe. I think Mick was making it up as he went along at this point. Dan left shortly after. B.A.D. II have some really good moments- The Globe's title track for one, Rush for another.
In 1993 Mick and B.A.D. found their way onto the soundtrack to a film called Amongst Friends, a low budget New Jersey mobster/ friendship film directed by Rob Weiss. But that's a story for another Saturday.
Another Sunday mix of edits to follow the one from two weeks ago (here). The first one was quite thumpy. This one is more dubbed out, more blissed out and laid back, more drifty, featuring a similar and familiar cast of edit- creators. There's plenty of material unused sitting in my downloads folders too so volume three is only a matter of time.
The Los Lopez edit of The Jesus And Mary Chain's 9 Million Rainy Days first came my way well over a decade ago, 2013 I think, Jim and William's misanthropy/ existential despair set to an electronic throb. 'As far as I can tell/ I'm being dragged from here to hell/ All my time in hell is spent with you', Jim mutters (on 1987's Darklands originally). This is the diametric opposite of the feelings and sentiment expressed in the widescreen, gloriously romantic, panoramic love that propels the fourth track in this mix.
Jesse Fahnestock is 10:40. He recut a very early Verve song, One Way To Go (a B-side to the Wigan quartet's first release, the magnificent sky scraping northern psychedelia of All In The Mind). Jesse looped it up and set the controls for the heart of the dub. On hearing it I said to Jesse he should re- edit all of the early Verve's music as dub extravaganzas- A Dub In Heaven. I'm still waiting. His edit of The Beta Band's Inner Meet Me came out on Paisley Dark in 2021, a song from The Patty Patty Sound, one of those unearthly EPs The Beta Band released in 1997/ 1998 when they looked like the future of leftfield music, a completely new way of doing things.
Coyote's edit of Nocturn was one of my favourite records of 2022, a swooning, deep sea dive into the cosmos. Or something. Their Magic Wand edit releases, vinyl only, are always top drawer. I love the way it starts off with one beat and then switches tempo, like the speed selector being suddenly flipped from 33 to 45. Nocturn was on Kate's 2005 album Aerial. 'We stand in the Atlantic/ We become panoramic/ We tire of the city/ We tire of it all/ We long for that just something more'. Yep, I know that feeling.
Steppers Rock came out on the recently revived Eclectics label, based in Bournemouth and the start of what promises to be one to watch.
Totem Edits are the work of Leo Zero and Justin Deighton, a weekly treasure trove. Last week they dropped a Balearic/ cowboy stomp edit of Big Audio Dynamite's Medicine Show (an all timer of a song for me). Air (from a week earlier) is John Martyn's Solid Air recut beautifully. I've been in a John Martyn phase recently, Solid Air and One World. By all accounts a terrible and flawed person but the music...
Edit To The Siren performs the possibly sacrilegious feat of taking This Mortal Coil's Song To The Siren and turns it into a dubbed out/ late night Balearic treat. The work of In The Valley. Wobbly.
Today's Sunday mix comes from the south of England and from Grant Williams who runs the independent label Eclectics which has recently re- entered the fray after a hiatus of a couple of years. The recent edit of The Residents (featured in my edits mix last Sunday, part two to come soon) can be found at Eclectics Bandcamp along with a, yep, eclectic range of releases including a James Bright EP, The Outside, that comes with Hardway Bros remixes, Warmth by Cole Odin and a Coyote release from 2017.
Grant hosts his Love Under Will radio show at 1BTN and last Sunday broadcast a two hour mix that is up at Mixcloud for those of us playing catch up. The two hours begins with Chris Rotter and his Bad Meat Club and the epic twenty three minute version of 86'ed that Chris recorded for Isaac when he died in November 2021 and then drifts off with some gorgeous electronic music- cosmic, ambient, space disco, dub and downtempo with tunes from Rhythm Doctor, Assab, Chris & Cosey and more.
The Totem Edits service run by Leo Zero and Justin Deighton threw another top class edit out into the ether on Friday, this one called Medicine, an eight minute edit of Big Audio Dynamite back in 1985 that shifts Mick, Don and the B.A.D. boys towards a dusty western stomp, appropriately enough given the sampling and lyrical content of the original and its all star video. Your Medicine is here.
Don Letts is a bit of a various artists compilation guru- the man who introduced the punks to reggae, who ran Acme Attractions clothes shop on King's Road, who filmed The Clash and then became integral to Big Audio Dynamite, who managed The Slits, and who made The Punk Rock Movie and Westway To The World. He put together two compilations for Heavenly back at the start of the 21st century (the Dread Meets B- Boys Downtown one I featured a couple of Saturdays ago and his Dread Meets Punk Rockers Uptown which pulled together the 7" singles he played at The Roxy between December 1976 and April 1977).
In 2021 Don compiled an album for the Late Night Tales label and series. Late Night Tales is a rich seam of V.A. compilations in itself. Don's Late Night Tales, Version Excursion, is a tribute to the sound systems and sound clashes, to the music of Jamaica, the Jamaican diaspora and bass culture. It's also a compilation with a sense of humour, a celebration of the unusual cover version, an alternate history of rock 'n' roll with a dub perspective.
The Beach Boys' Caroline No is for many the apex of mid 60s pop, the heartbreaker that closes Pet Sounds, the song that seems to foretell the end of innocence, the Kennedy assassination and the death of the American Dream, the end of the 60s, Vietnam, Nixon, Altamont, anything you want really... Maybe it is just the words of a man disappointed that his girlfriend has cut her hair short. 'Where did your long hair go? Where is the girl I used to know?'. It's not a song that naturally suggests a Lover's Rock cover but Zoe Devlin Love and Tim Hutton make it their own.
Sixteen Tons, a coalminer's song written by Merle Travis but made best known in the Tennessee Ernie Ford version from 1955. It was a Clash favourite, a tour bus favourite and gave its name to a 1980 tour. 'You move sixteen tons and what do you get?/ Another day older and deeper in debt'. This dub cover is by OBF.
On his Late Night Tales Don finds the sound system spirit all over the place- Love Will Tear Us Apart, Black Box Recorder's cover of Uptown Top Ranking, covers of White Rabbit and Lost In The Supermarket- and also in this by the man himself as The Rebel Dread, a cover of Big Audio Dynamite's E=MC2 with Gaudi and Emily Capell, with the film samples re- created, and Mick's song turned into a skank...
I’m really
not a very patriotic person at all, it being as Oscar Wilde said, 'the last refuge of the scoundrel'. The markers of patriotism have always felt
like nonsense to me- the flag (either of them, the cross of St. George and the
Union flag), the national anthem, the monarchy, the Little England attitudes, the
English exceptionalism, all of it does nothing for me. It makes no sense at all
that someone who was born in Carlisle, Dover or Chester is in some way better
than someone born a few miles away in Wrexham, Calais or Dumfries. Pride in one's country and it's achievements is I suppose OK to an extent but that pride often tips over into nationalism and exceptionalism and has a habit of hiding or ignoring some parts of a nation's history too.
Supporting
the England football team has always been tainted with all of the nonsense too. It's not necessarily the team's fault, they're partly just the vehicle for it. Tabloid controversies about whether the players are singing the national anthem
with enough ‘passion’. Songs about winning two world wars, ten German bombers and no surrender to the I.R.A.
Grown men dressed as crusader knights. The England band (thankfully now missing). Car flags and cheap red cross on white background bunting sagging in the summer rain. The booing by their own fans of players taking the knee to protest against racism. The deluge of racist messages that Bukayo Saka,
Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho received after missing their penalties in the 2021
Euro final. This was almost the last straw as far as I was concerned, ‘fans’ who would
have been dancing in the streets if the penalty kicks had been a few inches one
way or the other, taking to social media to racially abuse the young men who
were taking part in a game was sickening and reflective of the wider culture-
of Reform and UKIP, of Tory Little England politics, of the immigration narrative
that Farage and Johnson and others fuelled by the tabloid press have spewed
into British politics and English culture, of the nationalist nonsense that is
only ever a sentence away from racism and the 'I'm not racist but...' brigade.
The football team have dragged
me back in over the last four weeks. I've tried to remain a bit arm's length from it, not get too invested. I boycotted the Qatar World Cup, hardly saw any of it, so it passed me by completely. But there was a sweet pleasure in watching the England penalties against
Switzerland last Saturday, as five black and mixed race young men calmly slotted
home their penalty kicks, the first and second generation descendants of immigrants putting England into a Euro
semi- final. Where, as someone asked on social media after the match, are the racists
now? Another of those children of immigrants, Ollie Watkins, scored the winner on Wednesday night, in the last second of the last minute of normal time.
Tonight, England
play Spain in the final of Euro ’24 in Berlin. This is a major achievement, the second consecutive Euros final. Those
of us who grew up watching England in the 80s and 90s have seen little but failure
from England teams. Sometimes they have been truly awful- the Euros in ’88, ’92 and 2016, the World Cup in 2014.
Sometimes they’ve been massively overinflated and departed meekly beaten by clearly
better sides- tournaments in 2002, 2006, 2010, 2012. Sometimes they’ve been engulfed by (in)glorious failure
with a sense of injustice- Mexico ’86, France ’98. Sometimes they’ve not even qualified
for tournaments- 1994, 2008. Very occasionally they’ve pulled it together and almost but
not quite got to the final- 1990 and 1996. But on the whole, even if you can ignore the nationalist bluster that surrounds them, they've been not very good.
Recently
they’ve been better and if nothing else Gareth Southgate has changed the story
around the England team, blocked out ‘the noise’ as he puts it. I’ve learned to
limit my expectations of England. Reaching Euro finals twice in three years is something
no other England manager or team has done. Hopefully, maybe, they can go one step
further tonight and put to bed the endless burden of 1966 and all that.
This is a thirty five minute mix of songs about England with a couple of England football songs. I'm sure some of you won't go anywhere near it but I like to think of it as the antithesis of Three Lions.
Shuttleworth ft. Mark E. Smith: England's Heartbeat (Brazilian Ambush)
The Vermin Poets: England's Poets
Big Audio Dynamite: Union, Jack
New Order: World In Motion (Call The Carabinieri Mix)
Billy Bragg's A New England is his 1983 calling card, a song about being twenty two and looking for a new girl, wishing on space hardware, and life in the early 80s. I probably should have included Kirsty McColl's cover which in some ways is the definitive version. In 2002 Billy addressed a load of the flag, nationalism, immigration, tabloid press, racism and England football shirts in his song Half- English- this only occurred to me while writing this part of the post.
Something About England is from The Clash's 1980 album Sandinista!, a song that opens with the more resonant than ever lines, 'They say the immigrants steal the hub caps of respected gentlemen/ They say it would be wine and roses/ if England were for Englishmen again...' It's a truly great song, one where ick and Joe sing in character, Mick a young man leaving a bar and Joe an old man huddled in rags in a shop doorway. They then give us a history of the 20th century, war, depression, class struggle, disaster, all set to Clash punk/ music hall. 'Old England was all alone', they conclude.
A few years later, Mick and Topper both sacked, Joe recorded the final Clash album, Cut The Crap. The only song you really need from it is This Is England, the last great Clash song, Joe giving a state of the nation address, five years into Thatcher's government, economic depression and unemployment, with drum machines, guitars and chanting football crowds.
Care was Paul Simpson (who will be back at this blog soon) and Ian Broudie. In 1983 Paul formed Care after The Wild Swans split for the first time. Sad Day For England was the B-side to the 12" My Boyish Days, one of only a handful of releases by the pair before they split in 1985.
Black Grape's England's Irie was an unofficial Euro '96 song, a song that brought together Shaun Ryder, bez and Kermit with Keith Allen and Joe Strummer (and Strummer's only Top Of The Pops appearance). Shaun delivers several memorable lines, not least 'I'm spectating my wife's lactating/ It's a football thing'. I'm not sure it's aged particularly well but I thought I should include it.
Shuttleworth were a one off band of Mark E. Smith, Ed Blaney and Jenny Shuttleworth who recorded this song for England's adventures at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Apparently the FA approached him to do it (!) but then decided against having an official song so Mark put it out anyway. Mark wrote a few football related songs- Theme For Sparta FC is a classic- and on one occasion read the full time results on the BBC.
In the 2010 World Cup England were dreadful in the group stage, finishing second behind the USA. They lost the next game in the knock out round to Germany, 4- 1.
The Vermin Poets were one of Billy Childish's many, many groups. Their album, Poets Of England, came out in 2010, garage rock/ psyche pop. I don't think it's among Billy's best work but anything by Billy is worth paying at least some attention to.
Union, Jack was on Big Audio Dynamite's 1989 album Megatop Phoenix, their fourth album and the last made by the original line up. 'Make a stand/ Before you fall/ You country needs you/ To play football', Mick sings, slipping in lines the empire, pints of beer, a green and pleasant land, and all for one. A Mick Jones late 80s football song that tries to re- imagine the football song after some terrible 80s ones sung by England squads with perms, mullets and in leisure wear. Mick would find himself trumped a year later though...
World In Motion needs no introduction really- New Order, Keith Allen, John Barnes, the summer of 1990, Italia 90, a dire group stage, wins against Belgium and Cameroon and then ultimately disappointment, penalties and Germany. This version is an Andrew Weatherall and Terry Farley remix from the remix 12" that came out a week after the main one. New Order had wanted to reflect the zeitgeist of 1990 by calling the song E For England, a step too far for the FA. They had to settle for the chorus, 'love's got the world in motion'. The FA wanted it changed to 'we've got the world in motion' but New Order stood their ground and love it was.
Last week I floated the idea of imaginary albums, albums that could have/ should have happened but didn't- the pair I mused about were an imaginary Andrew Weatherall/ Sabres Of Paradise produced Sinead O'Connor and Jah Wobble album, building on the Visions Of You single, and also what might have happened had Andrew Weatherall actually gone on to produce The Fall in 1993, a meeting that went as far as the studio before there was a backing out. Today's imaginary album is going back to 1986 and the aftermath of The Clash.
This is what really happened.
Mick Jones was fired from The Clash in 1983 by Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon (and Bernie Rhodes, back as manager at Joe's insistence). Mick had become increasingly difficult to work with and there had bee major disagreements about the song selection and mixing of the album that became Combat Rock. Famously, Mick and Paul had a stand off for several hours about the level of the bass in Know Your Rights and their relationship broke down to the point where they weren't even speaking. Joe and Paul issued a statement saying Mick had drifted away from the original intention of the group and they would now pursue this without him. Joe and Paul recruited two new guitarists, Vince White and Nick Sheppard and drummer Pete Howard who'd replaced Terry Chimes, who'd replaced Topper Headon. The five man Clash went on to tour and record a much derided album called Cut The Crap (made mainly by Strummer and Rhodes- it's not all bad, the song This Is England is a genuine Strummer state- of- the nation classic, but much of the rest was done by Rhodes and doesn't add much to the band's back catalogue although some fan remixed versions have some merit). The Clash Mark 2's highlight was a busking tour. On getting home Strummer called it a day and the band broke up.
Mick Jones was kicked out of The Clash, the band he started in 1976, and set about proving Joe and Paul wrong. He formed TRAC (Top Risk Action Company) who then became Big Audio Dynamite. Some of Mick's songs for the first B.A.D. album were already written while he was in The Clash and the rest came quickly. Recorded by the new band- Mick with Don Letts, Greg Dread, Dan Donovan and Leo Williams- BAD's first album, This Is Big Audio Dynamite, is a modern, fun, genre- clash and sample- fest, packed with great tunes- The Bottom Line, e=mc2, Medicine Show, A Party and the rest, fusing rock, reggae, rap, and dance music. After that Mick moved quickly, writing songs for B.A.D.'s second album.
Joe was full of regret and self- loathing about the way The Clash had imploded, blaming himself for sacking Mick and for being (again) seduced by Bernie's talk. He hoped to make up with Mick and flew out to the Caribbean where Mick was staying. The legend has it that Joe cycled round the island looking for Mick, found him, presented him with some weed by way of apology and asked him to reform The Clash. Mick had no interest in reforming The Clash, B.A.D. was his future and he must have taken some pleasure at Joe's volte face. At some point Joe told Mick that the new B.A.D. songs were 'the worst thing I've ever heard'. Joe's retrenchment into three chord rock had characterised The Clash Mark 2. Mick was fusing the questing, experimental Clash of 1980- 81 with pop music and samples and he wanted to keep pushing forward. The two made up though and both Joe and Paul appeared in the Medicine Show video, the three former bandmates friends again.
Joe signed up for co- producing the next B.A.D. album and ended up co- writing several songs- Beyond The Pale, Limbo The Law, V. Thirteen, Ticket, and Sightsee M.C. Two more saw the light of day as bonus tracks on the U.S. CD release- Ice Cool Killer and The Big V (Ice Cool Killer is drum machine beats and Scarface samples. The Big V is a cooled down version of V. Thirteen).
The Strummer- Jones writing team was firing on all cylinders on No. 10 Upping Street. V. Thirteen is one of B.A.D.'s best songs, sleek and widescreen with a great Mick Jones lyric and vocal. Beyond The Pale is a crunchy, guitars and keys celebration of immigration with Joe on backing vocals. There are two songs further Strummer- Jones co- writes from this period. Love Kills (from Alex Cox's Sid And Nancy film) features an uncredited Mick Jones on guitar and backing vox and U.S. North, a song that sounds like a close cousin of love Kills, written in late '86 but not released until a posthumous Joe Strummer album a few years ago.
Mick kept going and in 1988 B.A.D. recorded and released their third album, Tighten Up Vol '88, and then the rave influenced Megatop Phoenix in 1989. Joe worked on the soundtracks for Walker and Straight To Hell, and went to L.A. and recorded his debut solo album, Earthquake Weather. Paul formed Havana 3 a.m. and released an album in 1991. The original B.A.D. line up broke up after Megatop Phoenix and Mick formed B.A.D. II.
But... this is what could have happened...
After No. 10 Upping Street and the success of the Strummer- Jones writing and production team, Mick and Joe could have closed ranks again and reformed their partnership. This could have been The Clash re- united. Joe probably would have done this, Mick would have been less keen, wanting to keep moving forward. Band re- unions weren't really a thing in the late 80s, not the way they are now. But if Mick had changed his mind some time in 1987, a new Strummer- Jones band could have formed and made a killer late 80s album. They could have brought Paul back on board. Poor Topper was deep into heroin addiction and driving a taxi- he appeared with Flowered Up in 1990 but then dropped off the map again.
The Strummer- Jones '88 album could have cherry picked the key songs from Tighten Up Vol. 88 and Earthquake Weather. A fully fired up partnership in the studio would have brought further new songs.
From Tighten Up Vol. 88 Mick's Other 99, a soaring, guitar- led song about doing the best you can, not being sucked into the rat race and sometimes accepting good enough is just that. The Battle Of All Saint's Road, a Jones- Letts co- write with banjo, reggae and a coming together of the Ladbroke Grove tribes, the rockers and the dreads. Just Play Music, 2000 Shoes and Applecart all pass muster and could all feature Mick and Joe swapping lines and singing together. The last thing the original B.A.D. line up recorded was Free, a song for the film Flashback (a Dennis Hopper and Kiefer Sutherland film adventure comedy about a aging on the run hippy and an FBI agent). A Mick and Joe version of Free would make the cut.
Joe's Earthquake Weather is an album cursed by muffled production, a weird mix and the sometimes unsympathetic and over the top playing of the band, L.A. rock musicians (a group Joe christened Latino Rockabilly War, which is a great name and could be the name of my imagined Joe and Mick band or album). But versions of those songs with Mick Jones playing and producing would lift them much higher. Gangsterville, Island Hopping and Sleepwalk are the obvious candidates, Leopardskin Limousines and Passport To Detroit maybe. The B- sides of the Island Hopping single include a lovely stripped down, swinging acoustic- ish version of the song re- titled Mango Street so we'll have that one too.
Joe had already contributed the mighty song Trash City to the soundtrack to a Keanu Reeves film called Permanent Record, a that song would open and adorn any late 80s Strummer- Jones album.
U.S. North could have been dragged from the vaults, its ten minute length trimmed a little. Paul could have come back and contributed something from Havana 3 a.m.'s album- this spaghetti western song perhaps...
If we're not careful we're heading back into double album territory, one of the straws that broke the Clash camel's back, but an imaginary single album, Mick and Paul co- writing and co- producing, playing and singing together, Mick back with Joe and Joe fully focussed, is a great What If? and could have been a very good (imaginary) album. They'd still have argued and fallen out again when Levi's came calling in 1991 of course. But that's The Clash.
The Clash, remixed, edited and sampled for a thirty three minute blast of Strummer/ Jones energy and invention for your Sunday morning delectation. Best played loud.
Davis Road Blues (Don Letts Culture Clash Radio Version)
In 1990 The Clash had a number one single eight years after they split up (for the purposes of this we'll take Mick being sacked from the band as the actual moment they split up even though the five man Clash rumbled on for two years with a largely unloved album and a busking tour that those involved seemed to enjoy). Should I Stay Or Should I Go went to number one and saw a surge in Clash related activity, one of which was the record company CBS reissuing Paul's 1979 song Guns Of Brixton in remixed form as Return To Brixton. The remixes of Return To Brixton, three of them on the 12", were done by DJ Jeremy Healy.
Edit: it occurs to me now that the re- issue/ remixes of Guns Of Brixton were in response to the bassline being sampled for Norman Cook's chart topping single Dub Be Good To Me as Beats International, number one in January 1990.
Dancing Not Fighting came out last year, a thumping, beat driven, high octane Jezebell release that samples Mick Jones screaming at bouncers in the film Rude Boy, trying to get them to stop beating up Clash fans. The band disowned the film by the time it came out but the live footage of the band is among the finest committed to tape by anyone, anywhere. Here they are in July 1978 doing (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais at the Glasgow Apollo.
Rock The Spectre is a Peza edit, what happens when the Strummer and Jones vocals from Rock The Casbah are played over Mystic Thug's Brocken Spectre (Mystic Thug is Tici Taci's Duncan Gray). What happens is you get the song completely recast in a new light, reborn, Mick and Joe's voices over a throbbing piece of slinky 2023 chug. Joe's vocal particularly shows he gave absolutely everything in the studio.
Magnificent Dub is a Leo Zero edit, the Magnificent Dance (a B-side to the Magnificent 7 single, released in 1981, inspired by the band's time in New York and Mick especially being taken with the brand new hip hop culture). Some of the vocals Leo throws into this edit are from the band playing live at Bonds, Times Square and various people having a go at the bassline ((played originally by Norman Watt- Roy when Simonon was out of town filming The Fabulous Stains). Leo also inserts some sections from the unreleased, unofficial Larry Levan version of Mag 7.
In 2005 when mash up culture was the big new thing a whole host of artists/ bedroom bootleggers threw everything they had at a completely remixed, re- edited and mashed up version of the album London Calling. The Clash found themselves (unofficially) rubbing shoulders with The Streets, Peaches, Vanilla Ice, Chuck D, Outkast and host of others sampled artists. It was massive fun. E-jitz took Mick's 1979 album track I'm Not Down and spliced it with the vocal from Boris Dlugosch's speed house track from 1997, Hold Your Head Up (vocal courtesy of Inaya Davis).
Davis Road Blues is a dub track by Prince Blanco with Mick's guitar from B.A.D.'s The Bottom Line and Joe's voice from a radio interview describing his first meeting with Mick and Paul that led to the formation of The Clash, a meeting that took place at 22 Davis Road, Shepherd's Bush (in a squat Paul shared with Sid Vicious and Viv Albertine).
Edit: the squat at 22 Davis Road has appreciated in value since the 1970s, as you'd expect. According to Rightmove 23 Davis Road was sold in 2018 for £480, 000 (that was just half the property, a ground floor two bedroom flat). Full houses on Davis Road, number 43 for example, go for around £840, 000 (2022 price). The 2020s version of Paul, Viv and Sidney must be living elsewhere.
On New Year's Day 2010 I started Bagging Area- which has made it very easy to remember when the blog's birthday is if nothing else. Today the blog enters its teenage years, thirteen years old. There are several songs titled for what is often seen as the unluckiest number.
Big Star's Thirteen from 1972 is a celebration of teenage love. 'Won't you let me walk you home from school', it begins, the ache and pain of young love perfectly captured by Alex Chilton and Chris Bell.
Big Audio Dynamite's V Thirteen is from 1987, co-written with Joe Strummer who also produced the album it came from (Number 10 Upping Street, according to Joe, the home of 'an alternative, funky Prime Minister'). V. Thirteen's lyrics take in all sorts of stuff, not least Little Jamie who writes 'V 13'- I've always assumed this means writes as in graffiti- my copy of the 12" came with a stencil for spraying V. 13 onto walls and other surfaces, still unused. V. Thirteen is one of B.A.D.'s finest moments.
Teenage Fanclub released an entire album titled Thirteen, released in 1992 following the flush of fame that Bandwagonesque brought. Inevitably it felt like a bit of a slump, the songs not quite up to par, many being fragments and leftovers from 1991/2. The experience of making it wasn't a happy one for the group, it dragged on and became hard work. Drummer Brendan O'Hare left after they toured the album. Time has been fairly kind to Thirteen I think, it sounds pretty good today, just not a great step on in any way. One of the key songs was 120 Minutes, a Raymond McGinley song, which the group recorded acoustically for their Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It EP, released in 1995
Andrew Weatherall's 2016 solo album Convenanza included a song called Thirteenth Night. The album was a wide ranging affair, spanning post- punk/ punk funk trumpets and featured Weatherall's vocals on many of the songs including references to writers Hans Fallada and Robert Walser (Fallada wrote Alone In Berlin, the true story of a German couple who leave a series of handwritten postcards around Berlin during the Nazi years attacking the regime and who then become involved in a deadly cat and mouse game with the Gestapo). Thirteenth Night was a slightly melancholic instrumental. For the remix album that followed- Consolamentum- Thirteenth Night was remixed by Andrew's Asphodell's bandmate and studio engineer Timothy J. Fairplay. The Asphodells' steam powered drum machine makes a welcome appearance.
Don Letts has compiled an album for the Late Night Tales series, a twenty one track dub excursion that pulls together all sorts of strands, strains and offshoots of dub, punk and post punk. Among the highlights are a bunch of cover versions. Capitol 1212 and Earl Sixteen cover Love Will Tear Us Apart, a dubbed out version of the song with a cool vocal and buckets of echo.
Wrongtown Meets The Rockers deconstruct The Clash's Lost In The Supermarket, bassline and FX, a snatch of melodica carrying the topline. The Easy Star All Stars break out the sitars for a very stoned version of Within You Without You. Gaudi and The Rebel Dread tackle Big Audio Dynamite's E=MC2, samples from Performance and a mangled, cut up vocal while the bassline prods and pushes Don's old band's song along.
Black Box Recorder's cover of Uptown Top Ranking, a Prince Fatty cover of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit (becoming Black Rabbit), Zoe Devlin Love's lovers rock take of The Beach Boys Caroline No and Yasushi Ide's version of Ain't No Sunshine further blur the boundaries, drawing wobbly lines between then and now. Matumbi and Dennis Bovell, Ghetto Priest, John Holt and Mad Professor all show up. None of this feels like a novelty or a joke, it's all part of a much greater whole, a celebration of the culture that has seeped from radios and Dansettes in the 60s and 70s to whatever device or platform you're using to listen to music at the tail end of 2021.
Back in 1985 Big Audio Dynamite released The Bottom Line, maybe their best song. Built around a stuttering bassline, a couple of vocal samples ('the horses are on the track'), some wonderful clanging chord changes from Mick, chorus and delay pedals used to the full, and a naggingly catchy lyric and vocal. Mick never sounded like he was having so much fun, celebrating the new found freedom BAD have given him- 'There's a new dance that's going around/ When the hits start flying you gotta get down... a dance to the tune of economic decline/ when you do the bottom line/ Nagging questions always remain/ Why did it happen and who was to blame... Even the Soviets are swinging away'
On the 12" the song extends for eight minutes forty five seconds and never feels too long. Mick and band break into the second half, the change pointed out by Mick when he sings 'We're gonna take you to/ We're gonna take you to/ We're gonna take you to... part two!' and then brings in a whole new section of verses and chants about Romeo and dancing in the face of nuclear annihilation-'We're not talking 'bout a third world war/ And who's not being fair/ were just saying they can drop the bomb and we don't even care...'
At the tail end of 1985 a band calling themselves The Clash released their sixth and final album, Cut The Crap. This version of the band, Clash Mk. II to some, was a post- Topper, post- Mick Jones version- Mick snarked that it took two guitarists to replace him following his unceremonious sacking by Joe and Paul. The two guitarists were Vince White and Nick Sheppard (Vince was actually Greg but re- christened by Paul Simonon who said Greg wasn't a rock 'n' roll enough name and threatened to quit). Drummer Pete Howard was the third unknown (replacing Terry Chimes who'd stepped in to replace Topper when they toured the States supporting Combat Rock and had chart hits, exposure and stadium gigs with The Who). The new version of The Clash had toured the west coast of the USA and were well received. Members of California punk bands have said the five man Clash were as good live as the original line up- but we can possibly take that with a small pinch of salt. If Paul had quit the group would have been over and maybe that would have been a neater ending, leaving Joe to lick his wounds and pour the songs he was writing into a solo album which is what Cut The Crap should have been. Defensive and angry Joe insisted the Clash Mk. II were going back to punk rock basics, cutting out the reggae and experimentation of Sandinista! and Combat Rock. Joe insisted anyone could write punk songs- despite the fact that almost all the music previously had been written by Mick. Joe, proving a point to Mick who had frozen the band's assets legally, wrote a song called We Are The Clash.
In early 1985 the new Clah went into the recoding studio with abut twenty songs written, ready to record. Bernie Rhodes was back in the manager's chair and had been instrumental in Mick Jones' sacking for 'rock star posturing'. With little money to play with Bernie booked a studio in West Germany and an engineer (Michael Fayne) with affordability in mind and also because he had experience using drum machines. Either Joe or Bernie (or both) had decided they'd employ drum machines in response to and compete with Mick's experimental drum machines and sampling in the early stages of Big Audio Dynamite. Strummer's new songs and the demos of them (This Is England, Three Card Trick, Sex Mad Roar) were promising and Joe wanted them recorded quickly and with the new group, guitars to the fore. Rhodes became convinced he was no the band's producer and was on the cusp of a new genre combining cut ups and samples, drum machines, electro and Joe's voice on top. Paul rapidly lost interest. Bernie bullied drummer Pete Howard in the studio. Bernie wanted football crowds and massed chants on backing vocals, a nod to the busking tour the five men did the year before. Joe and Bernie clashed and apart from This Is England, which everyone agreed was a keeper, and the only song in the studio that all five members really contributed to. Bernie took over and Joe let him. Bernie filled all twenty four tracks on each song, cluttering the album and muddying the sound, the two guitarists contributing twin Les Paul guitar parts, drum machines clattering away and chanting choruses competing with samples and dialogue from the TV. Paul doesn't appear on it at all except in the inner sleeve photo. The cover is awful, a picture postcard punk/ collage. The press pulled it to pieces, the fans agreed on the whole, the band didn't like it- in 1986 Joe said he hated it.
This Is England survived Cut The Crap, eventually re- admitted into a recent Clash compilation and Strummer himself claiming it as 'the last great Clash song'. But mainly what The Clash Mk. II proved was that Bernie had been a disaster and that Mick Jones was a/ the significant musical and song writing talent- Mick demonstrated this fully a month before the release of Cut The Crap with the debut B.A.D. album, a superb and easy sounding album full of drum machines, samples from films and catchy, relevant songs.
Earlier this year Gerald Manns took Cut The Crap to pieces and rebooted it. Many of the songs from the album were available on bootlegs in a form more as Joe intended, from gigs and demos and Gerald and other fans claimed a decent Clash album existed inside Cut The Crap. Gerald has taken whatever versions he can get hold of as inspiration painstakingly, ripped Joe's vocals from Cut The Crap, cleaned them up and then reconstructed the songs. De- Berniated them, as he puts it. The reconstruction involved recreating Pete Howard's drum tracks using a drum machine/ programme that sounds like a real drummer and then rebuilding the guitars himself, playing along to what he can glean from the album. Gerald has since put his versions of the songs from Cut The Crap on Youtube, a reimagined version of the album along the lines of what could have been released if the Strummer/ Simonon, White/ Shepperd/ Howard group had recorded them as a band. They're worth a listen if nothing else and show what could have been if Joe had held his nerve and kept Bernie out of the studio (or if Paul had left as he threatened to and surely wanted to given his lack of involvement in the album, his loyalty to Joe the only thing keeping him in the band. If that had happened Joe and The Clash had ended there and then, Joe might have recorded these as his solo debut. The whole album is on Youtube but I'll offer a few highlights.
Three Card Trick (Rebooted) rumbles nicely, Joe in good voice and the guitars slashing and burning, the sound of the 1985 five man Clash recreated at home.
The Dictator (Rebooted) is another winner retrieved from the original album, Joe's voice audibly from an inferior source but sunk into a two guitar, straight ahead, heads down, retro punk sound.
Ironically, This Is England (Rebooted) is the one that for me sounds least good, maybe because the version released in 1985 actually works and works well. This sounds smaller somehow and shows that drum machines and samples weren't necessarily the problem with Cut The Crap. I'll happily keep the original.
The rest of the album is out there, you can find it all on Youtube if you're interested and I accept this is a very niche subject matter. You could argue that this entire enterprise is against the spirit of The Clash, who were always pressing forward and progressing in different directions, often many at the same time. But in the spirit of what things could have been like, it's worth giving the songs a go.
Joe and Paul went on to patch things up with Mick quickly and Joe produced and co- wrote the second B.A.D. album, No. 10 Upping Street, with Mick having tracked him down and apologising for sacking him. That album contained this, a song as good as anything either man wrote or recorded in the 1980s.
One of the defining features of popular culture for those of us who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s was the Western. My Mum was/is a Western obsessive, a huge fan of Bonanza, The High Chaparral and the whole gamut of Western films. The theme tunes to those TV shows are some of my earliest musical memories and the actors from those shows singing country 'n' western songs ran through my Mum's record collection (along with The Beatles and Nancy Sinatra). Musically, Lorne Greene singing cowboy songs hasn't really stuck with me but the partnership between Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone has. The Spaghetti Western films, especially the core Dollar trilogy films made in the 1960s- A Fistful Of Dollars (1964), For A few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966)- were late night BBC2 films, taped and re-watched. The style of the films, hard boiled anti- heroic, Clint Eastwood's poncho wearing Man With No Name, Mexicans, feuds over gold, bounty hunters, Lee van Cleef, changed the popular view of the Western completely, from the clean living, homespun, family oriented shows to something grittier and ambiguous. The music, scored by composer Ennio Morricone, was something else as well, no rousing orchestral fanfares or campfire singalongs but sparse, dramatic, low budget tunes with whipcracks, gunshots, chanting voices and whistling.
The various Morricone songs from the soundtracks have re-appeared throughout pop culture ever since. The Clash used it as their walk on theme and the Ramones as their walk off stage music. They've been sampled by widely including by Bomb The Bass, Cameo, various hip hop artists and Big Audio Dynamite. Two lesser known versions of Medicine Show for you...
'Wanted in fourteen counties of this state, the condemned is found guilty of the crimes of murder; armed robbery of citizens, state banks, and post offices; the theft of sacred objects; arson in a state prison; perjury; bigamy; deserting his wife and children; inciting prostitution; kidnapping; extortion; receiving stolen goods; selling stolen goods; passing counterfeit money; and, contrary to the laws of this state, the condemned is guilty of using marked cards and loaded dice. Therefore, according to the power invested in us, we sentence the accused here before us, Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez..." "...known as the Rat..." "...and any other aliases he might have, to hang by the neck until dead. May God have mercy on his soul. Proceed!'
Here's Joe Strummer, sometime in NYC, in a Bedrock City t- shirt. Joe had a thing about cities. His solo career has songs named after at least three (imaginary) cities. To Joe, cities seem to have existed as a state of mind or a condition. With The Clash he spent time in Clash City and Innoculated City.
Trash City came out in 1988, Joe backed by The Latino Rockabilly War. The song was one of five done for the soundtrack to Permanent Record and came out as a single too. Trash City is fantastic, one of those chugging railway guitar riffs and there's some terrific Joe imagery in the lyrics, American junk culture over a clattering rhythm. It sounds like it could have been written and recorded in five minutes and none the worse for it.
Forbidden City was on the first album Joe did with The Mescaleros, 1999's Rock Art And The X Ray Style, acoustic guitars and bongos, a song for the people of China and a 'dream of freedom'.
Bummed Out City is from his second album with The Mescaleros, 2001's Global A Go Go. Bummed Out City is where Joe resides following a bust up with his wife. 'It was me/drove off the off- ramp/ of the sweetheart highway' he sings at the star and then in chorus follows up with 'we're in bummed out city/ that signs says/ I plead your mercy and your pity'. A gentle apology over acoustic guitars and a fiddle.
Bedrock City was the home town of the Flintstones, 'the modern Stone Age family'. My 'research' shows that there were two Bedrock City theme parks, one in Arizona (which opened in 1972) and one in South Dakota (which opened in 1966). It looks like both are now closed. Whether Joe's t- shirt came from a trip to one of the two theme parks I don't know but it paints a nice image in my mind, Joe with leather jacket, quiff and family trawling round some Yabba Dabba Doo rides.
In 1986 Joe's ex- Clash mate Mick Jones put out Badrock City, an electro/ dub version of their rocking C'mon Every Beatbox single, seven minutes of cut and paste samples, sirens, drum machines and bassline. The single led BAD's second album, No. 10, Upping Street, a record which Joe produced and on which he co- wrote some of the songs with Mick.
BAD also provided a song for the soundtrack to the 1994 Flintstones movie, a song called Rock With The Caveman. It pens with roaring dinosaur sounds and Fred shouting 'Wilma, I'm home!!!' before heading into rock 'n' roll pastiche territory, covering a 1956 Tommy Steele song (actually the first British rock 'n' roll record to enter the UK top 20, a fact which apparently has pissed Cliff Richard off over the years). You'll probably only need to listen to this once.
Brexit is happening suddenly but quietly. It's largely disappeared as a news story, forced off the front pages/ top of the hour reports by Johnson's victory in December which has taken all the debate and opposition out of it and a flurry of other stories- the royal family and paedophilia, the royal family and racism, the royal family and the entirely sensible decision by two of its members to get out of it, the Coronavirus, Trump's impeachment and Iran to name but a few. Johnson promised to get it done. What he's done is get everyone to stop talking about it. In two days time Britain will leave the E.U. Admittedly we won't see any real changes until the end of the year. Freedom of movement will remain while the UK is in the transition period, we will still be bound by E.U. laws, and the European Court of Justice, worker's rights and trade will remain the same but without any representation in the European Parliament. As the press looks elsewhere the government will supposedly get on with the job of negotiating the terms of the real departure and the UK's future relationship with Europe, trade deals and all the rest. They've already passed legislation banning themselves from extending the transition period beyond the end of 2020 which means that we could conceivably slip out of the EU on December 31st without any deal. Something that a good number of these bastards have wanted all along.
Symbolically the moment when we leave is midnight on January 31st (Brussels time, nicely). That's the moment that this country takes the step to make itself poorer, worse off in all sorts of ways, to cut itself off from the largest single market in the world, the moment this country chooses to be an inward looking, mean spirited, small minded Little Englander nation. There will be some arseholes draped in Union flags having parties where they've 'banned' French wine, Dutch cheese and German sausage, Little Englanders to a man. They will be misty eyed dickheads standing staring at Big Ben, willing it to bong, and sharing pictures of the White Cliffs of Dover. These people will be gone one day, forgotten, swallowed up by the mess they created, the country they chose to reduce, the country they willingly have turned into a laughing stock around the world. I hope each one of them at some point has a moment where they see what they've done and silently admit to themselves that they made a massive fucking error.
Two late period Big Audio Dynamite songs, both showing in different ways that there was life in Mick Jones' band after they were seen to have passed their sell- by date. In 1991 Mick put together a new version following the departure of the original line up after Megatop Phoenix. Recruiting three younger players (Nick Hawkins, Gary Stonadge and Chris Kavanagh) and renaming the band Big Audio Dynamite II they released Kool Aid in 1990 and then The Globe in 1991. The Globe was in part a re-working of Kool Aid, kicking off with Rush and the cracking title track plus fan favourite Innocent Child and one or two others that still cut the mustard. The Globe was remixed by ambient house heroes The Orb, nine minutes of bliss starting out with the song, then going all dubby bubbly and ambient before bringing in Mick's most famous guitar riff to see us throgh the last few minutes.
By the mid 90s B.A.D. II had become Big Audio and then back to B.A.D. They were dropped by their major label and signed to Radioactive. In 1995 they released F- Punk, eleven songs created with the same line up Mick put together in 1990 but now with Andre Shapps on board on keyboards and co- production. Andre is the cousin of Grant Shapps, former chairman of the Conservative party and currently transport minister in Johnson's cabinet. We can't really hold this against Andre but it's a bizarre link. F- Punk contained one end period B.A.D. classic...
This is 22 Davis Road, Shepherd's Bush, West London. In 1976 this was a squat occupied by Viv Albertine and Alan Drake, both studying art at the Hammersmith School of Art and Building, Lime Grove, Shepherd's Bush (later known as Chelsea Art College). Viv met a fellow art student Mick Jones who enrolled mainly because he thought art college was the best place to go to start a band. Mick began visiting the squat at Davis Road, along with Paul Simonon who he met through an audition for a band he tried to put together months earlier and had recently bumped into again- he couldn't sing or play but looked right and Mick began to teach him bass. Alan Drake's friend Keith Levene was another regular visitor to Davis Road. Paul moved in downstairs and rehearsals took place there, for an as yet unnamed band. Viv's friend Simon (Sid) moved in. Mick had met Bernie Rhodes who wanted to manage Mick's nascent group and began looking for a new rehearsal space, out of the squat. This would take them to Camden. Before that Jones, Simonon and Rhodes saw a pub rock band perform, The 101ers, and approached the lead singer/guitarist about leaving the old guard and jumping in with them, now called The Clash (a word that leapt out at Simonon while leafing through the local rag, the London Evening Standard). On June 1st 1976 Joe Strummer turned up at 22 Davis Road to tell them he was in. Future members of The Clash, Sex Pistols, PiL and The Slits all came from the squat at 22 Davis Road.
Prince Blanco was born Mark Atrill on the Isle of Wight in 1965. By the mid 90s was playing in ska and reggae bands. He became involved with various reggae producers and musicians including Dubmatix, who in 2009 made an album of dub versions of Clash songs called Shatter The Hotel, a tribute to Strummer and a benefit for the Strummerville charity (the album also involved Don Letts and Dan Donovan). There's something about Clash songs that lend themselves to covers, dubs, versions, re-edits, remixes and refits. There are some groups whose songs should be left alone but I'm always open to reworkings of Clash tunes. Prince Blanco's track here isn't a Clash cover as such, it's a dub track with Mick Jones' guitar from B.A.D.'s The Bottom Line dropped in and a vocal from an interview with Joe Strummer.
Nicolas Roeg has died aged 90. The films he made in the 1970s and 80s were the type of films you read references to and in those days where things were scarcer you hoped they'd eventually be shown late at night on BBC2 (with a VHS cassette close by). Performance is a counter-cultrue classic, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg and James Fox all going slowly mad in a big house in Notting Hill Gate (and when it was being made Keith Richards waiting in his car outside the set, paranoid about what Jagger and Pallenberg might be up to). The soundtrack was legendary too and this (with my surname too, which added to it for me) is a genuinely great Jagger vocal with slide guitar from Ry Cooder...
Mick Jones paid tribute to Roeg, his films and especially Performance in Big Audio Dynamite's 1985 single E=MC2, peppered with dialogue from the film and a verse about taking a trip in Powis Square with a pop star who dyed his hair, mobsters, gangland slayings and insanity Bohemian style. The opening verse is about Walkabout (1971) and the 3rd verse is about The Man Who Fell To Earth, another late night, video tape film that had the capacity to freak the viewer out.
The chorus took me years to fully work out and I'd sung all kinds of words along to it but I think it goes...
'Ritual ideas, relativity
Holy buildings, no people prophesy
Time slide, place to hide, nudge reality
Foresight, minds wide, magic imagery oh ho'.
Happy Mondays 1988 masterpiece Bummed was also Roeg and Performance inspired with at least 3 songs referencing the film. Mad Cyril includes dialogue from it including the line that opens the song 'We've been courteous'. The Mondays played it on Granada TV for Wilson's The Other Side Of Midnight show, a band at their peak...
Mick Jones turned 62 years old last week so this is a belated happy birthday from me. The photo was taken for a music press interview (either NME or Melody Maker) c.1989, after Mick had recovered from a life threatening bout of pneumonia. Those Stussy bucket hats were highly sought after around this time (and still are today).
Mick was on a roll around this time, despite slipping out of fashion, with Megatop Phoenix coming out in 1990, a hit single with Roddy Frame and The Clash hitting number 1 on the back of the Levi's advert. BAD II's Rush was on the B-side, a good Mick song and one of the best the second line up recorded. It was a decision which go down very well with Joe and Paul apparently.
I don't know where this photo of Mick Jones comes from (or where I got it for that matter)- long hair, floral shirt, red trousers all makes it post Clash I think. This curio came my way via email recently too from old friend/reader Dub Robots. 7 Years was a Big Audio Dynamite demo from 1988 just Mick, drum machine and spare guitar. Someone called IndieGround and Heston have re-imagined it adding samples, instruments and more voices and turned it into a nicely B.A.D. piece of work, totally unofficial but rather good. There's a link on the Youtube page if you want a download version.
There are multiple B.A.D. bootlegs available out in the internet, The B.A.D. Files, running up from Volume 1 through to 9, containing all kinds of odds and ends. This, if you're interested, is Mick's original demo of 7 Years.
