Bow Wow Wow at The Garage on 20 August 2016

/ The original 1980s line-up of Bow Wow Wow: guitarist Matthew Ashman. bassist Leigh Gorman, vocalist Annabella Lwin and drummer David Barbarossa  /

The last time I saw Bow Wow Wow was in 2012 at The Islington Academy and the line-up featured two of the original members: singer Annabella Lwin and bassist Leigh Gorman. Since then, Annabella and Gorman have clearly fallen-out (Bow Wow Wow was always a rancorous band) and she’s now doing her own incarnation of Bow Wow Wow in which she is the sole originator and is backed by entirely new musicians. (Her version of the band is called Annabella’s Original Bow Wow Wow.  Confusingly, Gorman is continuing with his own edition. Seriously, that would be like Blondie touring without Deborah Harry or The Banshees minus Siouxsie). For all I know a lawsuit has been involved at some point between Gorman and Annabella over ownership of the name. In her between-song banter Saturday night at The Garage Annabella said something along the lines of, “If there are any of my original musicians in the crowd tonight, I hope you understand why I need to do this ...”

Much as I enjoyed Saturday night, the 2012 gig was infinitely better in musical terms. Bow Wow Wow’s best New Wave-era tunes are catchy and minimalist but deceptively complex and sophisticated with African and Latin polyrhythms and surf guitar influences. It felt like the newbies in the band were loud and powerful, but steamrolled over those nuances.

The 2012 concert really was a definitive greatest hits performance and I couldn’t complain about the track selections. Last night’s set list was weird and patchy. On plus side: essential stone-cold classics like “C30, C60, C90 Go!”, “Louis Quatorze”, “Mile High Club”, “Aphrodisiac”, “WORK”, “I Want My Baby on Mars”, “Baby Oh No”, “See Jungle (Jungle Boy).” They sounded as sexy, funny, punky and exotic as ever. On the downside: no “Uomo Sex Al Apache” (a 2012 concert highlight), “Elimination Dancing”, “Sexy Eiffel Tower”, "TV Savage" or “Chihuahua”. (To be fair, they seemingly never play “Chihuahua” live. I’d argue that song is Bow Wow Wow’s magnum opus.  I suspect this is because Malcolm McLaren forced Annabella to sing lyrics like “I can’t dance / And I can’t sing / I can’t do anything ...  I’m a rock’n’roll puppet in a band called Bow Wow Wow .. I’m a horrid little idiot / can’t you see ...” etc). They treated “I Want Candy” as the climactic big finale – understandably, because it was their biggest chart hit but it’s not their best song by a long shot (I bet Annabella is secretly sick to death of it).

Annabella is presumably calling the shots now and she displayed a strange lack of confidence in her own back catalogue. They padded things out with a cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'” (an interesting experiment to hear that given a Burundi beat / tribal make-over but hardly essential) and then she introduced a brand new song. And with the best will in the world, it wasn’t good. They really tried to sell it, with Annabella delivering it enthusiastically and grinning hard for the duration (and urging us that “it’s available on iTunes and Amazon.com”) and the bassist giving the thumbs-up (cringe!). But it was frankly mediocre, with  a tired eighties slapped-bass funk sound (Pal said it sounded like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers).

The charismatic Annabella herself was on great form. At 49 she’s still gorgeous (killer cheekbones, shapely legs), still kinetic (she dances hard the whole time – she’s like a whirling dervish) and her voice is still an alluring girlish punkette coo. Why isn’t Annabella celebrated as one of the great punk frontwomen just a few notches below Siouxsie and Deborah Harry or the equal of Poly Styrene and Ari Upp? I suspect the rockist Mojo generation simply don’t rate Bow Wow Wow.

Anyway, something was clearly riling Annabella because a few times between songs she demanded, “Am I too old? Do you think I’m too old? I’ve been told I’m too old.” I’d love to know what that was about. (For what it’s worth: considering she was only 14 when she joined Bow Wow Wow, Annabella is substantially younger than most of her post-punk peers).  Her stage-wear was disappointingly lacklustre:  she was wearing one of her own tour merchandise t-shirts! She’d customised it (shredding it up and wearing it backwards) – but still! This is someone who used to wear head-to-toe Vivienne Westwood pirate gear! And her hair was a shiny, jet-black 100% acrylic wig. In 2012 she sported her own hair in long cornrow braids tied with ribbons. The wig was an odd touch. If Annabella was worried about her hair, she should just resurrect her trademark early eighties Mohawk: no woman ever looked more beautiful with a Mohawk than Annabella.

Similarly, the crowd was a mixed bag: it’s been a while since I’ve been to a gig where the audience was predominantly older first or second-generation punks. Life had clearly been tough on some of these people. As I hoped, some looked great in vintage Vivienne Westwood. But there was a dismaying amount of older guys wearing anoraks, dad jeans and trainers! You’re letting the side down, people!

Playing us out: classic-era Bow Wow Wow captured onstage in 1982.

The Triumphant Return of Bow Wow Wow!

Annabella Lwin of the mighty Bow Wow Wow in London. 30 April 2012

Was there ever a band as underrated or misunderstood as Bow Wow Wow? Suspicion about the anarcho-delinquents's “authenticity” (that tiresome preoccupation of rockist killjoys) dates all the way back to their origins as the band “manufactured” by Malcolm McLaren as his new post-Sex Pistols shock tactic. As their own Wikipedia page baldly states: “Bow Wow Wow are an English 1980s New Wave band created by Malcolm McLaren to promote his and business partner Vivienne Westwood's New Romantic fashion lines.” This is like waving a red rag to the kind of people who fret about “style over substance.” I would argue: to model Vivienne Westwood’s cutting-edge pirate and buccaneer range – what better reason to form a band?! But that’s just me.



Anyway, in 1981 the Situationist punk instigator lured the backing musicians away from Adam Ant’s band (Adam’s Ants, if you prefer) and installed as their front woman a nubile but musically inexperienced half-Burmese 14-year old ingénue discovered working at the local drycleaners. (Legend has it Annabella Lwin – real name: Myant Myant Aye - was overheard singing along to a Stevie Wonder song on the radio. In a fun pop footnote, Bow Wow Wow was initially meant to have two lead singers: punk Lolita Annabella plus a pre-Culture Club Boy George, then billed as Lieutenant Lush. He didn’t make the final cut). Eternal agent provocateur McLaren must have been doing something right if he’s still so reviled and divisive even in death (he died aged 64 in 2010). To me, the man was a truly Warholian figure, a conceptualist, and (like former partner Westwood) a genuine English eccentric. As a person, he was seemingly an amoral and disloyal prat, but he was also a twisted pop visionary. Anyone who dismisses his influence needs to read England’s Dreaming (Jon Savage’s definitive account of UK punk history, which gives a great warts-and- all appraisal of McLaren’s accomplishments).

And if McLaren was “guilty” of cynically contriving a band to score hits, Bow Wow Wow’s rowdy but adventurous left-field mixture of influences (thunderous “tribal" African Burundi drums, lacerating guitar that variously evokes surf, rockabilly, Ennio Morricone Spaghetti Western soundtracks and African/Latin sounds, all overlaid with an unpolished teenage punkette alternately ranting and cooing) was hardly a safe guaranteed commercial bet!



Another reason Bow Wow Wow might not have been taken as seriously as they merit becomes apparent when you compare them against their post-punk peers circa 1981. The stark likes of Siouxsie and The Banshees, Joy Division and Public Image Ltd were self-evidently serious, art-y and gloomy, and therefore instantly credible. With their riotously funny and sexy songs and Day Glo pop choruses, colourful modern-primitive Vivienne Westwood wardrobes, Mohawk haircuts and dodgy genesis, Bow Wow Wow were clearly an entirely different proposition.



Anyway, what does it matter when 1) Bow Wow Wow’s songs still sound strange, fresh, exotic and intoxicating a good thirty years later and 2) they were (and are) an absolutely ferocious live act onstage? I don’t know how many people under forty even know who Bow Wow Wow are, but for the most part they’re remembered with genuine affection, and Bow Wow Wow’s musical DNA is audible in the disparate likes of MIA, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, No Doubt, the Ting Tings and Vampire Weekend. Even Madonna’s recent (less than rapturously received) single "Give Me All Your Luvin'", with its spelled-out and chanted chorus and minimalist twang-y surf guitar sound, would appear to owe Bow Wow Wow a debt as much as Toni Basil’s “Hey Mickey”.

Bow Wow Wow’s existence was always tumultuous. The original line up formed in 1981 by McLaren split acrimoniously by 1983. Annabella (now residing in Los Angeles) and bassist Leigh Gorman reconciled and revived varying line-ups from 1997 onwards to hit the punk revival circuit, but only performing in the US. I never thought I’d get to see them here in the UK, where they hadn’t toured since their early 1980s heyday. So when this London “comeback” gig was announced, I leapt at the chance to see them – a band that had thrilled my punk heart as a teenager growing up in rural Quebec. For this UK tour, the only original members are Annabella and Gorman: Lanky Mohawked guitar genius Matthew Ashman tragically died of diabetes-related causes aged only 35 in 1995, and drummer David Barbarossa apparently declined to participate.

They opened with the storming “Giant Sized Baby Thing”, which starts with Gorman singing/rapping lead, allowing Annabella a delayed “star entrance” and creating a sense of building anticipation. When she finally shimmies onstage, raving like a female Mark E Smith of The Fall, everyone gasps and starts frantically snapping her picture with their camera phones (me included). To me, she’s always looked like one of the golden-skinned Tahitian girls from a Paul Gauguin painting given a radical punk make-over. At 46, Annabella is still exquisite (and because she started so young is a good decade younger than most of her punk peers). Obviously she grew-out her signature Mohawk long ago (did any woman ever look more beautiful with a Mohawk?). Radiantly smiling, tiny and more voluptuous these days, she’s gone heavy on the silver Cleopatra/Nina Hagen eyeliner winged all the way up her temples. It looked dramatic and punk-y, but her face is so delicately beautiful she could have easily gone without it.







Sorry to keep gushing about one of my teenage crushes, but Annabella is an utterly charismatic front woman and vastly underrated as a singer. Her truly beguiling voice is sometimes bratty, sometimes alluring (within the same song!) and worthy of comparison to Deborah Harry or Poly Styrene. And like Madonna, Annabella’s voice remains girlish and kittenish in middle age. Annabella is also still a whirling dervish onstage, with a different dance for every song (when they lash into “Uomo Sex Al Apache”, for example, she does a sexy Indian squaw rain dance).





The current line-up is killer (special kudos to the drummer for nailing the trademark galvanising Bow Wow Wow drum sound). My friend Lisa and I mosh and pogo by the very front of the stage. (You’d have to be dead not to dance to the likes of “Aphrodisiac” and “Go Wild in the Country”). The music is too vital and frantic for it to feel like a golden oldies nostalgia concert. A true punk gig, Bow Wow Wow plays for a tight hour, no flab, and return for a two song encore. Every song is a catchy bubblegum punk tantrum: Bow Wow Wow may not have scored that many chart hits, but they have more great sly, funny, cheeky and provocative songs than people give them credit for. So many in fact they tore through the old favourites (the only song that felt a bit rote was “I Want Candy”: I bet they secretly hate it but feel obligated to include it!), but still left out “Chihuahua”, for me their most melancholic and haunting moment. Perhaps Annabella is sick of singing the line “I’m a horrid little idiot in a band called Bow Wow Wow ...”







Setlist
Giant Sized Baby Thing
WORK
Louis Quatorze
Aphrodisiac
Baby Oh No
Sexy Eiffel Tower
Mile High Club
Sun, Sea and Piracy
Uomo Sex Al Apache
Elimination Dancing
Go Wild in the Country
C-30, C-60, C-90, Go!
I Want Candy
Encore:
Sinner, Sinner, Sinner
Baby on Mars

The reviews of Bow Wow Wow's UK tour have been pretty glowing so far: Louder Than War website reviewed their Southampton concert. Couldn't agree more with Simon Price of The Independent's assessment "Lwin delivers one of the most life-affirming, smile-inducing performances I've seen all year." The Guardian's critic was perhaps a bit dismissive, but they also ran a fascinating interview with them.

See the rest of my photos from the night here


Annabella Bites Back: Watch Annabella unleash the full punk sullen attitude on a smarmy TV host in 1982. You go, girl!