Here's Adam & The Ants to kick start your week...literally, the opening song of today's selection is called Kick! (Adam's exclamation mark, not mine).
The first album I ever bought was Kings Of The Wild Frontier, £3.99 from Sound Seekers for the vinyl edition with free magazine. The latter blew my 9-year old mind as it revealed that not only had the band existed before Dog Eat Dog and Antmusic forcibly grabbed my attention, but that apart from Adam Ant, it was a completely different line up with a completely different look and sound.
A year or so later, after I'd bought follow up album Prince Charming and with no inkling that the end was nigh for the band (or that I would pretty much lose all interest in Adam's solo ventures, having moved on to synth pop), I got hold of Dirk Wears White Sox. My uncle, who I think lived near Shepherd's Bush at the time, used to borrow albums from his local library and dub them onto a C90 cassette. My brother and I were fascinated by this and as our parents had a turntable but not a fancy schmancy tape deck combo, we didn't have the means to make our own contribution to killing music with home taping.
So, a few requests and blank cassettes later and our uncle had a little cottage industry of supplying my brother and I with a bunch of albums we might otherwise not have access to. My main recollection was that my brother took the opportunity to catch up with the ouevre of E.L.O. and The Police. I was quite specific: I wanted Dirk Wears White Sox, with The Blue Meaning by Toyah on the flip side.
A while later, our package arrived. My uncle's exact comments haven't been recorded for posterity but he wasn't overly impressed by my choices, which I think pleased me at the time. He had a point: whilst some of the tunes are really great; I've always found Adam's lyrics so-so. For every Antmusic, there's Ant Rap; for every Stand And Deliver! there's The Idea. In a parallel universe, Adam Ant wrote Sex Farm and gave it away to Spinal Tap.
Despite all that, there's a real buzz listening to their music. My vinyl copy of Kings Of The Wild Frontier and magazine are long, long gone but I still play Adam & The Ants' music regularly. I've since dipped into Adam's solo stuff but it just doesn't resonate with me in the way that this music from my childhood does.
Today's selection is split into two vinyl-friendly sides, quite heavy on the Dirk Wears White Sox period, with a couple each from Kings Of The Wild Frontier and Prince Charming, as well as various B-sides, sessions and demos.
Enjoy!
Side One
1) Kick! (Remixed Version) (1982)
2) That Voodoo! (Album Version) (1981)
3) Deutscher Girls (Album Version) (1978)
4) Antmusic (Album Version) (1980)
5) The Human Beings (Demo Version) (1980)
6) Zerox (John Peel Session) (1978)
7) Never Trust A Man (With Egg On His Face) (Album Version) (1979)
8) Young Parisians (Demo) (1977)
Side Two
1) Beat My Guest (Single Version) (1981)
2) Animals & Men (Album Version) (1979)
3) Mile High Club (Album Version) (1981)
4) Christian D'Or (Single Version) (1981)
5) Tabletalk (Album Version) (1979)
6) Killer In The Home (Album Version) (1980)
1978: Jubilee OST: A3
1979: Dirk Wears White Sox: A7, B2, B5
1980: Kings Of The Wild Frontier: A4, B6
1981: Prince Charming: A2, B3
1981: Prince Charming EP: B4
1981: Stand & Deliver! EP: B1
1982: Antmusic EP: A1
1990: The Peel Sessions: A6
2000: Antbox: A8
2004: Kings Of The Wild Frontier (Expanded Edition): A5
First album at 9 years of age?
ReplyDeleteClearly a child prodigy!
I was thinking the same. Took me until I was 12 or possibly 13 before I bought any records at all.
DeleteI had to double check but Kings... came out in November 1980. I bought it on release day so it would have been a few weeks before my 10th birthday. No idea why I felt the overwhelming urge to buy this other than I had clearly succumbed to Antmania. I bought the Prince Charming album the following year but had dropped Adam like a sack of spuds by 1982 when he ditched the band and releases Friend Or Foe. Fickle youth, eh?
DeleteI have no recollection of buying any other albums, until around 1985 (age 14), and mainly cassettes - The Smiths, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Propaganda. So buying my first album at 9 years old was definitely a blip!
I used to have a similar arrangement to your uncle with a local record shop when I was about 14/15. They realised that most of their 'customers' were schoolkids who clogged up the place browsing but could not afford to buy albums, so they set aside one copy of everything in stock for rental.
ReplyDeleteFor a small fee you could take out up to three albums for 48 hours but you had to solemnly swear that you would not tape them - and of course I never did (honest Guv). I always picked something I had never heard of for my third selection, so that shop played a big part in broadening my musical tastes.
What a brilliant record shop that was, Ernie. And your honesty and integrity when it comes to home taping is commendable.
DeleteThat's a great mix of pre-fan Ants. I'd have had Car Trouble in there somewhere too.
ReplyDelete"pre-fame", I meant. It's Monday morning, I am not functioning.
DeleteThanks, Martin. I like Car Trouble (both parts) though part 1 is another example of Adam's dodgy lyrics that sounded at best out of step and a bit crap even back then. I could have edited it to just part 2, which is great in it's own right but I didn't want to overload on Dirk... songs. The Day I Met God also missed the cut for similar reasons.
DeleteAh, no ''Car Trouble'', excellent. Entertaining but certainly not one of the best songs on ''Dirk...'' Being from The Netherlands and starting with ''Stand and Deliver'' on Toppop on dutch TV I learned from the few music publications I had acces to that there was a ''first '' album. Mum went to the UK to visit an old friend and was ordered to bring back THAT album. Life-changer (music-wise)!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Dalebanon! Similar to you, I only realised that there was a first album from reading the magazine that came with the Kings... album. I finally got my own copy of the original Do It vinyl release circa 1990/91 in Perth, Western Australia. It survived being shipped back to the UK via surface mail but sadly got traded in during a vinyl cull/period of straightened circumstances.
DeleteYour mum sounds like a diamond. Mine bought me Ant Rap on 7" from the local Woolworths, but yours was really above and beyond the call of duty there. Great stuff!
That could and would have been a fantastic and very unexpected ICA........(still could be if you fancy adapting it at some point!!!!!!)
ReplyDeleteThanks, JC, that means a lot. As it happens, I have something in mind...not Adam & The Ants but hopefully just as unexpected and (I hope) entertaining...
Delete