Backtracking 1983: Malcolm McLaren's Duck Rock and Into Battle with the Art of Noise

RIP Jonathan L. Thanks for all the music!

...trevor horn strikes again (and again) (and again again)

Trevor Horn first appeared on my radar as the producer of ABC's The Lexicon Of Love. Fairly certain I first heard "The Look Of Love" and, just a few months later, "Relax" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood on Jonathan L.'s Virgin Vinyl show though the playlist pictured at the top of this post lists "4 Ever 2 Gether" as being played on at least one episode of the show. That's still a tasty playlist! 

I stumbled onto The Art of Noise in the usual way... hearing it gloriously amplified on the stereo at the late and very much lamented Loco Music one night. It was unlike anything else I had ever heard up until that point in my seventeen-year-old life. If my flashbacks are accurate, it was close to Halloween with Senior Year underway, I had been working my first job for about three months, and I was more than likely accompanied by my girlfriend at the time after our whirlwind summer romance. Everything was cool in my little world, possibly as good as it could get for someone likely to be wearing parachute pants, and then that breakdown in the midst of "Beat Box" played on the store's sound system though at that time the title was still unknown to me - the huffing/puffing sounds end with what sounds like someone saying pizza box or beat the box - and I nearly lost my ever-loving mind. We left Loco later that night with a loose cellophane-wrapped UK import 45rpm 12" EP of Into Battle With The Art Of Noise which can still be found on The Vinyl Wall behind me here at the HERChives some forty years later.

Maybe a month or so later, sometime around Thanksgiving or possibly between Turkey Day and Christmas Day, I brought home a new compilation album (also a UK import - wow, I was really throwing my hard-earned minimum wages around back then) and, while listening to my latest acquisition, Now That's What I Call Music, hear the sounds of the improbable jump-roping anthem "Double Dutch". Checking the back of the album for the name of the artist, I saw Malcolm McLaren, a familiar name from early on in my Adam and the Ants/Bow Wow Wow fandom.

As the song grew on me, I began to search for other Malcolm McLaren music, and one glorious day early on in 1984 I came across D'ya Like Scratchin', a mini-LP credited to Malcolm McLaren and the World Famous Supreme Team Radio Show.

A few weeks later, a 12" single joined my burgeoning vinyl collection though apparently, the "Buffalo Gals" single had been released prior to D'ya Like Scratchin'. One thing I noticed from the covers and labels of the singles was the name Trevor Horn as co-writer and producer.

For weeks, I scoured the single, album, and import sections of every record store I frequented on the lookout for more Malcolm McLaren and was finally rewarded by finding the album Duck Rock. Dig that tricked-out boombox!

Duck Rock was released in the UK on May 27, 1983

Into Battle with the Art of Noise was released in the UK on September 26, 1983

I have yet to be released in the UK.