Bow Wow Wow C/D

"Do You Want To Hold Me?" is pop perfection.

But, yes. Very classic. Not the least reason being the fact that they have an album called See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! Such fun.

i could have sworn i wrote about them a bunch on some other thread, but i can't find it. anyway, yeah, one of my favorite bands. i like EVERY song they ever recorded. for real. there isn't anything i don't love listening to and i own everything they ever made.

I keep listening to "Do You Wanna Hold Me?"

Over and over.

"Chihuahua" is one of the best songs of the 80s, maybe of ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7BwRL2yhGQ

I keep listening to "Do You Wanna Hold Me?"

Over and over.

― Tape Store, Tuesday, July 22, 2008 9:43 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

I adore "C30 C60 C90 Go" but have never looked further. What's their best album or compilation?

buy everything.

They had essentially three albums plus a few stray singles and other tracks.

Girl Bites Dog is an awesome must-have comp that includes all of their 8 song debut Your Cassette Pet plus singles from around the time of its release

See Jungle! See Jungle! was their next long-player and is classic top to bottom

When the Going Gets Tough... is their final album; it's post-McLaren, post-"I Want Candy" and has a denser, whooshier (for lack of a better word) sound to it... it's great also - the problem with Bow Wow Wow is that everything's phenomenal

That leaves out a few wonderful songs like "Baby, Oh No" and "Cowboy" that were not album tracks per se... look for them

If you want a Greatest Hits - and I notice that there are a million out there - search for one that has the 12" single versions of "Chihuahua" (>5 minutes long) and "Prince of Darkness" (>4 minutes).

For questions about sound quality, best read amazon reviews for guidance. I can really only vouch for Girl Bites Dog as the best CD representation of the early material I've heard... keep in mind that the Your Cassette Pet songs had a pretty rough production sound to begin with

C30 C60 C90 Go is one my favourite songs of all time. See Jungle! is an excellent album all the way through, Chihuahua and Elimination Dancing are especially great tracks.

For some reason I've never even thought of giving When The Going Gets Tough a chance, I'll have to rectify that very soon.

Ah, thanks for this input! Spotify has "Girl Bites Dog" and a few of the comps, I'll start checking stuff out there. It looks like Cherry Red reissued "See Jungle" as a 2cd set last year, though I am wary as Cherry Red is notorious for shoddy quality control.

Yeah I would be very wary about this reissue after reading these reviews on Amazon.co.uk.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bow-Wow/dp/B003JIOHAO/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1321126925&sr=1-3

Also how lazy renaming the album so it's self titled, maybe they just couldn't be bothered printing that full title.

I had an earlier CD issue of the album that was really good but I sold it as it was going for a lot, I replaced it on vinyl. It's really easy to find on vinyl usually, are you a CD only man though?

are you a CD only man though

I am, yeah. I couldn't wait to ditch vinyl in 1987! I'll poke around for better options, ta.

growling, howling!

Wow, this thread is crazy short. Utterly classic. They're one of a slew of new wave-era acts who are unfairly dismissed as one/two-hit wonders but had a lot of great album material that transcended those hits (see also: Flying Lizards, Josie Cotton, The Waitresses, Holly and the Italians). See Jungle! See Jungle!... is one of the best albums of that era.

Yeah, I slept on them so long because of I Want Candy.

Same here. Rip It Up And Start Again inspired me to check them (and many, many other acts) out.

Children, I want to warn ya,
'cause I've been to California

I really like the early stuff the bo diddley/burundi/bubblegum stuff. think that would coincide with Girl Bites Dog as mentioned above though not sure if taht's teh title of the cd compi I have of them.

I thought they went off towards theh end, became overproduced and less energetic but may need to recheck that.

THe Adam And tHe Ants early stuff is also really good, 1st lp is the same band that became BOw Wow Wow for the most part. 2nd, Kings of the Wild Frontier has some of the same ideas being explore but I think less bubblegum.

Matthew Ashman also turns up on an lp called Witch by (C) or Louise Wener, not to be confused with teh sleeper girl. I think it's shortly before he died. I think Wener later complained taht Madonna ripped off her style for a period near whispered spoken word over interesting dubby background. Could have just been a reviewer noting sources for Madonna's sound at one point.
Great, great lp though.

Matthew Ashman also turns up on an lp called Witch by (C) or Louise Wener

that's a really good album.

You could do an amazing single-CD Matthew Ashman compilation -

Adam & The Ants - Bow Wow Wow - Chiefs of Relief - © - Agent Provocateur

chiefs of relief !
had no idea he was part of them.
they supported BAD when i saw them.
i have one 7" buried deep somewhere, but never picked up the album.

i did however recently track down a copy of the AP album ..
not half bad when in the mood for big beat/skunk rock grooves.

I'm glad to see some consensus here that "Do You Wanna Hold Me?" is a lost classic. I feel somewhat validated for listening to that song on repeat for like 6 months after finding it in the dollar bin last year.

I think Bow Wow Wow were my favorite discovery while reading Rip It Up And Start Again. Definitely more musical substance there than their legacy would lead you to believe.

Leigh Gorman in particular was (and is) a virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist, as his wikipedia page details.

For many years When the Going Get Tough the Tough Get Going was my favorite album by anyone.

No-one pays attention to Malcolm McLaren's Swamp Thing album from '85, but there's a kinda great version of Sexy Eiffel Towers on it (McLaren & Ashman both get writing credits for this song)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6deJmxl0jaA

No-one pays attention to Malcolm McLaren's Swamp Thing album from '85

cos its an arse to get on cd/digital etc.
my cassette version died years ago, so unable to listen to it.

Yeah, I had the cassette for years (which still holds up). But not that long ago I found a vinyl version which doesn't sound as good as the cassette!

so much trouble re the back catalogue of MM that i got that 'buffalo gals go back to skool' reversion, as it had some of the original mixes interspersed with the revised crap.

"Swamp Thing" isn't available on CD. The only MM I care for is "Fans", anyway. That's quite a unique sound.

On the Swamp Thing LP…

"Eiffel Tower" = "Punk It Up" from Duck Rock + Bow Wow Wow's "Sexy Eiffel Towers"
"Boom Boom Baby" = "Soweto" from Duck Rock + Bow Wow Wow's "I Want My Baby on Mars"

McLaren is given sole credit for the two songs on Swamp Thing although the Bow Wow Wow songs were originally credited to McLaren plus the guys in the band (not Annabella).

What I wonder about is whatever happened to McLaren's friends in Paris who supposedly came up with a lot of the ideas that many early Bow Wow Wow songs were based on. They were trying to make some kind of crazy musical with an underage sex theme, circa 1979. I forget their names, but they never got any Bow Wow Wow songwriting credits at all it seems.

What I wonder about is whatever happened to McLaren's friends in Paris who supposedly came up with a lot of the ideas that many early Bow Wow Wow songs were based on.

given MMs groove, i would suggest that the answer to this is : nothing ..

Is that what Chicken was? a French paedo musical?

I thing Chicken was supposed to be a magazine. Not clear on whether it had anything to do with the musical project. The idea of the musical, iirc, was that a bunch of kids hijack a plane and then all have sex with each other on it (origin of "Mile High Club"). The name "Lieutenant Lush" that Boy George later assumed was a character from the musical.

And I think there are kid gangs in it, like the Homosexual Apaches (hence "Uomo Sex Al Apache")

here's the stuff about McLaren & Chicken, it's pretty fucking unpleasant stuff tbh

http://thestreetlampdoesntcast.blogspot.com/2011/07/sexploitation-music-part-2.html

Yeah, it was about how children could be the true revolutionaries if they use their sexuality. And on from there..

Not sure I need more than the comp I've already got but Cherry Red is putting out the complete works:

https://www.cherryred.co.uk/product/bow-wow-wow-your-box-set-pet-the-complete-recordings-1980-84-3cd-clamshell-boxset/

Ah, I messed up the link for my comp, it's this one: http://www.discogs.com/Bow-Wow-Wow-Annabella-The-Best-Of-Bow-Wow-Wow/master/300892

That's awesome. It's great to have all those 12" remixes in one place; I think some have not been on CD before. The 12" for "Love, Peace, and Harmony" sounds great and is notably different from the album version. This box also includes "Teenage Queen," which is "Baby, Oh No" with different lyrics and only came out in Japan. It also looks like it has the new versions of "Elimination Dancing" and "King Kong" that came out only on a Flexipop single.

The only thing it looks like it doesn't have is the re-recorded versions of "Mile High Club" & "C30 C60 C90 Go!" that appeared on a limited edition promo single when they played at the new Studio 54 in 1981 (unless the last track of Disc 4 is the former... not sure)

There’s a Bow Wow Wow appearance on “American Bandstand” from May 1983 up on YouTube. They do “Do You Wanna Hold Me” and “Aphrodisiac.” The group seem in such good spirits it’s hard to believe they would play the final show of their classic run the very next month.

Dick Clark asks them about the time they’re spending touring the US, which got me curious, so I looked it up and it’s kind of amazing how much they worked in the US. They were gigging in America for practically the entire first six months of 1983, this on top of extensive US tours in ‘81 and ‘82.

I just have to add, I have never understood the break-up of Bow Wow Wow. It seems like a major case of self-sabotage. They were all still so young, but only Leroy Gorman, the most talented one, accomplished much post-BWW. No one really remembers The Chiefs of Relief, I assume.

the bass sound on this live version of I Want Candy is immense:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjtvrYZyBEA

I dunno why people bag on this song so much. it's fucking great. the purity of it... all the elements just fused into this unstoppable beat. it honestly almost brings me to tears