“You’re listening to the boy from the big bad city” was a catchphrase by the legendary radio DJ Frankie “Hollywood” Crocker (R.I.P.), dating back to late 70’s, pronounced on WBLS-FM 107.5 NYC. The catchphrase has become a fundamental part of two milestones of disco dance music, as an element strongly characterizing the lyrics. The first song is titled “Johnny Dynell & New York 88 – jam hot (rhumba rock)”, and has been released in the year 1983. Johnny Dynell has been a protagonist of the nightlife at clubs in NYC, in quality of musician, rapper, and nightclub DJ, especially during the 80’s. The second song is titled “Beats International – dub be good to me”, featuring the vocals by Lindy Layton and the participation of the DJ/remixer/producer Fatboy Slim, perhaps the best-known international DJ from the UK. To be honest, given that I’m Italian, I can inform my readers that, in Italy, while Fatboy Slim is largely popular and greatly admired, the name of Mr. Dynell is known only to a strict number of alternative DJs. As an expert of dance music, I’ve observed an evident resemblance between the structures of “jam hot (rhumba rock)” and of “Eurythmics – paint a rumour”, a track contained in the Eurythmics’ album of the year 1983. I haven’t found any proper evidence about which of the two cited, resembling tracks has been released earlier. I can refer that Mr. Dynell has declared to press that he wrote “jam hot (rhumba rock)” in the year 1980, and that it was inspired to him by the vision of the amazing work of DJ Grandmaster Flash. However, I’ve known that two legends of the mixer in the Big Apple, DJ John “Jellybean” Benitez and DJ François Kevorkian, in the year 1984 have produced an instrumental remix of “Eurythmics – paint a rumour”, which is even more similar to “jam hot (rhumba rock)”. Well, in the field of pop music, the resemblance among various, different songs is an occurrence rather frequent, and a good song remains a good song, independently from citations and similarities. Now that I’ve explained the starting point, I can say that the topic of the page is equally bound to the catchphrase of the above. In effect, I’m going to talk about big bad cities. More precisely, I want to describe a number of circumstances and situations, whose presence cause a big city to gain the reputation of being bad.
First of all, I have asked to myself why the cited, prominent DJs have called “bad” the city of New York. One of the possible answers is that, in the American slang of the 70’s, the word “bad” had a meaning exactly opposite to the literal one. I think that the origin of the kind of slang was the Great Prohibition, during which Italian-American mobsters conquered a prevalence in the sector of nightclubs, popularly welcomed like in the Ian Dury’s song “sex and drugs and rock and roll”, that lasted for various decades. Despite, this is still the blog that you’ve known, and here the favorite topics are bad, according to the most spread meaning of the word. More clearly, my attention goes to big cities of the world, where life for inhabitants is properly bad, because filled with problems, dangers, and everything else able to worsen a common lifetime. When is a big city considered bad for its inhabitants and its visitors? Web sites assign the maximum of importance to high crime rates and perceived danger. In detail, popular attention goes to: crime statistics, among which high homicide rates; issues related to gang violence, drug trafficking, and political instability; poor law and order, and especially poor judiciary; pollution and air quality; cleanliness, with particular attention to garbage, and to human excrements; weather conditions; traffic and congestion; bad management of tourism, with particular attention to crimes against tourists, and to frequent episodes of vandalism, including those committed by tourists themselves; expensiveness. Some more brief observations, taken from the most recent crime statistics. Colima, Mexico, has the world record of 180 homicides per year for each 100.000 inhabitants. The highest number of urban homicides during a single year is a shocking 3231, that happened in Cape Town, South Africa. The three countries with the worst crime statistics are Mexico, Brazil, and the USA. As exactly said by some experts, bad crime statistics are always bound to wars among drug dealers.
Going to the conclusion, I anticipate that it is rather objective, and highly politically incorrect. Previously, I can affirm that crucial social topics, such as welcoming immigrants, LGBT rights, genders equality, racial equality, social justice, fair retribution and good conditions for workers, redistribution of richness, and so on, are totally irrelevant in the matter of badness of big cities. A good administration of the largest cities requires law and order, a high level of urban hygiene, a judiciary efficient and focalized to the maintenance of public order, the maximum guarantee of integrity of public and private properties, a management of traffic coherent with the necessities of local activities and, particularly, of businesses, and so on. In the matter of traffic, I want to propose a simple philosophy: pedestrians and slow vehicles should not be the owners of the streets, but someone to protect, and to guide on apposite paths, studied for not decelerating common vehicles. As usual, I’ve accompanied the page with music about the same topic. This time, it is a mash-up dedicated to big bad cities, that exploits the resemblances among the three tracks cited at the beginning.
File name is “A bunch of DJs Vs Max Look DJ – big bad cities around the world (July 2025)”, length 5’30”, it’s a mash-up at 98,5 BPM, obtained by sampling and mixing the following tracks: Johnny Dynell & New York 88 – jam hot (rhumba rock) (US 1993), Eurythmics – paint a rumour (instrumental remix by John Jellybean Benitez and François Kevorkian) (US 1984), and Beats International – dub be good to me (mix version) (UK 1990, featuring DJ Fatboy Slim).
