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- Big Audio Dynamite: more pioneering than the Clash?
In the early-80s, punk was floundering. Then up stepped Mick Jones and his motley crew of artists with one of the most innovative groups of the time
Back in the dark days of early 1984, there was a time when Orwell's predictions of an overbearing police state seemed worringly prescient.
Thatcherism was at its peak, the miners were striking and punk was on its arse. Even scene figureheads the Clash were floundering. The tight-knit "classic" lineup was no more, their forthcoming tour was a busk around Britain and they were having to piece together songs for what would be their contractually obliging and limp swansong album, Cut the Crap, disowned for many years by its creator Joe Strummer.The problem was Strummer had lost his songwriting foil, the temperamental and talented Mick Jones; the rock yin to Strummer's punk yang. So while Strummer was "fucking off to the mountains of Spain to sit sobbing under a palm tree" Jones was already up and running with a new band, Big Audio Dynamite, fuelled by the type of determination that only comes when there are ex-band members/friends to spite with your own success.
Big Audio Dynamite (later known as Big Audio Dynamite II, Big Audio or just BAD) never quite gained the critical or commercial success of the Clash, but they did enjoy a longer career, and judging by the just-reformed band's billing at this year's Coachella festival there's still a lot of love for them.
For all the lengthy magazine retrospectives and weighty biographies that rightly claim the Clash were musical pioneers, there's also a strong argument to be made that BAD were more forward-thinking – or perhaps more of their time, more now – than Jones's previous band. Less confined by the constraints of rock'n'roll and determined to shake off the Clash's formidable legacy, Jones – the member who brought hip-hop into the Clash and wrote their sole No 1 single – set out to create a sound that utilised the emerging technologies used by dance and rap music and took a more multimedia approach to their presentation.
Keyboards, loops and samples of everything from news reports to scores of Sergio Leone Westerns featured heavily, as did the briefly state-of-the-art Bond Electraglide guitar, and over the years Jones enlisted an array of collaborators including film-maker/DJ Don Letts, MC Ranking Roger, clothing designer Shawn Stussy and video-making London ace face James Lebon.
This modernist approach to recycling or reintroducing samples was completely new in the rock/pop format of the mid-80s, and pre-dated key sampling releases from De La Soul, 2 Live Crew, Beastie Boys and MARRS' Pump Up the Volume, the first sample-based 1987 hit single to top the chart. In fact, BAD's 1985 debut album, This Is Big Audio Dynamite, and the Nicholas Roeg-sampling homage and hit single E=MC2, are now widely acknowledged as pioneering works in the emerging format. Which is doubly impressive given how utterly averse to the idea of sampling the rock world was (and much of the mainstream music industry, come to think of it).
BAD only actually had two top 40 singles in the UK and no doubt alienated many of the more conservative-minded punks, but they did enjoy international success as a big live draw. Some of their work sounds dated now, but then doesn't most pop and rock from the 80s? In their wake came everyone from rock-dance crossover bands such as the Shamen, Jesus Jones and Pop Will Eat Itself and on to Klaxons, Gorillaz and beyond. Perhaps their 2011 re-formation may now remind us just how ahead of their time Big Audio Dynamite were.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Readers recommend: songs about mistaken identity
We'd like you to unmask tracks about adopting a disguise
The implications of the Guardian's revelations about the environmental activist who turned out to be a police spy are still unclear. But it's a rum business.
And it struck me that songwriters have often been moved to make music after encounters with people (or things) that aren't who (or what) they appear to be.
There can be perfectly good reasons for adopting a disguise. And it's not always a case of deliberate deception, of course – the narrator may simply have jumped to the wrong conclusions. So let's unmask the tracks that concern mistaken identity.
The toolbox: Archive, the Marconium, the Spill and the collaborative Spotify playlist.
DO:
* Post your nominations before midday on Tuesday if you wish them to be considered.
* Write a few lines attempting to justify your choices.
DO NOT:
* Post more than one third of the lyrics of any song.
* Dump lists of nominations. If you must post more than two or three at once, please attempt to justify your choices.
* Read the results of last week's Readers recommend: songs about austerity.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Behind the music: Is it possible to write a hit song in three hours?
Two new programmes claim to document the creative process. But can the pressures of reality TV really help songwriting?
I'm a big fan of BBC4's Classic Album series. It's fascinating to see what went into making some of the greatest LPs of all time, even the ones that aren't my favourites. Sometimes, like in the documentary on Bruce Springsteen's Darkness On the Edge of Town, you get a glimpse into the writing process, but the focus is mainly on recording. Now Universal Music has launched a video series called Inside the Hit Songs, which promises to provide a "behind-the-scenes look" into the art of songwriting. It sounds like a great idea.
The first episode features the All-American Rejects talking about their song Gives You Hell. Future episodes will see Glen Ballard talk about working with Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones on Man in the Mirror (I'll definitely watch that one) and Keri Hilson describing the writing process behind her single with Ne-Yo, Knock You Down. Judging by the initial video, the interviews will under five minutes and edited MTV-style with quick cuts, much like a music promo. Perhaps producers suspect viewers have short attention spans.
The Universal series features writers talking about the creation of songs in retrospect, but a forthcoming show with former American Idol judge and professional songwriter Kara DioGuardi aims to highlight the road to writing a hit. It's being lauded as an "Idol-style" competition for songwriters, "not performers", though Reuters reports that the winner will receive a $100,000 cash prize, publishing deal and recording contract, which suggests contestants will also perform.
The show, Platinum Hit, will see DioGuardi – who's written for and with artists including Britney, Christina Aguilera, Pink – and Jewel mentor contestants and pick a winner. In other words, there won't be an audience vote. Jewel said artists need signatures, not just hits: "A lot of great singers are foundering because they haven't found that one song." Perhaps Simon Cowell should take her words to heart and reconsider making X Factor winners release a cover as their first single.
One of the challenges will be to write a song in three hours. It sounds daunting, but can be exhilarating as well – as I've found at songwriter retreats. We did it in a three-way co-writing setting and it made us go with our gut instinct. Too much analysis can block the creative process. One of the tracks written at the retreat even won song of the year at the Country Music awards.
But will Platinum Hit examine the creative process as it happens? The reality is most songs are not written in three hours. Max Martin, one of the world's most successful songwriters, has said that it usually takes him weeks to finish a hit. Songwriting is an intimate and sometimes painful process, and, in my experience, you need to feel free to come up with ridiculous ideas to get to the good ones, without censoring yourself. Having a camera pointed at you may not be conducive to this.
If they showed what's really involved in writing a hit song, we'd end up watching people staring into space hoping to find the right words to complete a lyric or, in the case of Paul Simon, bouncing a ball against the wall (in the book Songwriters On Songwriting he says the mechanical motion helps free up his mind). Yet a programme showing great songwriters in the process of creating (albeit in an edited version) would certainly get me hooked. If Universal really wants to illustrate the magic and the hard work that goes into making music, they should convince these writers to allow us to take that journey with them.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
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