Bow Wow Wow

Bow Wow Wow was an English 1980s New Wave band that consisted of guitarist Matthew Ashman, bassist Leigh Gorman, drummer David Barbarossa and lead singer Annabella Lwin. The group's sound was a mix of Lwin's "girlish squeal," Balinese chants, surf instrumentals, pop melodies, and Barbarossa's Burundi ritual music influenced tom-tom drum beats.

Among the regular faces at the band's early London gigs were Latin songwriter/producer Richard Daniel Roman and Boy George, then known as Lieutenant Lush. McLaren was also going to use Boy George (later of Culture Club fame) as a second lead singer, but he was deemed to be "too wild" for the band.

They had their first U.K. top 10 hit with "Go Wild in the Country" in early 1982. The band's most popular U.S. hit was the New Wave staple, "I Want Candy", which was originally a 1965 hit by The Strangeloves. "I Want Candy" was featured in an early music video on MTV. Bow Wow Wow's recording of "I Want Candy" continues to appear in film soundtracks and media and advertising events such as the 2005 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.

Their most notorious recording was "Sexy Eiffel Tower," with excitedly heavy breathing and moans. By 1983, the group had released three full-length albums, and were due to embark on a world tour but tensions in the group were rising, as the members were suffering from illness and exhaustion after intense US touring. After a rest, the guys in the band ousted lead singer Annabella Lwin in order to form a new group with guitarist Ashman as its lead singer.

In 1997, Lwin and Gorman re-created the Bow Wow Wow sound embarking on the "Barking Mad" reunion tour in 1997 and 1998, adding guitarist Dave Calhoun and drummer Eshan Khadaroo. The tour produced the live CD Wild in the U.S.A., which also included remixes of previous Bow Wow Wow tracks. In the wake of the success of the "Barking Mad" tour, there were reports that the band planned to record new material.

The song "A Thousand Tears" made it into the 1999 film Desperate But Not Serious starring Christine Taylor and Claudia Schiffer, and this song, along with some other previously unrecorded songs, have been performed by Bow Wow Wow in recent concert dates, but presently, no new studio record has yet appeared.

In June 2006, Bow Wow Wow recorded a cover of The Smiths' song "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish" for a proposed Smiths tribute record. A promotional edit of the recording can be heard on Bow Wow Wow's MySpace page. The full-length recording, the first new recording released under the name Bow Wow Wow in over 20 years, was made available on iTunes in January 2007.

In November 2006, Bow Wow Wow played at the Maritime Hotel's Hiro Lounge in New York City to promote the inclusion of their music on the soundtrack of the Sofia Coppola film Marie Antoinette.

Music Videos

 * Baby, Oh No
 * C30, C60, C90, Go
 * Chihuahua
 * Do You Wanna Hold Me?
 * I Want Candy
 * Louis Quatorze
 * Mario (Your Own Way to Paradise)
 * W.O.R.K.