Monday's Long Songs

This bootleg re- orbited into my musical world last week, a 2021 cut- and- shut of Malcolm McLaren's Madame Butterfly and The Grid's Floatation by pflext, the two songs working together perfectly, Malcolm's 1984 marriage of opera and 80s r'n'b and hip hop spliced with Richard Norris and Dave Ball's 1990 Balearic/ ambient house classic, remixed by a then fledgling remixer Andrew Weatherall. Richard did point out in 2021 that the bootlegger pflext missed a trick by not calling it Floats Like A Butterfly. Listen here, eight and a half minutes of bliss. Pflext is Paul Flex Taylor currently based in Sydney, Australia. 

Here's the original of Madame Butterfly from '84, McLaren, Stephen Hague, Debbie Cole and Betty Ann White taking on Puccini and winning. The album Fans was six tracks long and included pieces from Carmen and Turandot over hip hop drums but madame Butterfly was the only one where he really nailed it.

Madame Butterfly (Un Bel Di Vedremo)

The McLaren/ Grid mash up led me to Paris in 1994, where Malcolm McLaren was still looking for the next big fusion, making an album celebrating the city in the form of atmospheric future jazz and synth pop with vocals from Catherine Deneuve. A second disc of remixes brought this seventeen minute ambient classic from Youth titled The Emotional Curvatone At A Given Moment In Time And Space Listen at Soundcloud or Youtube. It really is something special with Deneuve's softly spoken vocals, waves of rippling synths and endless flow. I posted it before in 2019, a year which is both fairly recent but also feels like many, many years ago. 

Dutch Butterfly

Malcolm McLaren has been painted as the villain in the Sex Pistols story for many years, usually by John Lydon who commands more air time and print inches than the rest of the participants put together. Malcolm was instrumental in that band's story but his wider contribution to popular culture goes way beyond the filth and the fury and subsequent crash and burn. Following the demise of the Pistols he kept running, straight into Bow Wow Wow and then moved on again, faster and faster, intent on mashing together disparate elements to create something new. This led to at least two further moments of inspiration and musical alchemy. 

In 1983 Malcolm put out his debut album, Duck Rock. His debut single Buffalo Girls was a genuine piece of cross cultural game changing with scratching and sampling, the World Famous Supreme Team, Zulu backing singers, Trevor Horn at the production desk, a record that was key in early hip hop culture. He followed it with Double Dutch, equally brilliant and further blurring cultural boundaries- skipping chants, a zippy bassline, hi- life guitars and South African vocals. He was sued by The Boyoyo Boys for that but a Top Three hit in the UK chart must have softened that blow. 

Double Dutch

Two years later he went further and deeper releasing an album called Fans that spliced opera with modern R & B. Madame Butterfly, a version of Puccini's famous work, a genuinely jaw- dropping piece of music- Stephen Hague now at the controls, crunching 80s synth drums, flutes, McLaren's speaking voice and hugely affecting vocals from Debbie Cole and Betty Ann White. 

Madame Butterfly (Un Bel Di Vedremo)

This version, a remix by Morales and Munzibai, stretches it out for ten minutes with a much toughened up rhythm-  industrial/ hip hop drums and foregrounded metallic, slap bass and whooshing noises. 

Madame Butterfly (On The Fly Mix)

Malcolm's death in 2010 brought some correction to his story and his role in punk but there's much more to Malcolm than just the Sex store, bondage trousers and Johnny Rotten, a tale we've all heard a thousand times anyway. Double Dutch and Madame Butterfly are both moments of madcap 80s brilliance made by someone who had a hundred ideas a day and the wherewithal to follow them through.