Lil' Bow Wows

What was it that my girlfriends and I loved so much about Bow Wow Wow lead singer Annabella Lwin back in the early 1980's? That the band's percussion-driven new wave pop "I Want Candy" and "Do You Wanna Hold Me?" were the few grooves getting our drowsy 13-year-old asses off the couch and dancing to Saturday morning airings of American Bandstand? That the early larvae-stage days of MTV strip-running their videos open our eyes to images of (albeit toned down) punk fashions and attitudes? Or could it be that Annabella, being so close to our own ages, has a mother that lets her like totally pose naked and have a real boss mohawk?? Well naturally at the time we weren't exactly aware of how much her mother protested the whole naked issue (I think I read that in the Malcolm McLaren book I have, however much of it you wanna take at face value), but I had to admit we all thought the whole mohawk thing was pretty keen. With our limited resources of hair gels, hair sprays and curling irons we all somehow managed to achieve some semblance of mohawkedness through the sheer force of our intrepid pre-teen will, and once I painted my aunt's face in an exact replica of Lwin's then-famous cheetah paint and then gleefully let her recount the instances of gawks and stares she received when she went out with it still on as she visited the local bumpkintown drug store to pick up some panty hose. I think it all came down to, well, Madonna hadn't existed yet, so who else were we wee things gonna gloam on to? Annabella was a peer. But much, much cooler than us. We all wanted to be in her righteous cool-girl, mohawk-sportin' posse.

Funny how I don't have any Bow Wow Wow on my iPod right now. Hell, you know how all the songs go anyway. So here's a video that I remember from way back when. Probably the first time I ever laid eyes her, in fact. Oh, and Joe booked them a few years back at Peabody's down at the beach. And lawd, the woman is still fiiiiine....

"Baby Oh No" - Bow Wow Wow (Youtube video circa 1982)