Modern Rock Tracks No. 1s - Big Audio Dynamite and "Just Play Music"

Out of the shadow of the Clash, Mick Jones shifts from a punk edge to a softer, experimental sound.

Big Audio Dynamite - “Just Play Music”

Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 1 (9/17/88)

Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time: 
Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O’ Mine

The earliest iterations of the Modern Rock Tracks (MRT) chart are largely a mystery to me, due in no small part to my young age and my access to this music at the time. As I learn more about this era, I'm also surprised by the collaborations and the bands formed from pieces of other, more successful, acts.

With this in mind, we can't begin to discuss Big Audio Dynamite (aka Big Audio, aka Big Audio Dynamite II, aka BAD) until we talk a bit about the Clash. Surely you've heard of the Clash, the grandfathers of British punk rock who ultimately paved the way for the myriad post-punk iterations of music that swept both England and the U.S. in the late '70s into the '80s. Indeed, one doesn't have to have lived through those years to recognize the impact of the Clash. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003, and they also had a pretty good run of crossover success into the mainstream pop scene.

"Train in Vain" was the first Clash song to chart anywhere in the U.S., hitting the Hot 100 and peaking at a respectable No. 23 in May 1980. "London Calling" followed that song's success, and reached a modest No. 30 on the Billboard U.S. Dance Club chart in July 1980. The band scored minor hits until the release of their double-platinum album "Combat Rock," which saw the band's biggest chart success in "Rock the Casbah." That single peaked on the Hot 100 at No. 8 in January 1982, and topped out at No. 6 on the Rock Albums & Top Tracks chart, which follows radio airplay numbers on rock radio, regardless of sales. Their follow-up, "Should I Stay or Should I Go," reached No. 13 on the rock airplay chart but missed the Top 40, peaking at No. 45 on the Hot 100.

Why all the Clash history? Well, following the release of "Combat Rock," the band's guitarist and vocalist Mick Jones was fired from the band. Jones briefly formed a new band called General Public, but he quickly moved on to find success with the band that would be his main home in the decade following the end of the Clash: Big Audio Dynamite.

What's remarkable to me is not that Mick Jones went on to form another successful post-punk band, but rather how different their first MRT chart topper sounded when compared to my memories of the Clash. With "Just Play Music," Big Audio Dynamite went for a sound that felt as far away from the Clash as possible.

I have to think “Just Play Music” sounded fresh and new in 1988, but to me it sounded dated and repetitive on multiple listens recently. Even earlier BAD tracks, like “E=MC2” from the band’s first album in 1985, have an ‘80s vibe that could find a place in recurrent rotation on an all-’80s radio channel. And it’s not just me: for folks who are still listening to BAD these days, “Just Play Music” has only racked up 362,000 streams on Spotify, which places the song well below the band’s top 10 tracks on the service. By comparison, “E=MC2” is the band’s biggest streaming hit, with more than 13 million streams. The album that spawned “Just Play Music,” the 1988 release “Tighten Up Vol. 88,” only generated one other single, “Other 99,” which topped out at No. 13 on the MRT chart.

But I’ll give credit where credit is due to Jones and his new bandmates: they successfully moved out of the imposing shadow of the Clash and created a sound that was all their own. The Clash cemented their legacy with a brash punk edge, and while their mainstream crossover successes took some of the edge off that sound, there was less experimentation in their creation process. Not so with BAD. Many of BAD’s earliest singles, like “E=MC2,” “C’Mon Every Beatbox,” and “V. Thirteen,” among others, were all chart hits on the U.S. dance charts, speaking not only to their tonal shift from pure punk, but also embracing an exuberance that played well in ‘80s dance clubs deep into the decade.

In the end, “Just Play Music” became a blip in the history of the MRT chart. It spent one week in the top spot and was off the chart entirely by November 1988. It peaked at No. 45 on the U.S. dance music chart and only reached No. 51 on the British charts. It’s legacy exists today only as the second No. 1 hit in the history of the MRT chart, and doesn’t seem to drum up as much nostalgic replay as many of their other hits.

They would follow this with several MRT top 10 hits, including “James Brown” and “Contact” off their follow-up album “Megatop Phoenix.” But the band’s release of the 1991 album “The Globe” would be their biggest success, and I’ll come back to that in a future article.

Overall, I respect what Big Audio Dynamite did with “Just Play Music,” but I think in general I’d rather just play other music instead of putting this one in regular rotation.

Rating: 3/10

Chart notes:

-- "What I Am" by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians: This track climbed into the top 20 of the MRT chart this week, hitting No. 14 before peaking at No. 4 a month later. It would become the band's only Hot 100 top 10 hit, reaching No. 7 on the big chart in March 1989.

-- "Jesus Christ" by U2: Still on a white-hot popularity streak coming off the release of 1987s "Joshua Tree," U2 extended their reach into the MRT chart for the first time, debuting at No. 11 with a song that's not quite in the same vein as "Joshua Tree." U2's cover of a 1940s Woody Guthrie classic folk song off a tribute album titled "Folkways: A Vision Shared," ultimately peaked one week later at No. 9. While it's a solid start for this upstart Irish band in the annals of MRT history, it wouldn't take long for them to surpass this feat.