Customer Reviews

We Are the 80's

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Bow Wow Wow are also one of the select few artists in the new VH-1 Classic "We Are The 80s" CD collection. Bow Wow Wow-We Are The 80's arrives in stores on July 18th. The CD includes 14 songs from Bow Wow Wow including their biggest hits "I Want Candy," "Baby, Oh No," and "C30, C60, C90."

Faithful Bow Wow Wow fans know that lead singer Annabella Lwin was only fifteen years old when the group recorded their debut album. According to the liner notes Annabella's mother attempted to ban the release of the groups first album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah, All Over! Go Ape Crazy! due to the fact that Annabella appeared on the cover in the nude. Annabella was discovered by former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McClaren who was looking for a new singer for a new band. Matthew Ashman, Leigh Gorman, and Dave Barbarossa, who were former members of Adam and the Ants rounded out the group that would become Bow Wow Wow.

McClaren was integral to the early days of Bow Wow Wow, but he stopped working with the group after their first album. Bow Wow Wow toured the United States for much of the early 80's. Sadly, group member Matthew Ashman passed away in 1995 due to diabetes.

Adrian Young, best known for being the drummer in No Doubt toured with the band in 2004. The CD, Bow Wow Wow-We Are The 80's includes a very well written history of Bow Wow Wow. The liner notes were written by Randy Haecker, Director of Media Relations for Sony BMG Legacy. He has been writing about pop culture since the early 80s.

The songs on the set sound great. The biggest hits, "C-30," "Do You Wanna Hold Me?" and "I Want Candy" are here. It would have been nice if they fit a few more songs on the set since most of their songs are short.

Like a ton of only people, I only really knew of the early 80's band Bow Wow Wow was in the form of their smash cover of the 60's song "I Want Candy". Also, like a lot of males growing up in the 80's, I remember their hot jailbait female singer who was only 16 when her and her bandmates made the video for I Want Candy. The fact that they almost always had her fully nude on a lot of their album covers/singles didn't hurt either. ;)

In fact, check out almost any 80's pop collection of any sort and it's bound to have I Want Candy on there.

But this band was highly influential to a lot of musicians. Musicians as diverse as Gwen Stefani (No Doubt), Larry "Ler" Lalonde (Primus) and Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers) have mentioned about how profound of an effect this band had on them in the early days.

To be honest, though, Bow Wow Wow has always been kind of an easier band to fully appreciate than to actually like.

Which brings me to this recent Bow Wow Wow compilation done by VH1 classic and Sony. Is this the most thourough compilation of their material? Not by a long shot. Also, at only 45 minutes in length, they could've put a lot more on here. If someone is a hardcore fan, they'll probably go after the 30 dollar 2 disc anthology that was only released in the UK.

But for a more passive fan or someone just wanting to hear what they were about beyond their one hit in the states "I Want Candy", this is ideal listening.

You get 14 tracks with most of them being taken from their actual album I Want Candy.

Compared to some of the other "We Are the 80's" compilations, thie remastering job done here isn't quite as stellar. But it still sounds better than the original versions. I just wish that the same time and care had been put into mastering these tracks. Compare this to the Scandal WLT80's compilation and from a sonic angle it comes up short.

Bow Wow Wow's sound is really hard to describe and really needs to be heard and properly absorbed to get what they were doing. Jungle rhythms permeate most of the proceedings in terms of the tribal percussions heard throughout. The bass player is absolutely phenomenal. The guitarist's style would heavily influence bands like early Chili Peppers stuff.

And the female singer's vocals are playful, sexy and full of innuendo. It might make someone feeling so guilty due to she was only 15 or 16 when she cut most of these tracks, but hey, when I was growing up in the early 80's and was only 8 or 9, she was one of the hottest women around.

While purists will bemoan the lack of many tracks, this does work perfectly fine as an overview of their material and sound. A lot of people won't like it as a lot of the tracks don't follow the normal verse/chorus/verse/chorus/solo style of songwriting. It's kind of more of a funky, poppy, jungle rhythm type of stream of consciousness type of songs.

Some of the tracks do tend to run together, so I'm having to knock 1 star off of my ranking.

I could NOT be more excited about this CD being released with my favorite song of all time: I Want Candy!!! This CD is going into permanent rotation in my CD player starting today. Of course along with the rest of the We Are the 80s collection. =)