Bow Wow Wow
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| Bow Wow Wow | |
|---|---|
| Origin | London, England |
| Genre(s) | Rock, New Wave |
| Years active | 1980–1983, 1997–1998, 2003–2006 |
| Label(s) | EMI, RCA, Cleopatra |
| Associated acts | Adam and the Ants Boy George Chiefs of Relief Republica No Doubt |
| Website | http://www.bowwowwow.org |
| Members | |
| Annabella Lwin Leigh Gorman Phil Gough Devin Beaman |
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| Former members | |
| Matthew Ashman (Deceased) David Barbarossa Dave Calhoun Eshan Khadaroo Adrian Young Boy George(as Lieutenant Lush) |
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Bow Wow Wow was a 1980s New Wave band managed by former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren during 1980. The group's music is described as having an "African-derived drum sound".[1]
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[edit] History
McLaren persuaded guitarist Matthew Ashman, bassist Leigh Gorman and percussionist David Barbarossa (also known as Dave Barbe), of the then lineup of Adam & the Ants to leave Adam Ant and form a new group. After a six month long audition process, the band hired teen singer Annabella Lwin.[1] Musician David Fishel, originally from Liverpool, an acquaintance of McLaren's, discovered fourteen year old Lwin while she was working a Saturday job at her local dry cleaning shop. She was singing along to a Stevie Wonder song on the radio. The group's sound was a mix of her "girlish squeal", Balinese chants, surf instrumentals, New Romantic pop melodies, and Barbarossa's Burundi ritual music influenced tom tom drum beats. Among the regular faces at the band's early London gigs were Latin songwriter/producer Richard Daniel Roman and Boy George, then known as Lieutenant Lush. McLaren was also going to use the latter (later of Culture Club fame) as a second lead singer, but he was deemed to be "too wild" for the band[citation needed]. In 1982 Bow Wow Wow had their first U.K. top 10 hit with “Go Wild in the Country.” The band's most popular hit was the New Wave staple, "I Want Candy" (originally a 1965 hit by The Strangeloves). "I Want Candy" was featured in an early music video on MTV. Bow Wow Wow's recording of "I Want Candy" continues to appear in film soundtracks and media and advertising events such as the 2005 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Their most notorious recording was "Sexy Eiffel Towers", a bold ode to masturbation, including excitedly heavy breathing and orgasmic moans; this was a song that went far beyond the slightly later Cyndi Lauper hit "She Bop", about similar subject matter. [2] The group released three full-length albums. In 1983, tensions in the group were rising. Suffering from illness and exhaustion after intense US touring, they went their separate ways.
Ashman went on to form Chiefs of Relief and play with other groups such as Max, Rams, and Agent Provocateur. In 1995 Ashman died from diabetes complications. Since his time in Bow Wow Wow, Barbe has worked on other musical projects such as Beats International, Live with Adam Ant in 1995, Republica, dance band Chicane, the London-based 'Faith' music collective, and Amber Gate. Barbe also wrote a novel entitled “We Were Looking Up". Gorman continued to perform and has had success as a record producer and composer for films and advertising. After Bow Wow Wow Lwin started a solo career.
In 1997 Lwin and Gorman reformed Bow Wow Wow and embarked on the "Barking Mad" reunion tour in 1997 and 1998, adding guitarist Dave Calhoun and drummer Eshan Khadaroo. [1] The tour produced the live CD Wild in the U.S.A. which also included remixes of previous Bow Wow Wow tracks. In the wake of the success of the "Barking Mad" tour, there were reports that the band planned to record new material.
| “ | The group wrote at least 10 new songs while on the road, including "Bedouin Rocker," "Eastern Promise" and the ballad "A Thousand Tears." Consequently, Bow Wow Wow hope to release an album of new material later this year. [The band's publicist] also said the band is planning to return to the U.S. for more dates, acting as support for a still-unnamed "major" artist. | ” |
The subsequent tour dates and records never materialized. The song 'A Thousand Tears' made it into the 1999 film Desperate but Not Serious starring Christine Taylor and Claudia Schiffer and this song along with some other previously unrecorded songs have been performed by Bow Wow Wow in recent concert dates, but presently, no new studio record has yet appeared.
It wasn't until the September 20th, 2003 Inland Invasion show as part of KROQ's 25th Anniversary celebrations that Bow Wow Wow reformed again and appeared on stage this time with Los Angeles guitarist Phil Gough and Adrian Young of No Doubt on drums. The band then maintained a touring schedule through 2006. In September 2005, Philadelphia, PA native Devin Beaman was brought in as the new drummer. In June of 2006 Bow Wow Wow recorded a cover of The Smiths' song "I Started Something" for a proposed Smiths tribute record. A promotional edit of the recording can be heard on Bow Wow Wow's MySpace page. The full length recording, the first new recording released under the name Bow Wow Wow in over 20 years, was made available on iTunes on January 1, 2007.
The band played their most recent show on November 2, 2006 at the Maritime Hotel's Hiro Lounge in New York City to promote the inclusion of Bow Wow Wow's music on the soundtrack of the Sofia Coppola film Marie Antoinette. Since then the band members appear to have put Bow Wow Wow on indefinite hiatus in order that the individual members can work on other projects.
[edit] Controversy
Their label at the time, EMI, refused to promote the cassingle "C30, C60, C90, Go" because it allegedly promoted home taping,[2] as Side B was blank. EMI dropped the group after releasing its second single "W.O.R.K." [2]
Lwin's mother alleged exploitation of a minor for immoral purposes and instigated a Scotland Yard investigation. As a result the band was only allowed to leave England after McLaren promised not to promote Lwin as a "sex kitten". This included an agreement to not use a nude photograph depicting Lwin as the woman in Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe), though the picture was used as the cover of an EP in 1982. [2] (The photo was originally to be used for 1981's See Jungle!..., and the cover was used as planned in some European countries - such as the Netherlands - though not in the UK or the US.) Lwin was almost made to quit the band by her family over the publication of the photo, particularly as she was only fifteen when the photo was taken.
The degree to which Adam and the Ants, Bow Wow Wow, and other British bands of their time were influenced by rather than stole the music of native African nations and tribes such as the Royal Drummers of Burundi and the Zulus has been a matter of debate. It is thought that when Malcolm McLaren started to advise Adam and the Ants on the direction they should take after Dirk Wears White Sox, he gave the band (the instrumentalists who would eventually become Bow Wow Wow) a variety of recordings of World Music from which to draw inspiration. When the Ants dropped out to form Bow Wow Wow, Adam Ant took the recordings from the band's early work in this new direction in order to start his new incarnation of the Ants. This is how it ended up that both bands were making music influenced by the recordings offered by McLaren. Among the recordings was one entitled "Burundi Black". The story of "Burundi Black" and the origin of the "Burundi Beat" and the associated controversy is told in the following excerpt from a 1981 New York Times article by Robert Palmer:
| “ | The original source of this tribal rhythm is a recording of 25 drummers, made in a village in the east African nation of Burundi by a team of French anthropologists. The recording was included in an album, Musique du Burundi, issued by the French Ocora label in 1968. It is impressively kinetic, but the rhythm patterns are not as complex as most African drumming; they are a relatively easy mark for pop pirates in search of plunder. During the early 70's, a British pop musician named Mike Steiphenson grafted an arrangement for guitars and keyboards onto the original recording from Burundi, and the result was Burundi Black, an album that sold more than 125,000 copies and made the British best-seller charts... Adam and the Ants, Bow Wow Wow, and several other bands have notched up an impressive string of British hits using the Burundi beat as a rhythmic foundation. But the Burundian drummers who made the original recording are not sharing in the profits. Nobody told them to copyright their traditional music, and trying to obtain copyright for a rhythm would be a difficult proposition in any case. | ” |
It has also been charged that Bow Wow Wow stole melodies from Zulu jive songs and Zulu pop songs and turned the original Zulu lyrics into English mondegreens. This is the charge made for the origin of the lines "See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah! City All over Go Ape Crazy!" and "Golly, Golly, Go Buddy. Hey i-yai-yo."
In answer to this issue the afore quoted Times article offers the following somewhat in Bow Wow Wow's defense:
| “ | It's [The 'Burundi Beat'] the driving force and most distinctive ingredient in much of Adam Ant's music and has been equally valuable to other British rockers. The fact that Adam and the Ants have used it to power fatuous celebrations of tribalism makes their borrowing even more distasteful. Pirates indeed.
Again, Bow Wow Wow is another matter. The group's rhythms are still influenced by the Burundian recording, but they are varied and flexible rather than slavishly imitative. And the Bow Wows have absorbed other rhythmic usages, including West African high life, Brazilian pop and conventional rock and roll. They seem to be able to synthesize their influences into appealing trash-pop as easily as they subvert Malcolm McLaren's image manipulation. |
” |
In an RCA radio promo vinyl recording, guitarist Matthew Ashman responds thusly:
| “ | Well they do a lot of that sort of chanting in, uh, Africa, but it's not a direct rip off. It's just, uh, our interpretation of it really. A lot of the ideas are ours, and they're brand new, a lot of those chants. You know what I mean? They're not stolen from some poor tribe in Africa. It's just like the influence is there, and we'll use it. Yeah, it's just a good noise, isn't it? It's a good sound. | ” |
[edit] Legacy
Bow Wow Wow has many famous admirers including members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and No Doubt. Anthony Kiedis included the lines, "Swimming in the sound Of bow wow wow" in the Red Hot Chili Peppers song 'Suck My Kiss' and "Holy cow bow wow wow" in 'Right on Time'. John Frusciante claims Matthew Ashman as an influence on his work since returning to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the late 90's This is evident in Frusciante's use of the Gretsch White Falcon which Is used by Ashman. Adrian Young said of the opportunity to play drums for Bow Wow Wow from 2003 - 2005, "It is a dream come true to play with a band I grew up idolizing. I feel like a kid back in the sand box."[7] Film director Sofia Coppola drew inspiration from Annabella when conceiving the style for her film, Marie Antoinette. Says Bow Wow Wow's manager in 2006, "They actually based Marie Antoinette, from a styling point of view, on Annabella Lwin. They drew parallels from the fact that they were both young girls who found fame and fortune at a ridiculously early age.”[7] Bow Wow Wow's recording and video of "I Want Candy" has enduring appeal for enthusiasts of '80s pop culture.
The band Pretty Girls Make Graves did a cover of 'C30, C60, C90, Go.'
[edit] Discography (UK)
[edit] Albums
- Your Cassette Pet (EMI WOW 1, cassette EP) Dec 1980
- Louis Quatorze
- Gold He Said
- Uomo Sex Al Apache
- I Want My Baby On Mars
- Sexy Eiffel Tower
- Giant Sized Baby Thing
- Fools Rush In
- Radio G. String
- See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy. (RCA RCALP 3000, 33rpm LP) Oct 1981
- Jungle Boy
- Chihuahua
- Prince of Darkness (Sinner! Sinner! Sinner!) [Instrumental]
- Mickey Put It Down
- (I'm a) TV Savage
- Elimination Dancing
- Golly! Golly! Go Buddy!
- King Kong
- Go Wild in the Country
- I'm Not a Know It All
- Why Are Babies So Wise?
- Orang-Outang
- Hello, Hello Daddy (I'll Sacrifice You)
- The Last of the Mohicans (RCA CPL1-4314, 33rpm EP) Jul 1982
- I Want Candy
- Cowboy
- Louis Quatorze
- The Mile High Club
- I Want Candy (RCA AFL1-4375, 33rpm LP) 1982
- I Want Candy
- Baby, Oh No
- Louis Quatorze
- Cowboy
- The Mile High Club
- Go Wild in the Country
- Jungle Boy
- El Boss Dicho
- (I'm a) T.V. Savage
- King Kong
- When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going (RCA RCALP 6068, 33rpm LP) Feb 1983
- Aphrodisiac
- Do You Wanna Hold Me?
- Roustabout
- Lonesome Tonight
- Love Me
- What's the Time? (Hey Buddy)
- Mario (Your own Way to Paradise)
- Quiver (Arrows in my)
- The Man Mountain
- Rikki Dee
- Tommy Tucker
- Love, Peace and Harmony
- Wild in the U.S.A. (Cleopatra CLP 0424-2, CD) 1999
Remixed Tracks: 1 to 6; Live Tracks: 7 to 20.
- I Want Candy (Razed in Black Mix)
- W.O.R.K. (Atomic Dog Mix Remixed by Wayne Hussey of the Mission UK)
- C30 C60 C90 Go! (Remixed by Kevin Haskins of Love & Rockets Remix)
- Do You Wanna Hold Me (CKB Remix)
- W.O.R.K. (Spahn Ranch Mix)
- I Want Candy (Girl Eats Boy Remix)
- Giant Sized Baby Thing
- Louis Quatorze
- Baby, Oh No!
- Sexy Eiffel Tower
- See Jungle
- Mile High Club
- Uomo Sex Al Apache
- Prince of Darkness
- Go Wild in the Country
- Aphrodisiac
- I Want Candy
- C30 C60 C90 Go
- Do You Want to Hold Me
- What's the Time (Hey Buddy)
[edit] Singles
- "C30, C60, C90, Go!" b/w "Sun, Sea and Piracy" (EMI 5088, 45rpm single) Jul 1980 #34 UK
- "Your Cassette Pet" Dec 1980 #58 UK
- "W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah, No No My Daddy Don't)" b/w "C30, C60, C90, Anda" (EMI 5153, 45rpm single) Mar 1981 #62 UK
- "Prince of Darkness" b/w "Orang-outang" (RCA 100, 45rpm single) Jul 1981 #58 UK
- "Chihuahua" b/w "Golly! Golly! Go Buddy!" (RCA 144, 45rpm single) Oct 1981 #51 UK
- "Go Wild in the Country" b/w "El Bosso Dicho" (RCA 175, 45rpm single) Jan 1982 #7 UK
- "See Jungle! (Jungle Boy)" / "(I'm a ) TV Savage" (RCA 220, 45rpm single, double A-side) Apr 1982 #45 UK
- "I Want Candy" b/w "King Kong" (RCA 238, 45rpm single) May 1982; #39 AUS, #9 UK
- "Louis Quatorze" b/w "Mile High Club" (RCA 263, 45rpm single) Jul 1982 #66 UK
- "Fools Rush In" b/w "Sex (instrumental)" (EMI 5344, 45rpm single) Sep 1982
- "Do You Wanna Hold Me?" b/w "What's the Time" (RCA 314, 45rpm single) Feb 1983 #47 UK
- "I Started Something" (Cleopatra, iTunes release) Jan 2007
[edit] Compilations
AllMusicGuide's Stephen Thomas Erlewine recommends The Best of Bow Wow Wow (RCA Oct. 29, 1996) for its liner notes and highlights from their "inconsistent" albums and EPs. [8]
[edit] Sources
- ^ a b c *Ruhlmann, William. "Bow Wow Wow" All Music Guide.
- ^ a b c d *Holly George-Warren, Patricia Romanowski, and Jon Pareles (2001). The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Revised and Updated for the 21st Century), p.107-108. ISBN 0-7432-0120-5.
- ^ VH1.com : Bow Wow Wow : Bow Wow Wow's Live Album - Rhapsody Music Downloads
- ^ VH1.com : Bow Wow Wow : Bow Wow Wow Wows Fans With Recording Plans - Rhapsody Music Downloads
- ^ [1]
- ^ a b The Pop Life; Latest British Invasion: 'The New Tribalism' - New York Times
- ^ a b Ken Phillips Publicity Group - Bow Wow Wow
- ^ Bogdanov, Vladimir et al, eds. (2001). All Music Guide: The Definitive Guide to Popular Music, p.49. ISBN 0-87930-627-0.
[edit] External links
- Bow Wow Wow - Official Site
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