Bow Wow Wow: Go Wild in the Country

Today's Independent reviews a concert by a revived Bow Wow Wow, so it is high time the band featured here.

The band was put together by the punk impresario Malcolm McLaren in 1980, most of its members having previously played with Adam Ant. He, it sounds odd to record now, was averse to commercialism and McLaren lost patience with him, wanting to have hits.

What really made the band, though, was the vocalist McLaren found to front it. He heard 14-year-old Annabella Lwin singing along to the radio in her Saturday job with a dry cleaners. Putting them together, he formed a considerable post-punk band.

Lwin's age involved McLaren in a Scotland Yard investigation when he had her photographed, demurely naked, in a recreation of Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe for an EP cover.

Times change. Blind Faith had no such more problems with a more explicit cover in 1969. Today it would be unthinkable.