#1
January 1 1984
Malcolm McLaren
Fans
3.25 out of 5
Highlights:
Madam Butterfly (Un bel dì vedremo)
Oh boy, the 80s were weird.
It’s fitting that the first album in 1984’s Listening Post be this record, actually. It was an impulsive comment about the brilliant Duck Rock on my Facebook feed that started a conversation about music which resulted in this group.
As what we accept as popular music changes (just 10 years before the closest we would get to Opera in pop was the middle section of Bohemian Rhapsody and that was Fauxpera) it’s also fitting that it’s Malcolm that, he of African rhythms and Hip Hop and punk appropriations be the one to make something like this: a disco, post punk version of Madame Butterfly and Carmen and Turandot….
This is all about the opening track. The rest is middling studio created stuff that wishes it was more poignant or pointed than it ultimately can ever aspire to be. Carmen as rap track is…a noble attempt but Bizet is Bizet and Malcolm is Malcolm. The latter isn’t expanding on the former just mashing it up.
Ray Manzarek’s Carmina Burana this isn’t. And it’s not even close to what Weezer would do with some of the same source material a decade later.
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