Back in my salad days, some might’ve gotten into Malcolm McLaren via his hits “Double Dutch” or “Buffalo Gals.” Or, maybe through this odd band he shaped, the Sex Pistols. Me, I latched onto a lesser-known, legendary, yet now oft-overlooked offering named “Madame Butterfly.”
I think a lot of things are oft-overlooked these days.
The sweaty-sauna ingenues massaging oil into each other’s supple flesh was certainly a visual lure, but what really hooked me about this song – from his 1984 opera-r&b-pop mashup album, Fans – was the groove. Oh, this is a simply wicked groove – one that not every fledgling synth operator and 808 programmer at the time could’ve come up with on the fly.
The website “Discogs” is your friend. Listed under “Fans” is McClaren’s co-writer Robbie Kilgore, a keyboardist and programmer. Was he directly responsible? I’m sure he was, but some supporting evidence was needed… whoops, there it is. Kilgore had worked on Shannon’s club smash, “Let The Music Play.”
Even at the dawn of the not-so-cold digital music age, there are traceable footprints – or fingerprints, rather – amongst those keys and knobs and buttons… as identifiable and human as a Coltrane solo or a telegraph operator’s fist.
AI, suck it.
- Steve Stav, along with cohost Mitch Hurst, is the proprietor of an enlightening Facebook page called The Big Music, which focuses on the music, movies and culture of Generation X. A podcast with the same name and hosts is in the planning stage.
