BOW WOW WOW – Bow Wow Wow (1981) (Limited edition 2CD) (2010)

Bow Wow Wow was Malcolm McLaren‘s (RIP Bless him) first big project after the Sex Pistols imploded, and the erstwhile media manipulator made sure his new band bounded onto the scene with a whole gaggle of gimmicks. The first was Annabella Lwin, a 14-year-old Burmese immigrant McLaren found working in a laundry and decided to remake into a post punk goddess. Then there was what used to be Adam’s Ants, the trio of Matthew Ashman (guitar), Leroy Gorman (bass), and Dave Barbarossa (drums), whom McLaren introduced to African music — specifically, the sound of Burundi tribal drumming — then induced to dump Adam and follow him.

But it was the product that ultimately pulled the package together. Bow Wow Wow’s cassette-only first single, a home-taping anthem called ‘C-30, C-60, C-90 Go!’, Much the same can be said for the impossibly titled See Jungle! See Jungle! [etc.] which introduced the group to this country. RCA turned the Bows over to a proven hit-maker: Kenny Laguna, who converted the band’s Burundi beat into a jazzy Bo Diddley groove and gave it a near-hit with a remake of the Strangeloves’ ‘I Want Candy’.