In 1981, when Mooney left Adam and the Ants after their breakout success with "Kings of the Wild Frontier," he formed Wide Boy Awake, and proceeded to create music far ahead of its time. Unfortunately, WBA never released a full album, only two EPs that featured a handful of astounding tunes. Although they got a a lot of air play on metropolitan alternative radio stations, WBA never really caught on because, I suspect, the general listening public as well as music reps simply did not know what to make of the sound. Combining funk bass, heavy drumming, and electronic instrumentation into an uncategorizable pastiche, they created quite a puzzling presence. Look at their colorful, homoerotic, carefully chosen image on the cover of the EP for "Chicken Outlaw" ("Slang Teacher" is the B-side of this release). I think I see a Vivienne Westwood Apache-inspired print from the "Pirates" collection on that loin cloth and I believe the bowler/Peruvian hats are from Westwood's "Nostalgia of Mud" collection...
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