377 Hello Annabella Lwin - C30 C60 C90 Go

Chart  entered : 26  July  1980

Chart  peak :  34

Number  of  hits : 10  ( 9  with  Bow Wow Wow, 1  solo )

Another  personal  milestone  here  as  we  reach  the  first  artist  who  is  younger  than  me  ( and  my  sister  too  actually ). She  wasn't  the  first  to  make  the  chart; that  honour,  I think , belongs  to  the  children  from  Manchester's  Abbey  Hey  Junior  School   who  charted  as  The  Ramblers  with  their  appalling  The  Sparrow  at  the  tail  end  of  1979  but  they  were,  thankfully,  one   hit  wonders*. Stacey  Lattisaw,  who's  a  month  younger  than  Annabella,  also  beat  her  to  the  punch but  she  only  managed  two  hits.

This  murky  story  begins  with  the  demise  of  the  Sex  Pistols  in  a  London  court  room  in  1979. With  all  ties  to  the  Pistols  abruptly  severed  and  some  legal  bills  to  pay,  Malcolm  McLaren  was  anxious  to  reinforce  his  self-glorifying  myth  as  pop's  subversive  Svengali. That  would  lead  him  into  some  very  dark  waters  and  were  he  not  dead,  and  the  subject  of  this  post  less  forgiving,  he  could  be  planning  a  supergroup  with  Messrs  Harris  and  Glitter  as  we  speak.  It  started  innocently  enough  with  an  offer  from  one  of  punk's  underachievers  Stuart  Goddard  ( aka  Adam  Ant )  who  offered  him  £1,000  for  a  bit  of  professional  management  and   stylistic  advice. McLaren  took  his  money  but  also  his  band. Realising  that  the  current  Ants, Matthew  Ashman,  Leigh  Gorman  and  Dave  Barbarossa  were  chafing  under  Goddard's  dictatorial  regime,  he  persuaded  them  to  jump  ship  and  join  him  in  setting  up  a  new  band  which  became  Bow  Wow  Wow.

Of  course  now  they  needed  a  new  singer  and  started  auditions , although  after  6  months  no  one  had  tickled  McLaren's  fancy . Then  a  friend  of  his , David  Fishel, sent  over  a  13  year  old  girl  he'd  heard  singing  to  herself  at  the  launderette  where  she  had  a  part  time  job. Annabella  Lwin  was  born  in  Rangoon  to  a  Burmese  father  and  English  mother. Though  not  blessed  with  any  great  vocal  talent,  she  was  exotic  and  beautiful   and  MacLaren's  brain  started  working  on  the  subversive  possibilities.

Immediately  after  the  court  case  McLaren  had  gone  to  Paris  where  some  friends commissioned  him  to  soundtrack  some  porn  films  using  a  vast  library  of  African  music  to which  they  had  access. While  engaged  on  this  McLaren  started  writing  scripts  of  his  own which  involved  underage  kids. African  music  and  paedophilic  titillation  were  two  of  the  ideas  he  wanted  Bow  Wow  Wow  to  pursue ; the  other  was  to  continue  the  Sex  Pistols'  mission  - as  defined  by  him -  to  subvert  the  music  industry.

This  latter  idea  informed  Bow  Wow  Wow's  debut  single. Surprisingly  , given  their  history  with  the  Pistols, Bow  Wow  Wow  were  signed  up  by  EMI, MacLaren  despising  the  independent  labels. They,  along  with  the  other  majors,  were  concerned  at  a  drop  in  record   sales  after  the  peak  year  of  1979  , and  believed  that  the  cassette  tape , allowing  people  to  record  songs  from  the  radio  and  friends'  record  collections  was  largely  responsible. McLaren  therefore  came  up  with  a  song  that  celebrated  the  situation  ( and  incidentally  predicted  the  whole  future  of  music  consumption ).

EMI's  behaviour  is  hard  to  understand. They  welcomed  the  media  interest  in  McLaren's  new  project  and  his  idea  of  releasing  the  single  as  a  cassette  only - a  world  first -   which  after  all  could  open  up  a  whole  new  revenue  stream. Then  someone  seems  to  have  cottoned  on  to  what  the  single  was  saying - "You're  rich  enough  to  have  a  record  collection / I'll  bring  my  bazooka  round  for  inspection"  and  they  refused  to  promote  it  until  there  was  a  vinyl  version  which  duly  came  out.

I  must  admit  I  hated  it  on  first  hearing.  It's  not  too  bad  when  the  bass  and  guitar  come  in  but  the  combination  of  Barbarossa's  bare  polyrhythmic  drumming  and  Annabella's  tuneless  yelping  just  gives  me  a  headache. I  acknowledge  it  as  a  groundbreaking, historically  important  record  but  I  can't  enjoy  it.


















*  I  think  they  were  on  Brian  and  Michael's  Matchstalk  Men  and  Matchstalk  Cats  And  Dogs  too  but  weren't  credited.