Bow Wow Wow, "Go Wild in the Country"

I didn’t seek out Bow Wow Wow. Didn’t wake up in the morning and decide I wanted to be the World’s (America’s? Massachusetts’s?) Biggest Champion of an ’80s one-hit-wonder novelty act. It just sort of happened. But wow, am I glad it did.

Everybody knows “I Want Candy” (Apple Music, Spotify). The video was on MTV all the time. Annabella had a mohawk haircut—or mohican, as they call it in England. Not sure why that is.

The Februarys did a cover of this song. Most of the time they played it second-to-last at their shows, just before “Any Wednesday.” When I bought their cassette, I saw that they credited not Bow Wow Wow but the Strangeloves, the American garage rock band that wrote and recorded the original (Apple Music, Spotify) back in 1965.¹

As memorable as Bow Wow Wow’s version is for so many of us Gen Xers, in reality it barely dented the charts, peaking at #62 on July 3, 1982. For reference, “Don’t You Want Me” (Apple Music, Spotify) by the Human League was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 that week, followed by Toto’s “Rosanna” (Apple Music, Spotify), “Ebony & Ivory” (Apple Music, Spotify), and Asia’s “Heat of the Moment” (Apple Music, Spotify). Bow Wow Wow’s biggest US hit wasn’t within sniffing distance of these records.

I always liked it, though. Loved the drums, especially.

Years later, when I was just out of college and living in New York City, I found and bought a UK punk rock compilation called The Best Punk Album in the World … Ever. That two-CD set had 48 tracks from different artists, cutting across, I dunno, dozens of labels. I don’t know how a compilation like this gets made. The UK must have different copyright laws and/or licensing practices than the States. This compilation, and the sequel set I bought during my travels in Britain, The Best Punk Album in the World … Ever 2, plugged me into at least two dozen punk and new wave bands, including Buzzcocks, the Damned, the Jam, Adam & the Ants, the Adverts, X-Ray Spex, the Rezillos, Wire, Generation X, the Stranglers, Magazine, and Stiff Little Fingers.

For all that, none of those bands—not even Buzzcocks—set up shop in my head like Bow Wow Wow did. The track on the compilation was “C30, C60, C90, Go!” (Apple Music, Spotify). Whereas “I Want Candy” has a bubble gum-meets-tropical vibe, “C30” is something altogether different. Same Burundi drums, but the rhythms are herky-jerk, four-on-the-floor amphetamine punk. A scratch rhythm guitar plays in lock step with the drums. Layered together, the beat is heavy. The vocals mix skipping rhymes into a rant about pirating music with a cassette recorder:

A bit bam-boogie and a booga-rooga. My cassette’s just like a bazooka. A bligger, a blagger, a bippity-bop. Well, I’m going down to the record shop. C30, C60, C90, go! Off the radio, I get a constant flow. Hit it, pause it, record and play. Turn it, rewind and rub it away. You’re rich enough to have a record collection? I’ll bring my bazooka around for an inspection.

Nothing in the world sounds like this … except for Adam and the Ants.

That’s because dandy MTV highwayman Adam Ant and his bandmates Matthew Ashman (guitar), Leigh Gorman (bass), and Dave Barbarossa (drums) originated this sound. Then along came impish impresario Malcolm McLaren, who was looking for new provocations in the wake of the Sex Pistols’ self-immolation. (See “Helter Skelter.”) Drawn to the band’s New Romantic look and sound, McLaren recruited Adam and the Ants into his management, then turned right around and fired Adam.

This side of Duran Duran and Madonna, Adam Ant was about as magnetic a figure as the 1980s would produce, and it’s not clear what prompted his dismissal. Sources on the Internet only recount that it happened, not why. My best guess is that Adam had pride of authorship—his own artistic vision and direction—and McLaren did not want another Johnny Rotten on his hands. He required more … malleable clients. So he redirected the Ants and their fully-formed signature sound into another outfit.

For this new band’s lead vocalist, McLaren installed a 13-year-old Burmese immigrant girl named Myant Myant Aye, whom a colleague had discovered singing in a laundry in West Hampstead, where she worked. Aye took the stage name Annabella Lwin.

The band took the name Bow Wow Wow.

Looking as ever to push buttons, McLaren’s plans for the band were first, to promote Annabella as underage sex kitten, the better to grab the attention of the British public; and second, to tweak the recording industry with songs like “C30” and its B-side “Sun, Sea and Piracy” (Apple Music, Spotify), both of which celebrated copyright infringement. “C30” was released as the first-ever cassette single, and EMI refused to promote it.

Fee-fi-fo, fee-fo-fido!

The sex kitten plan backfired spectacularly, too, once Annabella’s mother, aghast at her daughter’s “tastefully topless” appearance on the cover of Bow Wow Wow’s first LP, reported McLaren to Scotland Yard. On this point McLaren could claim some cultural cover—the photo sleeve was a retake of Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe. Nary a nipple in sight, but even so, it was clear McLaren was exploiting a teenage girl to stir the pot. Generally speaking, you won’t see me writing here in favor of government intervention in rock culture. But in this case, I can get on board.

The thing is—and this most definitely got lost amid all the controversy—the band were making innovative and terrific music. So I would find when I mail-ordered The Best of Bow Wow Wow on CD through the BMG Record Club, in the late 1990s.

BMG was always a better value proposition, I thought, than Columbia House, because it was a one-off deal. You paid for one of their overpriced CDs and you got eleven more free of charge, with no further obligation. Contrast Columbia House, where you committed to buy six CDs at the going rate within the next three years, and until you discharged that obligation they would send you an album of their choice every month and bill you for it. If you didn’t want the CD of the Month—and you usually didn’t—you had to send timely notice in advance (yeah, right) or ship it back after it arrived, which was an exercise in logistics comparable to planning the invasion of Normandy. Often as not you ate a bunch of records you couldn’t stand, which at this point in time meant late-era grunge.

I did BMG multiple times in the late 1990s. Signed up, got the 12-for-1 new member deal, canceled membership, then rejoined again right away. The only downside with BMG was their selection wasn’t as good as Columbia House’s. So you’d end up taking some fliers in order to fill out your List of Twelve. The Best of Bow Wow Wow was absolutely one of those reaches.

I don’t remember how long I waited before I cracked open the shrink wrap, dropped The Best of Bow Wow Wow into the tray, and hit Play. It could literally have been months after the CD came in the mail. Once I finally did, I lost my mind. I. Lost. My. Mind. The driving tribal rhythms, the throbbing bass and spaghetti Western guitars, the blessed lyrical non sequiturs: all of it was conceptually brilliant and rendered to perfection. “Do You Wanna Hold Me?” (Apple Music, Spotify) delivered pure pop joy amid warnings about California, where Mickey Mouse is a demon as big as a house. “Where’s My Snake?” (Apple Music, Spotify) had me skipping up Putnam Avenue in a one-man conga line, overturning cars with my bare hands. That’s not to speak of the frenetic harmonies of “(I’m a) TV Savage” (Apple Music, Spotify), with its time-capsule name-drops of Ronnie Reagan and Sue Ellen Ewing from Dallas. Savage Annabella’s confidence is peaking and infectious: I am your magic circle, she sings, in the age, the Golden Age of Me.

I ran out and bought all the records on compact disc. First came Girl Bites Dog: Your Compact Disc Pet, a retread of the band’s first LP, which they had originally and mischievously released in cassette-only format. Then I bought the second record, called—and this is a bit of a mouthful, so bear with me—See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah! City All Over Go Ape Crazy! And finally, the third release, When the Going Gets Tough the Tough Get Going. I even shelled out for a remix album, even though remix albums invariably disappoint. (I did take to the “Razed in Black” mix of “I Want Candy” (Apple Music, Spotify)—a welcome update of the original, on the far side of Nine Inch Nails.)

I told all my friends that they needed to go out right now and buy themselves some Bow Wow Wow. Then I circled back and told all my friends this a second, then a third time. I was well aware I was wearing people out over this.

“Hey—did Brad call you ranting about Bow Wow Wow again?”

“[sigh] No, but I guess I have that to look forward to?”

“Just let him go on, and first chance you can get a word in, say something about the Buckeyes.”

“Still, that’s ten minutes of my life I won’t get back.”

Who could say whether my ears were burning because discussions like these were happening offline across my friend group, or because Bow Wow Wow had set them ON FIRE? At some point I bought a used Bow Wow Wow 1998 Barking Mad Tour T-shirt on eBay, because I was desperate for band merch and couldn’t find it anywhere. It arrived with a hole in it. I felt blessed, nevertheless, because I could finally represent Annabella et al. in public. I stopped short of a tattoo, but only because my body is a temple and I’m a chickenshit.

The fact that my own Rolodex was populated with philistines didn’t mean that Bow Wow Wow weren’t beloved in many of the right places. For example, I took note that in “Suck My Kiss” (Apple Music, Spotify), the Red Hot Chili Peppers sing about swimming in the sound of Bow Wow Wow. Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette featured no fewer than three of the band’s songs on its soundtrack (Apple Music, Spotify). Just imagine how insufferable I was in the theater that day: Kate! Kate! They’re playing ANOTHER Bow Wow Wow song! And when I finally did get to see her play live, at the Middle East, in July 2004, Annabella’s touring drummer was No Doubt’s Adrian Young, who declared it “a dream come true to play with a band [he] grew up idolizing.”

For my part, though, I couldn’t make any headway evangelizing Bow Wow Wow—at least not door to door. Having tried the patience of friends and family, I needed another outlet for my enthusiasm. So I worked them into the novel I was writing. A while ago (see “Here Comes Alice”) I described how the Jesus & Mary Chain inspired me to write New Jersey’s Famous Turnpike Witch. But that was just the jumping-off point. Brainstorming one night over the Witch’s origin story, it occurred to me to ask: What if you were in the middle of a nervous breakdown, and some mysterious benefactor handed you a Walkman and the complete works of Bow Wow Wow?

Certainly some strength could be found embedded in the Dadaist messaging of “Giant-Sized Baby Thing” (Apple Music, Spotify), which includes these lines: Yea, though I’m walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I fear no evil, ’cause I’m the evilest baby that ever went walking in that Valley. “Elimination Dancing” (Apple Music, Spotify), too, could lift a KOed fighter up off the canvas: I’m ashamed of you—it’s not the end. Resist! Persist! Knock out!

So I ran with the idea.

Had a Bible been handy, Alice might have found salvation in Jesus Christ. Had John Travolta pulled over in a suitably accoutered Trans Am, she might as dutifully have transferred her meager bank assets to the Church of Scientology. Tell that to Alice, though, and she wasn’t listening. She was wholly devoted to Annabella Lwin, because she was special. Annabella sang freedom. She sang empowerment. Alice played those tapes all day long. Headphones blaring music into her ears while she lathered up her body with hand soap in the bathroom stalls, while she plumbed dumpsters in the rear parking lot for half-eaten burgers; while she slept, hunched over, in a hard plastic Dining Area booth. Her cocoon of Bow Wow Wow sealed her off from the mundane.

As they do for All of Us Who Listen.

Today’s song is “Go Wild in the Country” (Apple Music, Spotify). Its stuttering, slithering bass line, signature Burundi drums, and food-obsessed escapism are spot-on for a Monday morning in December.

I don’t know you. I don’t know you, Town. I don’t want to know you. I’ll shop around. I can get a train—I don’t need no hamburgers. I don’t need no suitcases, ’cause truth loves to go naked. Got no boiled chicken: I want to go hunting and fishing.

Go wild in the country!

1. It bears mentioning that “I Want Candy” was co-written by the Strangeloves and producer Bert Berns. Berns co-wrote another song with songwriter Wes Farrell, which was originally titled “My Girl Sloopy.” The Strangeloves planned to release a version of “Sloopy” as their follow up to “Candy,” if the Dave Clark Five didn’t get there first. In the meantime they were touring, and a band called Rick and the Raiders opened their show in Dayton. The Strangeloves decided that it was too soon to release a second single and invited Raider Rick Derringer to New York City to record a vocal over their own pre-recorded backing tracks. The result was credited to the McCoys and is now the state song of Ohio (see “Hang on Sloopy”).