V.A. Saturday

In 2004 Don Letts compiled a various artists compilation for Heavenly, Social Classics 3 Dread Meets B- Boys Downtown. It was a hugely listenable sixteen track compilation recreating the summer of 1981 when Don accompanied The Clash and they took over New York with a residency at Bond's Casino in Times Square. The stories are legendary- the promoters oversold the shows, the fire department shut it down, The Clash promised to  honour all sold tickets and ended up playing seventeen nights, an exhausting experience. While that was going on and Don filmed them, the band immersed themselves into New York's street and club culture, Mick Jones especially, and the nascent hip hop scene. Support acts for the group at Bond's included Grandmaster Flash, The Fall, Dead Kennedys, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, The Slits, ESG and The Treacherous Three. 

Don's has various slices of old school hip hop (Grandmaster Flash, Grand Wizzard Theodore, The Fearless Four, Fab Five Freddy, the Wild Style OST), some classic New York dance tracks (Babe Ruth's The Mexican and Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band's version of Apache), some cutting edge early 80s electro (Al- Naafiysh by Hashim), along with Malcolm McLaren, Kraftwerk and The Clash. It's wall to wall early 80s bangers and cutting edge too. 

Grand Wizzard Theodore is from The Bronx, NYC, and is the DJ who is largely credited with inventing scratching. 

Subway Theme

Babe Ruth were an early 70s funk rock band from Hatfield, Hertfordshire. The Mexican was recorded at Abbey Road in 1972, a hugely influential song later on in the decade when the New York hip hop DJs picked up on it and played it, mixed it and sampled it to pieces. 

The Mexican

The Clash were inspired by New York , it sent them into a spin they never really pulled out of. This Is Radio Clash  was a standalone single and 12", fired up by New York. the city's sounds and radio stations. Outside Broadcast was a remix version of the main track, seven and a half minutes of dub sound effects, samples, traffic sounds, rapping and studio experimentation. 

Outside Broadcast

Malcolm McLaren's Buffalo Girls is an essential early 80s record, 1982 hip hop produced by Trevor Horn, after Malcolm saw what was happening in New York. He'd been in the city looking for a support act for Bow Wow Wow and went to a block party where he heard hip hop and scratching for the first time.

Buffalo Gals

Fab Five Freddy is a New York hip hop legend, graffiti artist, film maker and face. In 1983 the film Wild Style was released,a document of New York's nascent hip hop scene in 1981 and the track Down By Law comes from the soundtrack. Chris Stein of Blondie worked on the soundtrack and the score too and Freddy would famously later on turn up in the lyrics to Rapture. 

Down By Law

Monday's Long Songs

This bootleg re- orbited into my musical world last week, a 2021 cut- and- shut of Malcolm McLaren's Madame Butterfly and The Grid's Floatation by pflext, the two songs working together perfectly, Malcolm's 1984 marriage of opera and 80s r'n'b and hip hop spliced with Richard Norris and Dave Ball's 1990 Balearic/ ambient house classic, remixed by a then fledgling remixer Andrew Weatherall. Richard did point out in 2021 that the bootlegger pflext missed a trick by not calling it Floats Like A Butterfly. Listen here, eight and a half minutes of bliss. Pflext is Paul Flex Taylor currently based in Sydney, Australia. 

Here's the original of Madame Butterfly from '84, McLaren, Stephen Hague, Debbie Cole and Betty Ann White taking on Puccini and winning. The album Fans was six tracks long and included pieces from Carmen and Turandot over hip hop drums but madame Butterfly was the only one where he really nailed it.

Madame Butterfly (Un Bel Di Vedremo)

The McLaren/ Grid mash up led me to Paris in 1994, where Malcolm McLaren was still looking for the next big fusion, making an album celebrating the city in the form of atmospheric future jazz and synth pop with vocals from Catherine Deneuve. A second disc of remixes brought this seventeen minute ambient classic from Youth titled The Emotional Curvatone At A Given Moment In Time And Space Listen at Soundcloud or Youtube. It really is something special with Deneuve's softly spoken vocals, waves of rippling synths and endless flow. I posted it before in 2019, a year which is both fairly recent but also feels like many, many years ago. 

Dutch Butterfly

Malcolm McLaren has been painted as the villain in the Sex Pistols story for many years, usually by John Lydon who commands more air time and print inches than the rest of the participants put together. Malcolm was instrumental in that band's story but his wider contribution to popular culture goes way beyond the filth and the fury and subsequent crash and burn. Following the demise of the Pistols he kept running, straight into Bow Wow Wow and then moved on again, faster and faster, intent on mashing together disparate elements to create something new. This led to at least two further moments of inspiration and musical alchemy. 

In 1983 Malcolm put out his debut album, Duck Rock. His debut single Buffalo Girls was a genuine piece of cross cultural game changing with scratching and sampling, the World Famous Supreme Team, Zulu backing singers, Trevor Horn at the production desk, a record that was key in early hip hop culture. He followed it with Double Dutch, equally brilliant and further blurring cultural boundaries- skipping chants, a zippy bassline, hi- life guitars and South African vocals. He was sued by The Boyoyo Boys for that but a Top Three hit in the UK chart must have softened that blow. 

Double Dutch

Two years later he went further and deeper releasing an album called Fans that spliced opera with modern R & B. Madame Butterfly, a version of Puccini's famous work, a genuinely jaw- dropping piece of music- Stephen Hague now at the controls, crunching 80s synth drums, flutes, McLaren's speaking voice and hugely affecting vocals from Debbie Cole and Betty Ann White. 

Madame Butterfly (Un Bel Di Vedremo)

This version, a remix by Morales and Munzibai, stretches it out for ten minutes with a much toughened up rhythm-  industrial/ hip hop drums and foregrounded metallic, slap bass and whooshing noises. 

Madame Butterfly (On The Fly Mix)

Malcolm's death in 2010 brought some correction to his story and his role in punk but there's much more to Malcolm than just the Sex store, bondage trousers and Johnny Rotten, a tale we've all heard a thousand times anyway. Double Dutch and Madame Butterfly are both moments of madcap 80s brilliance made by someone who had a hundred ideas a day and the wherewithal to follow them through. 

Monday's Long Song

A seventeen minute trip through Paris in the company of Malcolm McLaren and Catherine Deneuve on vocals sent through the ambient dub machine by Youth. A rambling, sprawling but never aimless Youth production from 1994 given a typically unwieldy name (The  Emotional Curvature At A Given Moment In Space And Time). Enjoy the ride.

I Wish I Was A Little Bit Taller

I'm running out of bandwidth for downloads at Boxnet so here's a video from 1995. Upbeat hip hop from Skee Lo- really catchy sample, self-deprecating lyric about being rejected by a girl and general all round good stuff. The musical sample comes from Bernard Wright's Spinnin' and Malcolm McLaren's Buffalo Girls are in there somewhere too.

And here are those Buffalo Girls along with Rock Steady Crew and Malcolm's World Famous Supreme Team from 1982...

And I'll Have Candy All The Time

I've heard this song crop up a few times in different circumstances over the last week or two and where the blog's concerned I take that as a sign- Bow Wow Wow, fronted by Annabella Lwin, had a pop take on a kind of Burundi beat and rock 'n' roll pairing. Masterminded by Malcolm McLaren, he nicked the three blokes from Adam Ant and found Annabella in a launderette aged 13. This got him into bother later when her Mum contacted the police about a photo session when she was aged 15, naked, recreating Manet's Le Dejeuner Sur L'herbe. This song and Go Wild In the Country were proper big hits and they released three albums before the boys in the band ejected Annabella. I Want Candy is a cover of a song by The Strangeloves (who themselves were a made up band, never really existed). The band have reformed various times with one, two or three members plus others. Sadly Mohawked, punkabilly, Gretschslinging guitarist Matthew Ashman died in 1995 of complications due to diabetes.

I Want Candy (Club Mix)

Video, a hit on early MTV, with some large candy props (geddit) and some green screen technology

Bow Wow Wow 'I Want Candy' (Kevin Shield's Remix)

Malcolm McClaren has died aged 64. Lydon hasn't spoken good of him since about 1978 but without Malcolm, no Pistols, no.... anything really. This lot were a second attempt to subvert popular culture and made some good records. This is the Kevin Shields remix, done a few years ago for that Marie Antoinette film. Don't be expecting MBV-style sonic cathedrals though- this is the Bow Wow Wow cover of The Strangeloves' song with slightly different drums.

No picture I'm afraid- my computer currently thinks almost everything internet-based is 'unsafe'. You're lucky I've managed to get it to publish this.

I Want Candy (Kevin Shield's Remix).mp3