Harry's Place Arts

This is a guest post by Ben Cohen

“Happy Pay-sack.” Mick Jones’s opening greeting at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, reliably delivered in his South London brogue, won roars of approval from the assembled crowd, many of whom were skipping the second Passover seder to see the original line-up of Big Audio Dynamite in the flesh. As a collage of sampled voices erupted from the stage, I was nudged by the man next to me. “Mick’s Jewish, you know,” he shouted over the first bars of “Medicine Show,” from BAD’s debut album. The undertone of pride in his voice was unmistakable. Kvelling, they call it.

For a short time, it seemed like this gig was going to be all about identity and politics and identity politics.  Next up was “Beyond the Pale,” another deeply personal composition in the tradition of earlier Jones tracks like “Stay Free” and “I’m Not Down,” in which he sings about his Russo-Jewish roots. “I’m half Welsh and half Russian,” he explained, by way of an introduction.

Then came a brief interlude when the focus shifted to Libya. Jones told us that he’d done a radio interview earlier in the day. The presenter had asked him why he was supporting Gadhafi. This was, he continued, a shocking accusation that was completely unfounded. To prove his pro-rebel credentials, he dedicated the next number to Omar al Mukhtar, a teacher of the Qu’ran who became the leader of the Libyan resistance to Italian colonization in the early twentieth century. Al Mukhtar, canonized as as the “Lion of the Desert,” had a grandson who was presently, Jones reported, fighting with Libyan rebel forces. Only then did BAD launch into “A Party,” a song originally written as an indictment of South African apartheid.

I was, I must confess, a little bemused at this point. In part, because al Mukhtar’s legacy has been embraced by both Gadhafi and various Islamist currents but not, so far as I know, by purveyors of groove. In the main, because I couldn’t believe that I was contemplating such issues at a BAD gig. While Jones was never a vacuous celebrity type, he was also the one member of The Clash who despised the posturing of ultraleft groups like the Socialist Workers Party and never apologized for his rock star ambitions. Jones, don’t forget, was the man whose petulant love song, “I’m So Bored With YOU,” was hacked by Joe Strummer into the anti-American chant, “I’m So Bored With The YOU-S-A.” And yet, here he was, delivering a political lecture of such complexity that the audience missed their applause cue.

In the event, I’m glad to say that BAD’s performance didn’t descend into a series of isolated songs punctuated by political speeches. Jones has a charm that does not sit well with evangelism, and he knows it. A sleek figure who glides around the stage dressed in a gleaming white shirt and nattily-cut suit, he is first and last a musician, and a brilliant one.

As BAD proved on stage in New York, the key to achieving legendary status is not writing songs that transcend the time in which they are written: after all, the unashamed use of drum machines on BAD’s studio albums locates the group firmly in the mid-to-late 1980s. What really counts is establishing one’s place in the evolution of rock’n'roll. Listening to BAD with the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that they were a bridge between the sonic experiments of the later Clash, from “London Calling” through “Sandinista” and “Combat Rock,” and the dance-inflected rock of later acts like Leftfield and The Happy Mondays. The vocal samples, scratching and intense echoes which brand BAD’s sound are evidence, too, of their debt to dub reggae, as well the pioneering hip hop of acts like the Bronx’s Afrika Bambaataa, who fused the elastic rhythms of soul with the rigid, relentless beats of European electronic music.

The sense of history is amplified by watching Jones alongside bassist Leo Williams and keyboard player Don Letts. It was Letts who, more than anyone else, was responsible for introducing the first wave of punk groups to the Jamaican sounds of roots and dub. And it was Letts and Williams who invited Joe Strummer on the night out that resulted in the late Clash frontman writing”(White Man in) Hammersmith Palais.” Speaking of Strummer, he was the invisible man at the BAD gig, the producer of their most accomplished album, “No. 10 Upping Street” (geddit??), which, twenty-five years after its release, accounted for much of their set.

Still, if the night belonged to anyone, it was Mick Jones. At every significant juncture – “C’mon Every Beatbox,” “Bad,” “V-13″ – he wrapped the audience further around his pinkie. By the time BAD climaxed into a joyous rendition of E=MC2, the crowd was in ecstasy. Herein lies Jones’s genius. Like an eternal Bar Mitzvah boy, he wants to create enduring memories. Only the meanest of spirits would chide him for that.