Big Audio Dynamite: Planet BAD: Greatest Hits

Big Audio Dynamite: Planet BAD: Greatest Hits

1995

Columbia Records

Format I Own it On

Track Listing: 1. The Bottom Line 2. E=MC² 3. Medicine Show 4. C'Mon Every Beatbox 5. V. Thirteen 6. Sightsee M.C! 7.Just Play Music 8. Other 99 9. Contact 10. Free 11. Rush 12. The Globe 13. Looking For A Song 14. Harrow Road 15. I Turned Out A Punk


This is a greatest hits album with a spot-on song selection, the only problem is that quite a few of these are single edits...Which doesn't bother me too bad, cos if I want to hear the longer versions I can just pull out the original albums, but if you're looking for the "Th-th-th-the horses are on the track!' section on "The Bottom Line" you might be disappointed..

Listening to this just highlights how many awesome singles these guys put out...Track after track of catchy dance-rock...I've covered most of this already, so I'll just stick to the songs that didn't appear on the albums I've already posted about...




"Free" comes from the soundtrack for the film "Flashback."



Which I have never seen, but I do remember going to rent movies at the video store back in the early 90's and seeing the video tape cover...The song's pretty cool...Sort of in the acid house style of "Megatop Phoenix," but quite a bit better than a lot of the songs on that album...An alternate version of this song appears on the "Kool-Aid" album as "Kickin' In."




The tracks "Looking For a Song" and "Harrow Road" come from the1994 "Higher Power" album. I used to have this on tape back in the day, but I lost almost all of my tapes after I moved...Not sure what happened to them...I moved to Arizona in 2001, and about 2 hours into the trip I realized I forgot my tape collection (which was a pretty huge collection). There was no way I was turning back, so I left them. My mom sent me a box with a bunch of them once, but when I returned to Michigan in 2003 to grab some more of them, all of them had been taken by someone...Not a big deal, but there's been quite a few I haven't been able to replace, and this was one of them...I haven't heard it in almost 12 years...I remember the album being really spotty but there were a few great songs on it...I loved "Got To Wake Up" in particular, but unfortunately that doesn't appear here..."Looking For a Song" is alright...Nothing to write home about, but the version of "Harrow Road" that appears here is stellar! It beats the pants off the album version...It's redone with a ska style backing and Ranking Roger from the English Beat appears to do some toasting...This song makes the whole compilation...





1995's "F-Punk" was another tape I lost. I used to listen to the shit out of this cassette,,,It had a really odd sound...The guitar was bigger, louder, and fuzzier than before, and Mick sounded like he was about an inch away from the microphone...It was a real cool racket, and I'd love to find it again, but the album costs a fortune now...I know I could probably just listen to the whole thing on youtube or something, but I don't have a computer...I write this blog on a steam-powered typewriter...

Anyway, "I Turned Out a Punk" appears on this compilation. This song was the opener on "F-Punk." Punk was coming back into vogue in 1994-95, thanks to Green Day and the Offspring, and the "F-Punk" album and "I Turned Out a Punk" in particular, seem to address the new craze. This was the most traditionally "punk" track Mick had released in years and it's a great song to boot...Listening back to it now it kind of reminds me more of early 2000's style garage rock than Green Day style punk... "F-Punk" was the last album Big Audio Dynamite" has released to date...The band recorded the album "Entering a New Ride," which was supposed to be released back in 1997, but their record company wouldn't release it, for some reason...The band later released it themselves as a download-only album on their website...They also recently reunited to do some shows but no word yet if they're planning on putting out a new record... I love Big Audio Dynamite...I don't see it as a step-down or inferior to the Clash in any way....Growing up, they were just as important to me as the Clash...Mick had quite the legacy to live up to and he never took the safe route of merely emulating his old band...He's always embraced  new technology and countered it with good, old fashion songwriting, finding his own unique style in the prcoess..I can't tell you how much I'd  love to hear one more record from these guys... Make it happen!  So let's check out the ska version of "Harrow Road"  by Big Audio Dynamite...