Malcolm McLaren :: Duck Rock ::

tonyphrone

hip Hop classic? I say HELL YEAH! Malcolm McClaren Hip-hop visionary no doubt!

jaymack

didnt he take credit for things he really didnt do?

pjl2000xl

ehhhh i dunno bout that. he basically just exploited hip hop for his own personal gain. Along with many other genres of music. He latched onto trends right in the beginning so cats like you think he is a visonary, instead of a biter.

MALCOLM MCLAREN (Buy CDs by this artist)
Duck Rock (Island) 1983
D'ya Like Scratchin' EP (Island) 1984
Fans (Island) 1984
Swamp Thing (Island) 1985
Paris (No!/Vogue/Gee Street/Island) 1995
MALCOLM MCLAREN AND THE BOOTZILLA ORCHESTRA
Waltz Darling (Epic) 1989
MALCOLM MCLAREN PRESENTS THE WORLD FAMOUS SUPREME TEAM SHOW
Round the Outside! Round the Outside! (Virgin) 1990

Most people, if they get the chance, have to settle for one great achievement in the cultural arena. Not for Malcolm McLaren. Besides being an imperialistic cultural plunderer (a non-judgmental designation), he is one of rock's true visionaries. His role in the formation and promotion of the Sex Pistols has been construed as everything from inspired instigator to Machiavellian manipulator, and his solo career has been as influential as it has been criticized: he tends to bring out the moral indignation in people. A brilliant carpetbagger whose precise talents ??? beyond aestheticism and the canny ability to peg influential trends in a wide panorama (fashion, retail, politics, music, art, film, literature) early enough to exploit them as a pioneer rather than a bandwagon-jumper ??? are difficult to pin down, McLaren has made himself the star of his own entrepreneurial undertakings. Despite the odds stacked against him mounting a successful recording career (that he's not exactly a musician is high on the problems list), McLaren has crafted a bizarrely significant oeuvre of high-concept adventures. It's hard to say just what McLaren does as an artist. He's more an assembler than a creator, piecing together artifacts from various musical cultures in such a way that, at the end of the day, his own input seems invisible. And yet his perspective as hip outsider has continued to provide a link between his Anglo-American audience and Third World forms. If McLaren's a musical tourist, these records are his home movies.

The Londoner's first vinyl forays were into the field of hip-hop. Duck Rock, produced by Trevor Horn and featuring the rapping World's [sic] Famous Supreme Team, is a vanguard album in the new music/rap crossover movement. (The Keith Haring artwork is equally au courant.) It offers vignettes of hip-hop, Appalachian music (McLaren shows no real racial preference in his thievery), African music and merengue. Instead of assimilating the forms and reconstructing them, McLaren puts his actual source material on vinyl (and then his name to it). The most striking cut, "Buffalo Gals," sets a square dance call over a hip-hop scratch track. D'ya Like Scratchin' plucks three songs from the album and funks with the mix, adding two versions of a new tune as well.

His next venture was exponentially more improbable. Feeding classic opera into a hip-hop blender, McLaren came up with the surprisingly entertaining Fans. McLaren mainly uses opera for its recitative form and story lines (namely Carmen, Madam Butterfly and Turandot) and, damn it, the thing works more often than not.

The aptly named Swamp Thing is a murky and bizarre creature grown during various sessions between '82 and '84. The title track perverts "Wild Thing" into a nightmarish but enjoyable mess. "Duck Rock Cheer" is so unlike the original that you'd never connect the two, save for minor overlapping of mix components; "Duck Rockers/Promises" sounds only slightly more familiar. "Buffalo Love" has even less to do with "Buffalo Gals," offering instead a smooth disco creation breathily sung by an unidentified woman. "B.I. Bikki" combines McLarenize exercise exhortations with opera and all sorts of extraneous rubbish; "Eiffel Tower" turns the old Bow Wow Wow song inside out to interesting effect.

McLaren next foisted another demented but entertaining musical hybrid on the world: Waltz Darling. Hooking muscular rock-funk ??? starring Bootsy Collins and Jeff Beck ??? together with a classical orchestral, McLaren comes up with what, at times, resembles an electrified version of Gilbert and Sullivan. He tops this weird blend off with a variety of female vocalists (the artist himself speaks lyrics on a couple of numbers), swanky dance lyrics and up-to-date production techniques. Unfortunately, the record wanders casually around its concept ??? too many tracks are merely standard dance-club fare with lush flourishes, hardly a novelty ??? but the instrumental "House of the Blue Danube" and "Algernon's Simply Awfully Good at Algebra," co-written by Dave Stewart, are pretty amusing.

Wrapping up the decade with another backwards/forwards sidestep, McLaren reunited with the World Famous Supreme Team ??? his B-boy compadres on Duck Rock ??? for the hip-house stew of Round the Outside! Round the Outside!, which samples (intellectually, not electronically) both Shakespeare and opera and includes an updated remix of "Buffalo Gals."

McLaren then stayed out of the record racks for five years, returning in 1995 with Paris, a high-style travelogue that turns Serge Gainsbourg's heavy breathing classic ("Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus," which McLaren has the temerity to cover here ??? in English, no less) into a full-blown epic of erotic geography. Over diverse and frequently alluring strains of dance, pop, jazz, African and movie soundtrack music, McLaren unwisely sings a bit, but mostly recites theatrical poetry in obvious homage to William Burroughs' sense of grimy wonder, navigating his namedropping reminiscences and impressions in and around such local landmarks as Catherine Deneuve, Fran??oise Hardy and Sonia Rykiel ??? all of whom add their voices to the effort. Absurd on the surface ("Walking With Satie," "Miles and Miles of Miles Davis," "Jazz Is Paris"), the album manages a seductive appeal in the monomania of its pretensions; if McLaren is a crappy poet, his devotion to the subject is touching, and even the worst photographer's snapshots show something. The CD contains a second disc entitled The Largest Movie House in Paris, which reprises much of the album in instrumental remixes.

tonyphrone

ehhhh i dunno bout that. he basically just exploited hip hop for his own personal gain. Along with many other genres of music. He latched onto trends right in the beginning so cats like you think he is a visonary, instead of a biter.

That's a typically cynical viewpoint from this board( i know - i should have expected that). I agree that he's essentially a conman and an opportunist - but fuck it- play "buffalo gals" or "Double Dutch" and I dare you not to start back spinning. His fusion of Afropop/electro/early hip-hop (pre- Run D.M.C.) and pop on that record is pretty next level. Besides those singles, the album holds up really well. The world famous supreme team deserve a lot of credit for that as well.





ALL THAT SCRATCHING'S MAKING ME ITCH...

hcrink

yeah, I would not call McClaren a "visionary" when it came to much of anything.

tonyphrone

alright forgetting Malcolm "The Devil" McClaren. You dont think this album is brilliant?

johmbolaya

FUCK!

I just spent the last hour writing a very long essay on the importance of Duck Rock[/b] (marklatency knows the deal) and then it said the form was no longer valid. I went back, and my entire post disappeared.

If anyone wants me to get in-depth again, say the word so i can find my exact words in a sidebar in Mojo[/b] magazine.


I will say this. This album and Into Battle[/b] were huge influences on my work. "It's Nasty" and "The Message" were cool, but I wanted it to be funkier. Now that I know that Gary Langan had first hand experience of what was going down in the clubs, and that being (according to him) one of the biggest influences towards his own music (and one reason why you hear a certain funky beat in the intro to Yes' "Owner Of A Lonely Heart"), it all makes sense. Langan was basically recreating what he heard in the club. In turn, a lot of hip-hop producers would take on what they heard from Art Of Noise, thinking it was a unique and different sound, when it wasn't so different at all.

Damn, now I want to write all over again. Fricka.

Big_Chan

I still want a tape of The World Famous Supreme Team radio show

and a "where are they now"-TV feature incl. Beatnuts talking about why they sampled "world famous" for their debut album. Yes sir!

Here you go Jspr:


WORLDS FAMOUS SUPREME TEAM - WHBI April 13 New York 1983

Flomotion

McLaren's no charlatan, musically and culturally he's always streets ahead of the game. I'd say he's a kind of visionary and no more exploito than anyone else, and maybe more honest than most. He just goes from one project to he next, never lingers, always trying something new and often gets it right. Great album.

street_muzik

I still want a tape of The World Famous Supreme Team radio show

and a "where are they now"-TV feature incl. Beatnuts talking about why they sampled "world famous" for their debut album. Yes sir!

Here you go Jspr:


WORLDS FAMOUS SUPREME TEAM - WHBI April 13 New York 1983

You have to log in to yousendit to download a file now?

tonyphrone

McLaren's no charlatan, musically and culturally he's always streets ahead of the game. I'd say he's a kind of visionary and no more exploito than anyone else, and maybe more honest than most. He just goes from one project to he next, never lingers, always trying something new and often gets it right. Great album.

Thank you. The Duck Rock record is bomb -pointblank. He also did some interesting propaganda/campaigns for a group you might have heard of called the sex pistols. You should check them out.

bull_ox

McLaren's no charlatan, musically and culturally he's always streets ahead of the game. I'd say he's a kind of visionary and no more exploito than anyone else, and maybe more honest than most. He just goes from one project to he next, never lingers, always trying something new and often gets it right. Great album.

That is without a doubt THE most generous take on the man I've ever heard

bull_ox

McLaren's no charlatan, musically and culturally he's always streets ahead of the game. I'd say he's a kind of visionary and no more exploito than anyone else, and maybe more honest than most. He just goes from one project to he next, never lingers, always trying something new and often gets it right. Great album.

Thank you. The Duck Rock record is bomb -pointblank. He also did some interesting propaganda/campaigns for a group you might have heard of called the sex pistols. You should check them out.

Yes, he managed to piece together different things different people were doing and make them commercially appealing. Whether this is a great achievement or not is debatable, but there is no doubt that he did not originate anything.

But I think these records can be appreciated without giving MM any credit...

bull_ox

jaymack

Phill_Most

I still want a tape of The World Famous Supreme Team radio show

and a "where are they now"-TV feature incl. Beatnuts talking about why they sampled "world famous" for their debut album. Yes sir!

Here you go Jspr:


WORLDS FAMOUS SUPREME TEAM - WHBI April 13 New York 1983

COTDAMMIT what is that reggae schitt at the end of this Supreme Team clip??? I know one of yall reggae lovin' dudes must know. I needs that, for real.

CHAN you got anymore World Famous tapes? Did you get that one from me? I need more of those, hommie. I been meaning to hit up some of my old school NYC peoples to see if they have any tapes from BITD. Some Paco on KTU disco / dance music tapes would be nice too.

bull_ox

Can someone post this file w/o the login??

SIRUS

Can someone post this file w/o the login??

tonyphrone

Can someone post this file w/o the login??

street_muzik

I'll host it and post it when it's ready, if that's cool.

pkny

Can someone post this file w/o the login??

Quick hint: do a Google search on "yousendit login", and you're bound to find a site when someone has listed an e-mail/password that will work. This will also work for other login-only sites such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

SoulOnIce

Or, you could just register - all they ask for is an e-mail address,
it's not like you have to pay or give any sensitive information...

pjl2000xl

yeah thats what i did, just use some bullshit dummy hotmail account if you feel shady about it

bennyboy

As a 12 year old in the cultural wastelands of Coventry in 1982, Buffalo Girls was the first 'real' hip hop I'd ever heard, & it got under my skin quick. I'd seen the Great Rock & Roll Swindle, read my Dads Time Out's, & I thought McLaren was a genius then; now I'm older I can't say I think he's a genius, but he's certainly a clever man, & knows what buttons to press to get his way. He didn't have much involvment with the creation of hip hop, but he certainly brought it to a lot of peoples attention in the UK / Europe, & we can argue about his role in punk, but its doubtful it would have blown up in the same way if he hadn't brought his ideas to the table.

Duck Rock is a great album. And I still like some of the stuff off Fans & Waltz Darling. So sue me.

DocMcCoy

McLaren is part-enabler, part-opportunist, and there's no doubt he has a tendency to over-emphasise the level of importance he's actually had in a lot of the stuff he's involved with. He's big on creating his own legend. Nevertheless, he's a fascinating guy. I spent quite a lot of time dealing with him at a previous job a few years ago, and he can talk like a motherfucker - if you ever have a phone conversation with Malcolm McLaren that lasts less than twenty minutes, it'll be because he's ill or tired or something.

Anyway, "Duck Rock" - great record, even if most of the work was done by the same Trevor Horn-helmed team of musos and technicians that later became the Art Of Noise. The WFST skits were amongst my favourite parts of the record, and McLaren was probably the first white person to immediately recognise within hip-hop the kind of connections that yer ethnomusicologists and musical academics began to routinely make with African music later in the 80's. Like bennyboy says, for a lot of surbuban British kids, it was probably the earliest exposure to the idea of hip-hop as a culture rather than just a bunch of guys talking over funky instrumentals.

Flomotion

McLaren's no charlatan, musically and culturally he's always streets ahead of the game. I'd say he's a kind of visionary and no more exploito than anyone else, and maybe more honest than most. He just goes from one project to he next, never lingers, always trying something new and often gets it right. Great album.

That is without a doubt THE most generous take on the man I've ever heard

Ha ha, you could be right, he doesn't have many defenders. He's not always an inventor or an originator but he spots things right at their inception, understands the essence of what he's got, knows how to get things noticed and has a knack of taking them to the next level. Got to give him credit, no?

street_muzik

You can get the file without logging in here.

tonyphrone

You can get the file without logging in here.

Thank you !!!!

What a dope slice of 1983.

youngEINSTEIN

i gotta be honest. this is the album that lead me to realize that i could participate in hip hop music. up until this point hip hop was black music and i knew i loved it but had no hope of contributing artistically. although mclaren's motives may have been self seeking and exploitive it was still inspiring. big up malcolm mclaren.
peace, stein. . .

batmon

Duck Rock is an album I cant listen to straight through. But there's a handful of joints that I return to.

Malcolm Mclaren would call my house to speak to my dad about Double Dutch.
The cover of the single for Double Dutch was photographed @ my high school.My pops arranged for some DD teams to do their thang for the video. So my connection to Duck Rock is special. He send a handful of promotional copies to my house before the Lp dropped. I never considered it a pure HipHop album but seminal to the spread of the culture.

tonyphrone

I'm impressed - who's you dad?