Adam & The Ants

Ah, the early 80s.  As far as I'm concerned the period from maybe 1981, possibly a year or two earlier, to 1984 was the absolute peak of popular music in my lifetime.  Post-punk, New Wave, The New Pop, the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, the rise of electronica - there was just so much exciting musical stuff going on that was both interesting and commercially viable, and this was just in the UK.  I've already eulogised over A Flock Of Seagulls and ABC on the blog, so let's add Adam & The Ants to that list.

Tha Ants were a strange beast - my memory tells me that they had a prolonged run of success, but in actual fact it was rather less than two years after breakthrough single Dog Eat Dog that the band split.  That, though, was the second incarnation of The Ants and their genesis was earlier, in the heyday of punk.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I'd like to say that I'm cool enough to have copies of The Ants first two albums - Dirk Wears White Sox and Kings Of The Wild Frontier - on vinyl, preferably.  But I have, in fact, only one album and it's a best of Adam Ant.  Of the 22 tracks, 11 are solo and 11 with the Ants.

The earliest song on the collection is, ironically, the Ants last single, Deutscher Girls, released as a cash in when the band split in 1982.  Dating from 77 and on the Jubilee soundtrack album, it's quite a pleasant tune, although rather lightweight given the band's punk roots.  The same could be said of their first single, Young Parisians, and both could be accused of having a bit of a novelty edge to them - Deutscher Girls is a tango, Young Parisians smacks somewhat of the music hall.  What Young Parisians really made me think of, though, was Blur.  Not, however, as much as their fantastic second single, Zerox.

Zerox, like Young Parisians, failed to chart.  So did third single Cartrouble/Kick! and it wasn't till 1980 and the release of Kings Of The Wild Frontier's title track as a single that The Ants troubled the UK charts, although they only reached 48 on this occasion.  These were different Ants though - facepaint, two drummers, big Marco Pirroni on guitar - Malcolm McLaren having spirited all the original band, except Adam, off to form Bow Wow Wow, early in 1980.

Quite what happened to turn mild critical acclaim and zero commercial success into Antmania, I'm not sure, but Kings Of The Wild Frontier was a huge success, making number one in the album charts and catapulting four singles into the top-10: Dog Eat Dog, Antmusic and re-releases of the title track and of Young Parisians (Zerox and Cartrouble also were re-released, but only reached 45 and 33 respectively).

Kings Of The Wild Frontier is a prime example of what I'm talking about when I enthuse about the greatness of the pop music of the early 80s.  It seems impossible that something so ramshackle and belligerent could possibly have been a hit at any other time - and it made number two in the UK chart.

It's quite telling really that one of those two drummers, Chris Hughes (the one in white, I believe) was also the band's producer and co-writer of many of their songs.

Later in 1981 The Ants released the Prince Charming album, which provided them with their two number one singles, Stand And Deliver and one of popular music's most brazen rip-offs, Prince Charming:

Here's Prince Charming in full - it is absolutely great, for all that it's a completely shameless rip-off of Rolf's War Canoe:

I refer you to my earlier rant about the non-availability of videos on Youtube.

Prince Charming was also a huge success, making number two on the album chart and producing a third top-10 single, Ant Rap, but the end was nigh for the Ants, as the band's lack of enthusiasm for Adam's courting of the mainstream teenage market led to the band splitting early in 1982.

I hadn't listened to any of this in absolutely ages and I'm pleasantly surprised at how much I like it, particularly the early singles that I'd never really paid attention to.  I think Dirk Wears White Sox definitely has to go on my 'To Buy' list, perhaps Kings Of The Wild Frontier too.