On The Ropes....

Malcolm McLaren - Double Dutch (12" Version)



So, where was I....

Oh yeah!

So after managing The New York Dolls and The Sex Pistols and breaking up Adam And The Antz to form Bow Wow Wow McLaren found himself in New York with Bow Wow Wow in 1980, the night before their gig at The Roxy McLaren took a walk through Harlem and saw this huge black man wearing a Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols T-Shirt, now Malcolm being the curious fellow he is went over to talk to him....

After a couple of minutes talking about the Sex Pistols and such the big black man said that he was throwing a party in the Bronx and that Malcolm should come along to see what they were up to....

The huge black man's name was Afrika Bambata.



The party turned out to be on a piece of waste ground in the middle of the Bronx with Bambata acting as a bouncer and minder for all his equipment and the kids spinning and scratching the records.... Malcolm was completely blown away and invited them all to play the Bow Bow Wow show the following night.....

The rest is pretty much history, Afrika Bambata and the Zulu Nation story will be covered here at some stage no doubt.



McLaren put together a production team including Thomas Dolby, Anne Dudley, Trevor Horn, The World Famous Supreme Team and several other people from the party and took what he had heard and seen that night and turned it into the album Duck Rock.

In truth I should have picked Buffalo Gals to post as it was more of a cornerstone where Rap is concerned, but I just love this track, similar in respect to what Bow Wow Wow were doing but with the wonderful wonderful Ebonettes and skipping ropes.... Fantastic.



Many years later in 1998 Malcolm gave the go ahead for a re-working of some of the tracks he'd recorded around this time, the remixing was done by KRS-One, De La Soul and Rakim amongst others who all paid their respect to what McLaren had done for Rap music in general on the album Buffalo Gals, Back To Skool....



Personally I don't think he's a very likeable person, but you can't knock what he achieved in the space of about 5 years, for a while there he was more than likely one of the most important people in music, his drive and ambition to find and promote new music was probably second to none.





Buy - Malcolm McLaren - Duck Rock

Buy - Buffalo Gals, Back to Skool

Visit - Malcolm McLaren Bio

Visit - Read About Duck Rock on Rap Reviews



Simon

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