Bow Wow Wow

[gigolo aunts aren't gentlemen]

Recently, I have been getting into Bow Wow Wow.   Dirk Wears White Sox is my favourite Adam & the Ants album (what does that title mean, by the way, does anyone know?  Name-checked in 'Don't be Square, be There' as well) so I was interested in Bow Wow Wow since they're the result of Malcolm McLaren kicking Adam Ant out of that band and replacing him with Annabella Lwin.  Odd (or is it?) that both Bow Wow Wow and the new Adam & the Ants ended up with lots of Burundi-type drumming all over them, maybe that's just a direction they were headed in before Adam left, but McLaren is credited with introducing it to their music.
Anyway, Bow Wow Wow.  Fairly clearly out to shock by having this Siouxsie-voiced 14 year old sing lots of songs about sex (on the first EP alone there's Sexy Eiffel Towers and Uomo Sex Al Apache next to each other, and on the former she's doing orgasm noises and the like) but I like it all the same, as much as Dirk.. and more than most of Adam Ant's subsequent stuff.  Lwin (real name Myint Myint Aye, Burmese for High High Cool – and she changed it!) has got pretty much the perfect New Wave voice, the Burundi rattle of the drums makes it all the more frantic and exciting, and the naughtiness of it (Operation Ore to this thread please) does add something.  I like pretty much everything I've heard, and I really like the ridiculous McLaren marketing of them:


That's a Manet pastiche with a nude 15 year old.  You wouldn't get that nowadays would yer? _{(possibly a good thing)} I'll post some mp3s soon, but what does everyone else think of them?

[GetTheeBehindMeStan]

Somewhere lying around the place (but God knows where) I have a complete set of cassettes from SFX magazine (no, not the Sci-Fi one, the music one from the late 70's/early 80's), including THAT interview with Annabel Lwin's Mum. It is fucking hilarious, if you haven't heard it. Sorry for tantalising you with that, but if I do find it, be sure that I will upload it ...

[NoSleep]

Somewhere lying around the place (but God knows where) I have a complete set of cassettes from SFX magazine (no, not the Sci-Fi one, the music one from the late 70's/early 80's), including THAT interview with Annabel Lwin's Mum. It is fucking hilarious, if you haven't heard it. Sorry for tantalising you with that, but if I do find it, be sure that I will upload it ...

I used to have that, too. Can't remember a damn thing about it after so long, other than remembering you're possibly right. SFX - a cassette magazine that came stuck to a piece of magazine-sized cardboard, so what you have IS the whole magazine.

I was also the proud owner of C30, C60, C90, Go! on cassette.

[GetTheeBehindMeStan]

Yeah, I lost all the cardboard inserts in a flood. It was a pretty cool magazine for the time. I seem to remember an interview with a REALLY pissed-off Lou Reed.

Like the Duck Stab avatar, BTW.

[rudi]

Recently, I have been getting into Bow Wow Wow.   Dirk Wears White Sox is my favourite Adam & the Ants album (what does that title mean, by the way, does anyone know?

http://www.adam-ant.org/fetish/puresex/

I was a big fan of the album when I was a nipper - I appear to have lost it which is bloody annoying (yet ironic, considering I stole it off my sister in the first place) so MP3s would be ace.

Golly Golly Go Buddy was forever being played round my gaff, oh yes.

[gigolo aunts aren't gentlemen]

Somewhere lying around the place (but God knows where) I have a complete set of cassettes from SFX magazine (no, not the Sci-Fi one, the music one from the late 70's/early 80's), including THAT interview with Annabel Lwin's Mum. It is fucking hilarious, if you haven't heard it. Sorry for tantalising you with that, but if I do find it, be sure that I will upload it ...

That would be top, I really don't know enough about them.  Still haven't got round to reading Rip It Up & Start Again.  Is it true McLaren made the band draw straws to 'deflower' her?

Ta for that Rudi, he's an odd one that Stuart Goddard.  And I'll chuck some mp3s up soon as I decide which songs are bestest.


Hmm, just looked at their myspace and apparently they're still together(ish), but no tour dates since 2005.  There's a cover of 'I Started Something...' there as well which is the best Smiths cover I've heard.  Rippable if you use this.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Just last week I dug out my old Bow Wow Wow albums and gave them a listen for the first time in over a decade.  I remember taping 'c30 c60 c90 Go' off Swap Shop by holding my tape recorder next to the speaker and getting caught out by the false ending and stopping the tape and having to start recording again to get the end bit.

Sometimes nostalgia is a bad thing.  Recently I listened to all my old Toyah albums and was totally embarrassed by the naffness of the lyrics, but Bow Wow Wow stood up very well indeed, although I laughed out loud at 'Elimination Dancing', probably Bow Wow Wow's silliest song.

It's amazing how music can take you back to a certain time and evoke long-forgotten memories.  Several summers in a row when we were going on holiday to the seaside or wherever I'd take a cassette of my Bow Wow Wow albums and listen to them to brighten up an otherwise mind-numbing long coach journey, and the weather was warm, and we were on our way to spend a week or 2 somewhere sunny, and life was just perfect with no worries in the world.

It wasn't until I googled last week that I found they'd got back together a coupla years ago, and I went in search of clips and found some on youtube.  I expected to be disappointed but despite the filmed-on-a-mobile-phone shitness they were surprisingly good.  The drums sounded perfect and Anabella's voice was just the same as it was in 1982.

Some of the lyrics were decidedly dodgy for her to be singing at the age of 14 and 15, and I remember there was a very mild controversy, but nothing like the shitstorm we'd get today.

As an aside, I was never that keen on Adam & The Ants.

c30 c60 c90 Go
Elimination Dancing
Sexy Eiffel Towers

[NoSleep]

Hmm, just looked at their myspace and apparently they're still together(ish), but no tour dates since 2005.  There's a cover of 'I Started Something...' there as well which is the best Smiths cover I've heard.  Rippable if you use this.

Annabella has had several attempts at comebacks over the years, probabably with the help of Lee Gorman and others from the band. I think Lee Gorman has scored a couple of hits as a producer (Hippy Chick might have been one of his, IIRC).

I just remembered I worked with Lee Gorman in his newly opened LRG Studios in the late 80s. Seemed like a nice bloke but the studio was wired all wrong which rather pissed me off at the time.

[gigolo aunts aren't gentlemen]

Right, mp3s:

Louis Quatorze (I Want Candy version): Mad song, very much casting Annabella as a female Adam Ant with period (ooer) romanticising and sexing up.  Catchy as fuck too.

Chihuaha: A sort of theme song for the band, with much 'bow wow wow'ing and Annabella singing 'I'm fifteen and a fool, can't you see...I'm a rock n roll puppet in a band called Bow Wow Wow'.  Tribal drumming and oohing and aaahing with her doing Annie-type vocals over it.  Great.

(I'm a) TV Savage: More guitar on this one, with Annabella singing 'I am like Botticelli, I am a big creator' (McLaren referencing?).  This has been in my head all week.

[samadriel]

Shucks, that's version of LQ, I have...  does this mean there's another one?

[NoSleep]

Shucks, that's version of LQ, I have...  does this mean there's another one?

A version of this was on the C30, C60, C90 Go! cassette. The version above doesn't appear to be that one (from distant memory).

[JesusAndYourBush]

I assumed the "I Want Candy" album was a re-release of all the cassette stuff and single b-sides, anything that wasn't on the first album. (with one new song called "Bow Wow Wow", well, I never worked out where it was from so I assumed it was new).

I've also got a Best Of cd with 2 songs on that I can't work out where they're from, maybe someone here knows.

"Baby Oh No".  It had a promo video which I've got on VHS somewhere but I can't find any record of it being released as a single.  Wikipedia has it as one of the songs on "I Want Candy" but it's a totally different tracklist and it's not on my version of that album.

"The Joy Of Eating Raw Flesh". I do remember this song title being mentioned in Smash Hits back in the day, just a small paragraph in the news section, but can't remember any more than that.  I'm assuming maybe it was a bonus track on a foreign release.  It's nothing special if anyone's not heard it, it's an instrumental!

[zonko]

The title Dirk Wear White Sox was a tribute to Adam's favourite actor Dirk Borgarde. There was also a rather excellent song of the same name which, oddly, didn't make the album.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_cGGiEo3qAc

[Bingo Fury]

Aaah, Bow Wow Wow ... one of my favourite bands when I was 15. I loved "C30 C60 C90 Go" and relished the cheek of them filming the video in one of EMI's decommissioned pressing plants. "Your Cassette Pet" was pretty fine too, a mash-up of styles which made for really unconventional-sounding pop. And yet I didn't bother buying their first proper album for some reason. Did I think they'd sold out by releasing a vinyl long-player?

These kids think they're the shit with their iPods and musical phones, but where's their piracy anthem, eh?