Monday Long Song

'Free', recorded in 1989 and issued on the soundtrack of the awful 1990 film 'Flashback', was the parting shot from the classic line-up of Big Audio Dynamite. Later in 1990 a new recording of the song, rechristened 'Kickin' In', appeared on 'Kool Aid', the first LP by Mick Jones' raw recruits now trading as Big Audio Dynamite II. In 1991 the same song surfaced once again on their live 'Ally Pally Paradiso' album, though by this time, somewhat confusingly, it had reverted to its original moniker, 'Free'.

Here's that 1989 swansong from the original BAD.

Big Audio Dynamite - Free

Friday Photo #46

A few weeks ago (here) I shared a photo taken beneath the Queensboro Bridge on Roosevelt Island. My cousin had bagged that particular day off work and joined me on my travels up and over the  Roosevelt Island Tramway and later for a bracing (read, bloody freezing!) ride on the East River Ferry, under the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn Navy Yard. After a revitalizing coffee and outrageously good doughnut in the Brooklyn Roasting Company on Flushing Avenue, we wandered up to Fort Greene, then back to the river via the iconic Dumbo neighbourhood. The plan was to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and back to the apartment, but when we got to the bridge we found it closed because of a potential jumper in the middle. Multiple choppers hovered directly overhead, police boats patrolled the waters below, ambulances stood ready at each end and the crowd of people waiting to cross quickly became a huge goggling throng. Rather than just standing there, we ambled off through Brooklyn Bridge Park and on to Brooklyn Heights, before looking back some time later to see traffic and people moving across the bridge once again. The potential suicide had thankfully been successfully talked down. Darkness had fallen by the time we eventually walked across the bridge ourselves, the myriad lights of Lower Manhattan's skyscrapers guiding us home.   

Big Audio Dynamite - City Lights 

Work in Progress #3: Big Audio Dynamite - The Bottom Line

Following his dismissal from The Clash in 1983, Mick Jones helped out on the first General Public LP, then in early 1984, put together a band he christened Top Risk Action Company. T.R.A.C. comprised Mick, John Lennard from Theatre of Hate on sax, bassist Leo Williams from The Basement 5 and a certain Mr Topper Headon on the drums. It was a short-lived configuration. Before the year was out, Mick and Leo had moved on to form Big Audio Dynamite. The only evidence that TRAC existed at all is a single band photo and a handful of demos. One of those demos, 'Du Cane Road', was later re-recorded by Topper in 1985 for the b-side of his first solo single 'Drumming Man', while another, 'The Bottom Line', was radically re-worked by Mick in the same year to become Big Audio Dynamite's debut single.

Top Risk Action Company - The Bottom Line 

Big Audio Dynamite - The Bottom Line

This, That and the Other

Three random tunes from the vaults. 'This Moment' by Matthew Sweet, Jah Woosh singing 'Don't Do That' and Big Audio Dynamite with 'Other 99'.

Carbon/Silicon

After a lengthy absence and without fuss or fanfare, Mick Jones and Tony James return, in their Carbon/Silicon guise, with a gentle, understated new song, 'Big Surprise', which is accompanied by a simple, but classy video, filmed on the cold streets of West London.