Malcolm McLaren
Malcolm McLaren must be a travel agent’s dream. His globe-trotting search for bizarre dances and snatches of folk lore has taken him from Africa to New York’s schoolyards and on to the mountains of East Tennessee.
The results of these exotic holidays will be heard when the ‘Duck Rock’ album is released on May 27.
There are also plans for a documentary video to illustrate the music. Here are some shots from that film.
One of the strangest songs on Malcy’s LP Is ‘Duck For The Oyster’, which sounds like a Chinese meal but actually springs from McLaren’s visits to the ancient community of the Hllltoppers.
These poor backwoods folk had certainly never heard of Malcolm or The Sex Pistols but were smart enough to recognise a dodgy geezer when they saw one, and promptly locked up their daughters.
Anyroad, Malcolm has adapted the Hilltoppers’ Square Dance — a crazy courting ritual which involves the gingham skirted young ‘uns taking their partners in and out the window and into the clover. All this to the sound of slapped thighs, scraping fiddles and raucous whistling.
McLaren has updated this jollity with the massed squeaks of a million Pac-Men and voilá! Touch dancing is born.
It sounds a whole lot more fun than the pogo.
Meanwhile, Malcolm’s follow-up to the Buffalo Gals is the ‘Double Dutch’ dance, after the skipping game popular with the schoolgirls of New York.
Malcolm’s adaptation of the game has been put to a tune sung by the Zulus of Kwayazululand.
How about something nice and simple next time, Malcolm? Like marbles in Mongolia.