Friday 9 April 2010

Malcom McLaren 1946-2010

Never mind the Bol......Well, more sad news first my one time dinner companion Christopher Cazenove! and now Malcolm, there's a lot of nonsense spouted on all sides about punk; some proggy types denying it had any effect at all and that we should all still be listening to Caravan and presumably the guy with the mohawk, studded leather jacket and tear drop tattoo stumbling down Deptford broadway the other day would say (slur more likely) that it never died! I'm not quite old enough to remember the first flush of punk. In 1976 I just remember it being hot , finding rats in our outhouse and the smell of hot scaletrix motors. I have vague memory of my dad reading about these punks in the Sunday times magazine but I didn't see an actually punk until a year or so later one Saturday in the middle of Barnsley. The punks in question did look scary but then I was only 8 at the time and they would've been 15!  Over the next years punk mixed in with the ska revival , NWOBHM and good old pop music. People would bring their brother's copy of the great rock and roll swindle into school, I think it's chief attraction was the odd cartoon naked breast and swastika arm band.

Then however came all the pop music Malcolm Mclaren if not made  inspired. I was looking at a picture of Adam Ant the other day and marvelling at hour beautiful and cool he looked in his full regalia. I remember one of his early appearances on TOTP and having the exciting feeling that some how this was wrong that someone so scary and exciting wasn't allowed on tv.  Then there was bow wow and buffalo girls etc. But more so the idea that you could make pop music yourself and fill it with passion and ideas. Sure this sort of thing has been around for years and isn't unique to punk but Malcolm Mclaren  seemed to epitomise a certain kind of sparky, funny, annoying, too clever by half way of doing things which you see in the best of pop and also oddly in diluted debased form in everything from the labels of smoothies to Top gear and YBA's etc.

This week we had the Digital Economy Bill and of course Malcolm (the manager of  pop group) once made a single celebrating home taping!
So what was the effect of Malcolm McLaren it's too early to say...

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