Compilation!: Malcolm McLaren: "The Bad, the Good, the Simply Boring"

MALCOLM McLAREN
THE BAD, THE GOOD, THE SIMPLY BORING

So I'm trying a new thing here. I love making compilations - you know, mixtapes, playlists, etc. The problem is that I'd love to be able to include them here to be heard, and that's just not very easy, legally.

Here's an attempt at a way around: a compilation made up of songs that exist on YouTube, where I link to the uploaded YouTube files. I'm not uploading them, no harm no foul? I think... I hope. I don't know.

First kick at the can is the recently-deceased 'imp' Malcolm McLaren, more famous perhaps for his managerial role and for his dabbling in politics than what he's produced as a musician - largely because he very clearly couldn't care less about having a musical 'career' and was content to periodically release music whenever he felt like it - in pretty much any ol' genre he preferred, with a wild variance in quality.

It turns out he does have enough 'greatest hits' for a full 70-minute CD, and one that's really quite listenably as it flits from genre to genre. This material probably belongs to a dozen different record labels, which would make it pretty difficult to have a physical form as a CD you can buy in HMV. And I'm not too sure who would buy a CD of Malcolm McLaren's greatest hits. Which is a pity, since it's quite a good listen. Don't take my word for it listen for yourself. Click on each song below and a window will open with the YouTube viewing screen for the song in question.

» #1 - Buffalo Gals (3:43) «

» #2 - Aria on Air (4:09) «

» #3 - About Her (4:50) «

» #4 - Double Dutch (3:50) «

» #5 - Deep in Vogue (4:03) «

» #6 - Madame Butterfly (6:23) «

» #7 - Revenge of the Flowers (Todd's extended mix) (5:07) «

» #8 - Magic's Back (4:35) «

» #9 - Carry On Columbus (3:49) «

» #10 - Eiffel Tower (3:44) «

» #11 - Something's Jumpin' in Your Shirt (4:53) «

» #12 - Chinatown (4:10) «

» #13 - Paris Paris (5:24) «

» #14 - Carmen (4:57) «

» #15 - Waltz Darling (4:29) «

» #16 - Operaa House! (5:54) «

» #17 - Duck for the Oyster (2:55) «

1983's Duck Rock was Malcolm McLaren's first kick at the can as a solo artist - and to a real extent his greatest accomplishment, not just because of legendary early hip-hop/square-dance 'crossover' Buffalo Gals (track 1) but also because of the amazing African-sourced jumprope song Double Dutch (track 4) - two brilliant songs the equal of anything else out there. Duck for the Oyster (track 17) is a silly little take on straight square dance music - a joke, really, but good fun. McLaren followed his début up with the modern-opera concept of Fans (1984), the source here of the magnificent Madame Butterfly (track 6) and Carmen (track 14). This 'situationist' reimagining of premodern music in a modern environment is the signature McLaren trick, something he'll return to again and again throughout his career. Swamp Thing, from 1985, is his last 'early years' release, and it's from this that we get McLaren's reworking of a Bow Wow Wow track, Eiffel Tower (track 10), sung by a pre-fame Neneh Cherry.

In 1989, McLaren released Waltz Darling, perhaps his hast attempt at 'chart success' the conventional way. It's a lush album, a perfect soundtrack to Paris fashion week, and we take three tracks from it: Deep in Vogue (track 5), Something's Jumpin' In Your Shirt (track 11) and Waltz Darling (track 15). The next year saw Round the Outside, Round the Outside, a kind of return to past hip-hop glories, but the lead single Operaa House! (track 16), a track less awesome than its title suggests it should be, was completely outshone by its b-side (and significant source material) Aria on Air (track 2), perhaps the most recognisable song on this disc due to its usage in British Airways marketing.

At this point, McLaren seems to have realised that conventional albums were not the way to go. The next two tracks we have here are both from soundtracks: 1991's Magic's Back (track 8), featuring Alison Limerick, from 'The Ghosts of Oxford Street' and 1992's Carry On Columbus (track 9), from the 'Carry On' film of the same name and released under the alias Fantastic Planet.One last 'normal CD' release in 1994 was called Paris, and featured Paris Paris (track 13) with Catherine Deneuve, and also the original version of the song that I include here in a Todd Terry remix: Revenge of the Flowers (Todd's extended mix) (track 7), featuring Françoise Hardy.

A few random releases here and there followed before McLaren showed up, mysteriously, on the 'Kill Bill Volume 2' soundtrack in 2004 with the odd version of the Zombies' 'She's Not There', retitled About Her (track 3), which also showed up a year later on a rare CD Tranquilize, from which I've also taken the very strage mashup Chinatown (track 12), a fittingly bizarre 'final song' from the man, a track which was never a single but which I felt added more than a little to this most curious of compilations. Available here for your listening pleasure, until YouTube takes them down...

Synapse to the Beat: Radiohead's "OK Computer"

I don't want to do the grumpy-old-man-bitches-about-today's-music thing. It is true that the majority of the music I listen to on any given day was recorded before the year 2000, but I'd like to think that reflects more on my than it does on the music that's out there today. To a certain extent, I think people have a finite amount of 'music that moves them' available to them, and after a certain point, what moves other people just ceases to move you. But that reflects little on what's out there and a lot on you yourself.

Except this. I was reading something about OK Computer, and I noticed a rather mundane fact that struck me: it was released in 1997. Yeah, so what, right? Well, it's 2011 right now, and that means this album was released 14 years ago. Now here's where it gets a bit funky: sure, the world has changed in the past 14 years. Music has changed. There are new things out there, different things out there. Importantly, how we consume music is completely different - the 'digital revolution' has changed the behaviours involved in music consumption in a way that in 1997, when there was an internet after there was MP3 technology, remember, we couldn't have predicted.

But... consider the world now and the world into which OK Computer was born. Now, go 14 years before that: 1983, and Duran Duran and Michael Jackson. MTV, synths, those horribly OTT eighties drums and saxophones every-bloody-where. Madonna is traipsing about with her bra on over her clothing and Cyndi Lauper is wearing bright plastic 'spangle' bracelets.

The world of 1983 seems hopelessly 'retro' today, but it did in 1997, too. We listened to 1983 music with ironic distance in 1997, amazed at how different everything had become. Those were great days, but they were very different days. There's no way to confuse 1983 and 1997; they were two entirely different beasts.

Now repeat the exercise and go back 14 years before that: 1969, the year of Woodstock. Long-haired hippies, denim, peace-and-love and Charles Manson. Jimi Hendrix was alive and the Beatles were still together. This is a world I know nothing about (I was born in 1975) and it's a world that has always seemed as far away as William Shakespeare or Christopher Columbus to me.

Now that's just my perspective, of course, one that people even just a half-generation older than me would laugh at. But the point remains: 1969 was nothing like 1983. If you could teleport a 1969 hippie to 1983 and play the radio for him, he'd find it completely alien. And probably hate it.

14 years before that and you've got 'year zero': 1955. The year of Elvismania, of "Rock Around the Clock". The year accepted as the 'birth of rock and roll', whether or not you buy that particular fiction. 'Sock hops' and Beaver Cleaver, Little Richard and soda shops. Again, light years away.

Isn't this the speed at which popular cutire, including music, is supposed to progress? I know I'm not a teenager now so I don't really 'get' it, and I'd love to think that there are still revolutions happening out there today, ones that maybe I'm unaware of but that in time will be seen as as game-changing as Elvis in 1955, Hendrix in '69, Michael Jackson in '83 and, yes, Radiohead in 1997. But it's tough to avoid the conclusion that momentum has somehow been lost, that somehow progress in music is 'slowing down'. Is there nothing left to do? Has everything already been done? I can't believe that. But where are today's revolutionaries?

Synapse to the Beat: Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby"

So it's a math class, I think. I'm not sure. Our teacher is a middle-aged woman (by middle-aged I probably mean 'as old as I am now'), and she's more than a little irascible. We're... er, 14ish or something like that. I could calculate the exact age rather easity but I can't really be bothered. It's high school, though, and we're being, well, more than a little boisterous.

Everyone is seated in class - it's not that people are running around or anything - but there's a dozen conversations going on: loud, laughing, not conducive at to learning about integrals or whatever it was we were meant to be doing.

The teacher's been subtly trying to get our attention  for a while, calling out 'okay, folks, come on now, let's stop talking, let's get down to work, etc. etc. etc.' It's a completel failure and her blood pressure is reaching critical mass. Suddenly the rage boils over, and she absolutely shrieks, "All right, stop!"

The dead silence of the class is immediate. Her bellow completely silences us to pin-drop levels. This all happens in the single beat necessary for me to risk my educational career and possibly my health by deadpanning, into that charged silence, with perfect timing: "...collaborate and listen".

You gotta be the right age to get it. Those are the opening lyrics to "Ice Ice Baby", the biggest hit of history's most preposterous 'rapper' Vanilla Ice. It's actually not that bad a song really. It's easy, and entirely appropriate, to diss Vanilla Ice. But this song still stands.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is how in that split second I weighed the possible consequences of making my math teacher really pissed off at me for giving her cheek.Ultimately, of course, a good musical joke is a worthy endeavour. I'd like to imagine at the end of the day, when she was at home with a brandy in her hand, she said to herself, "you know, that was a decent joke." Probably not, because she probably didn't get the reference. Anyway, I got detentions but I also got a room full of laughter.

The thing about audacity is sometimes it has to be done. There's no shame is being a smartass, really. A smartass is someone who knows that a clever joke needs to be made, damn the consequences.

This is What the KLF is About: the KLF's Greatest Hits

So it just so happens that I absolutely love the KLF. I know, I'm old, and I listen to twenty-year-old music. But the KLF didn't just make good music, they were also a truly awesome story. I think one day I might devote an entire blog to them, but in the meantime I've sifted through their chaotic (and entirely deleted) discography to produce a two-CD greatest hits disc. This is what it is about:

DISC ONE

1.		THE KLF - AMERICA: WHAT TIME IS LOVE? uncensored. (9:04) From the single "America: What Time is Love?" (KLF USA 4T), 1992.
2.		THE KLF - 3 a.m. ETERNAL live at the s.s.l. - radio. (3:43) From the single "3 a.m. Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.)" (KLF 005), 1991.
3.		THE KLF - LAST TRAIN TO TRANCENTRAL pure trance original. (6:43) From the single "Last Train to Trancentral (Pure Trance)" (KLF 008R), 1990.
4.		THE KLF featuring TAMMY WYNETTE - JUSTIFIED & ANCIENT stand by the jams. (3:38) From the single "Justified & Ancient" (KLF 099), 1991.
5.		THE KLF - DREAM TIME IN LAKE JACKSON. (2:36) From the album "Chill Out" (JAMS LP5), 1992.
6.		THE JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MU MU - ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE original mix. (5:05) From the single "All You Need is Love" (JAMS 23), 1987.
7.		DISCO 2000 - I GOTTA CD 7" edit. (3:52) From the single "I Gotta CD" (D 2001), 1987.
8.		THE KLF - KYLIE SAID TO JASON edit. (4:06) From the unreleased album "The White Room Original Soundtrack", 1989.
9.		DISCOTEC 2000 - FEEL THIS. (5:35) From the v/a compilation "Eternity Project One", 1989.
10.		SPACE - JUPITER. (6:35) From the album "Space" (SPACE LP1), 1990.
11.		THE KLF - BUILD A FIRE. (4:41) From the album "The White Room" (KLF JAMS LP6), 1991.
12.		THE KLF - MADRUGADA ETERNA club mix. (5:20) From the unreleased single "Madrugada Eterna", 1990.
13.		ONE WORLD ORCHESTRA - THE MAGNIFICENT. (2:15) From the v/a compilation "The Help Album", 1995.
14.		THE JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MU MU - DOWN TOWN. (7:29) From the single "Down Town" (JAMS 27T), 1987.
15.		THE KLF - AMERICA NO MORE. (6:06) From the single "America: What Time is Love?" (KLF USA 4T), 1992.

DISC TWO

1.		THE KLF - WHAT TIME IS LOVE? live at trancentral. (5:26) From the single "What Time is Love? (Live at Trancentral)" (KLF 004X), 1990.
2.		THE KLF - 3 a.m. ETERNAL pure trance original. (5:56) From the single "3 a.m. Eternal (Pure Trance)" (KLF 005T), 1989.
3.		THE KLF - LAST TRAIN TO TRANCENTRAL live from the lost continent - radio. (3:43) From the single "Last Train to Trancentral (Live from the Lost Continent)" (KLF 008), 1991.
4.		THE KLF - JUSTIFIED & ANCIENT the white room version. (4:44) From the album "The White Room" (JAMS LP6), 1991.
5.		THE TIMELORDS - DOCTORIN' THE TARDIS radio edit. (3:40) From the single "Doctorin' the Tardis" (KLF 003), 1988.
6.		THE KLF - ELVIS ON THE RADIO, STEEL GUITAR IN MY SOUL. (3:02) From the album "Chill Out" (JAMS LP5), 1990.
7.		THE JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MU MU - THE QUEEN AND I. (4:46) From the album "1987 (What the Fuck is Going On?)" (JAMS LP1), 1987.
8.		DISCO 2000 - UPTIGHT (EVERYTHING'S ALRIGHT) banana 2000. (3:41) From the single "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" (D 2003), 1989.
9.		THE JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MU MU - THE PORPOISE SONG. (5:47) From the album "Who Killed the JAMS?" (JAMS LP2), 1988.
10.		THE KLF - NO MORE TEARS unreleased soundtrack version. (3:27) From the unreleased album "The White Room Original Soundtrack", 1989.
11.		K FOUNDATION - K CERA CERA (WAR IS OVER IF YOU WANT IT). (4:35) From the single "K Cera Cera", 1993.
12.		THE KLF - LAST TRAIN TO TRANCENTRAL lp mix. (6:07) From the album "The White Room" (JAMS LP6), 1991.
13.		THE KLF - WHAT TIME IS LOVE? pure trance original. (7:09) From the single "What Time is Love? (Pure Trance)" (KLF 004T), 1988.
14.		THE KLF vs EXTREME NOISE TERROR - 3 a.m. ETERNAL klf vs ent version. (2:47) From the single "3 a.m. Eternal (KLF vs ENT Version)" (KLF 5TOTP), 1992.
15.		THE JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MU MU - IT'S GRIM UP NORTH part 1. (10:04) From the single "It's Grim Up North" (JAMS 028R), 1991.

Since the KLF's entire catalogue is deleted, I have no idea what the legality of posting KLF songs is. I shouldn't say they're entirely deleted, actually: you can get "The White Room" and the "Doctorin' the Tardis" single on iTunes, due to licensing rights Bill and Jimmy sold to Arista and, er, TVT (?) for the US. In any case, I've decided, after deliberation, to make this available. I have no interest in turning this into a 'download blog', but I think this qualifies as extenuating circumstances. So without further ado, here it is down below. 

Note: nah, sorry. I got too paranoid, not so much about Bill and Jimmy suing me (there'd be an irony to that) but about Google banning me from Blogger or Adsense. Sad, I know, but I just panic sometimes. Google Gods - look, it's gone.