Adam and his Antz second 7″ single, recorded by the second Antz line up comprising the musicians that recorded the ‘Dirk Wears White Socks’ LP.
In 1980 this line up also infamously, had Malcolm McClaren (the then manager of the band) get the adorable and dreamy (I am allowed to say that cos I was a year younger than her at 13/14 in 1980) 15 year old Annabella Lwin to join up on vocals to become Bow Wow Wow, leaving Adam on his Jack Jones.
Quite a coup, still Adam got the last laugh becoming a huge world wide star with a completely different band.
Both the new Adam And The Ants (note different spelling now) and Bow Wow Wow had a very similar sound, performed in similar venues, and on similar TV and Radio sessions, and I am still quite amazed to this day that Bow Wow Wow did not overshadow the new Adam And The Ants in world wide popularity in 1980-1981.
Adam and his new Ants released the ‘Kings Of The Wild Frontier’ LP, which is a mighty fine listen. Bow Wow Wow released their first LP/EP release on cassette only format. That format did not qualify as a single in the charts, nor ironically an LP, the fact that there was no LP format meant a lot less sales. Bow Wow Wow lost ground on Adam And The Ants from that point on and were lapped several times before Bow Wow Wow released a proper vinyl LP (plus cassette version) in 1981.
Maybe I should not be so amazed…McClaren and E.M.I. bodging it up again.
Loads more Antz material uploaded, use the search function.
Jah Pork Pie
June 4, 2008 at 12:08 pmSome rather different imagery between the 2 incoarnations of the Ants and the Antz though:
Gone are any uncomfortable Nazi references (no Deutscher Girls), and Adam becomes packaged as an adorable asexual Peter Pan figure. There aren’t any whips in his valise any more.
Gone are any attempts to be taken seriously: no more pretence to art, just fun fun fun for da kidz!
Jah Pork Pie
June 4, 2008 at 12:09 pmSome rather different imagery between the 2 incarnations of the Ants and the Antz though:
Gone are any uncomfortable Nazi references (no Deutscher Girls), and Adam becomes packaged as an adorable asexual Peter Pan figure. There aren’t any whips in his valise any more.
Gone are any attempts to be taken seriously: no more pretence to art, just fun fun fun for da kidz!
Carl
June 4, 2008 at 12:16 pmI would not be so amazed that Bowwowwow were not on the same planet as Adam and The Ants, mainly for a number of reasons. One being that the Ant/Marco writing team should not be underestimated..Kings was an excellent album that blasted him off into orbit. You have the feeling now, maybe at the time, that Adam always wanted to be a STAR in the same way that Marc Bolan wanted to be, and had the single mindedness to achieve that.
McClaren, on the other hand, was more interested in trying to be smart and outwitting the music industry, he failed again in this.Whilst he was trying to be a smart arse, Adam was off selling records!
Not sure that The Bow Wow material was ever as strong as Kings.
kaplan
June 4, 2008 at 2:14 pmLet’s face it : B.W.W was utter crap compared to the incredible early Ants singles ! McLaren was trying at that time to sell peadophilia stuff with teenagers taken at the Camden lavomatic…I remember the promo pix he used to give away to music press in those days : 100% peado shit with kids wearing g-strings and all that. Today he would have been probably behind the bars for that. May the swindler rot in peace.
Jah Pork Pie
June 4, 2008 at 2:53 pmThere were significant differences between the 2 incarnations of the Ants though: all the fetishism (Whip In My Valise etc) and flirting with Nazi imagery (Deutscher Girls etc) were swept under the carpet when Adam and McLaren decided to go for broke and court the teeny bopper market. Okay, Adam probably needed telling about the Nazi stuff anyway (I never thought that the punk obsession with shock-horror Nazi imagery was terribly well-informed) but “I’m the dandy highwayman”??? Gimme a fuckin’ break!
He was more highly sanitised than an advert for feminine hygiene deodorant by the time he hit TOTP. Which for somebody with his fragile mental predisposition cannot have been easy to deal with (not that McLaren would have worried too much about that, if poor Sid was anything to go by).
I rated McLaren with the Pistols and with Middlesbrough, but with the Ants and in the England job he proved himself unfit for purpose. Now, if Big Phil Scolari had been brought in to produce the second Ants album we might have got Adam beyond the qualifying group 😉
Jah Pork Pie
June 4, 2008 at 2:58 pm@kaplan->”McLaren was trying at that time to sell peadophilia stuff with teenagers taken at the Camden lavomatic…I remember the promo pix he used to give away to music press in those days : 100% peado shit with kids wearing g-strings and all that.”
THAT’S a perfect working definition of free-market capitalism for anyone who needs it for an essay.
I don’t know which is worse really, being the sort of person who would buy something because there were pictures of semi-naked kids on it, or being the sort of person who would sell it to make a quick buck. My guess is the latter.
Carl
June 4, 2008 at 3:05 pmJah…I was following all that and smirked when you got to McClarens failure with England and his refusal to take the band on the 2008 “Anarchy in Austria and Switzerland” tour. No sell out !!
Phil
June 4, 2008 at 3:40 pmThat 79 new year gig was so brill. It seemed that everyone on the scene was there that night. Im sure even some of the Poison Girls/Crass lot.
No that cant be right!
Penguin • Post Author •
June 4, 2008 at 3:45 pmThat gig is uploaded on this site if you search for it.
kaplan
June 4, 2008 at 3:48 pmAdam & the Ants “golden era”TOP 10
1) cartrouble pt 1 & 2
2) zerox
3) ligotage
4) whip in my valise
5) catholic day
6) nine plan failed
7) day I met god
8) beat my guest
9) puerto rican
10) tabletalk
Jah Pork Pie
June 4, 2008 at 4:21 pmDefinitely “Car Trouble” and “Beat My Guest”.
“Remember der coils of der Deutscher Goylz” was the best song about German Intra-Uterine Devices ever written, too 😉
Val
June 4, 2008 at 6:45 pmPlastic Surgery – best song EVER live, by any band and Young Parisians / Lady was THE most perfect double A-side pop record ever made. I was living in a girls’ hostel when I bought it – I didn’t even have a record player!
johng
June 4, 2008 at 7:22 pmsure my copy had Deutscher girls on the b-side and not whip in my valise….?
luggy
June 4, 2008 at 11:00 pmGot 2 copies, one of which has You’re So Physical (although labelled as Whip In My Valise) on the B-side.
gerard
June 4, 2008 at 11:30 pmDidn’t Do-It do it on purpose? That version of Physical isn’t really that good IMHO, but always nice to get “mispressings”.
Best band of the era by far for me. No one else came remotely close.
Got me wondering if any of those old t-shirt designs are available anywhere?
Jah Pork Pie
June 5, 2008 at 12:35 am@gerard-> You wouldn’t by any chance be Gerry from The Plague Dogs, of Thornton Heath fame, would you?
Stewart
June 5, 2008 at 12:37 amNot sure where this thread has suddenly sprung from, but I agree with Gerard and Val! The Ants WERE the most inspiring, exciting, and even subversive band of the era for a while. Plastic Surgery performed live was definitely their best song! IMHO, NONE of their vinyl ever matched what the Ants really sounded like – I remember being REALLY disappointed with Young Parisians when it came out AND the LP. We were so looking forward to it, and then… Young Fucking Parisians?!?! What the fuck?!?! And – and this is only my opinion, folks – you can forget everything about them AFTER that first LP, because they became a complete fucking joke. Their tracks on the Jubilee album sound a lot more like the Ants I remember and admired (apart from, as Pork says, all that Nazi imagery crap).
Had my copy of the single nicked, but mine definitely had Deutsche Girls on the B-side
Sorry about all the ‘fucks’ by the way (*blushes*)
Penguin • Post Author •
June 5, 2008 at 12:37 amAdam And The Ants: Zerox
[July 1979] single
Chart: UK #45 (January 1981)
7″: 1979 UK (Do-It DUN 8)
3:46 Zerox
3:57 Whip In My Valise
7″: 1980 UK (Do-It DUN 8) [‘secret’ pressing; x2000]
3:46 Zerox
3:56 Physical [‘secret’ version]
There you go Mick Lugworm…scan it for EBay now!
Jah Pork Pie
June 5, 2008 at 1:18 am@Stewart-> I remember the whole Ants thing as being quite ‘exclusive’. Something of a private members’ club. A lot of the Ants punks up Portobello and Kings’ Rd were kind of a ‘cut above’ the rest of us, what with all the artistic futurism and the heavy symbolism (plus the whole S&M thing was something that I’m sure a lot of their fans pretended to be into just so that they could cultivate a further bit of mystique). And there was a real dress code amongst the more elitist of them too – rather negated the point of punk to me.
Once I got into talking to a few of them at the squats and at gigs though (went to see them at the Lyceum, can’t remember which gig it was), most of them were really nice people (and a lot of the ones at the squats really were into the whole bondage thing, which was a learning experience!)
I really felt for them when the Ants went into Jolly Pantomime Pirate mode – nobody likes seeing that which they love have to whore itself out on every street corner in Britain just to get by.
I wonder, with all the ambiguous sexuality involved with the Ants and their fans, whether a lot of those fans went on to become fascinated with Morrissey in the 80s?
Stewart
June 5, 2008 at 2:13 amPorky – (*winks*) – I don’t remember it as being ‘exclusive’, just ‘underground’ still, like a lot of punk then, and exciting and even dangerous – but I was very young and naive… I remember the fucking Kings Road being ‘exclusive’ and a load of toss IMHO and no ‘real’ punx there, but that’s just my take on it, and I only ever went there once or twice quite late on (the Sid Vicious Memorial March anyone?!?! :O ).
However, re the bondage thing – and not really appropriate to this thread but who cares? – I recently plucked up the courage to try out my S&M fantasies for real. I conversed with a woman into the same thing on a dodgy internet site, we met up at her flat (in Birmingham as it happens), had a bloody wonderful time with all sorts of clamps and floggers and clothespegs and metal spiky sex toys, went to bed about 3.30am, and woke up 45 minutes later with her bedroom on fire and then the whole flat on fire – she’d left a candle alight! Tried to open the front door and couldn’t work it out (double-locked and didn’t have my contact lenses in :O ), went to the front room to try and smash a window, table bounced off it (double-glazed safety glass :O), couldn’t see a thing and was choking to death, and I really thought I was going to die (smoke inhalation – mostly from all her fucking rubber gear and our sex toys, as far as I can tell). Anyway, I survived, as you can see – but spent the whole of the next day and night in hospital on drips and oxygen etc. That’s the last fucking time I live out my fantasies, lol!
Jah Pork Pie
June 5, 2008 at 2:50 am@Stewart-> “Porky” was an matchstick, indian ink and sewing needle tattoo I got on my arm by Ruth and Russ at Campbell Buildings – do you remember me?
The Kings Road: you just had to know where to go. The Trafalgar pub was my favourite, snakebite and pool all afternoon on a Saturday and full of punks. Just down the road from there (dunno if it was that road that the lawyer was shot by the old bill in the other week) there was a little square just off the Kings Road (on the North Side) where the glue heads were. Nothing exclusive there, just turn up with Evo-Stik and a bag and you were their long-lost brother! I ignored the Chelsea Potter and the other places back towards Sloane Square – too dear and too full of poseurs and rich kids. There was a Safeway (I think) a bit before the Chelsea Potter and another little recess back on the South Side with a couple of benches which were always good for hanging around poncing fags/ten-pences and drinking cans. On the whole, I liked the place.
That Sid memorial march – was that another thing organised by Pat Marc, self-styled “King Punk Of London”? Now THAT was a title I just don’t understand to this day! The Anarchist King? If “post-ironic” means anything, I guess that’s about it!
On the bondage front, I know it’s wrong of me but I fucking corpsed with laughter when I read that: especially the bit about the contact lenses and choking to death on her rubber gear. I’d go for a bird with an interest in Watersports next time. Sounds a lot safer. Mind you, with your luck she’d probably produce a salty human tsunami and wash you out the window 🙂
Stewart
June 5, 2008 at 3:07 amHi you! Glad someone else is up at this time, lol! Sorry, I wasn’t actually at Campbell Buildings at this time (or ever…) – think I was commuting between the Balls Pond Road squat in Hackney/Islington borders and Manchester (where my good friend was Mike Joyce, who drummed for a punk band called The Hoax and later became drummer for The Smiths! No, I couldn’t believe it either… And before you ask, no, I’ve never listened to The Smiths either… :O ) x
PS Re bondage thing – I can laugh now, but I didn’t laugh at the time, I can tell you! And there’s a postscript… My satellite navigation system survived the fire (hey, I’m with the new technology, man!) so because I’m poor and they’re quite expensive (to me, anyway) we arranged one more get-together to pick it up and – erm – do the two-backed-beast thing(despite her horrendous burns :O ). I picked her up and we set off for the cheap hotel we’d booked for the night. She asked me to stop off at Tesco Express on the way – because all her sex toys had melted in the fire and she “wanted to pick up a few things”. Anyway, I dropped her off at Tesco Express and waited outside in the car for at LEAST half an hour (she was obviously considering her purchases very carefully). Anyway, she eventually came out with a smile on her face, and we went off to have some fun at the hotel. When we got there, she unpacked her Tesco carrier bag to reveal her idea of fun – which was a pair of Marigold rubber gloves, four leeks, and a pot of Vicks VapoRub…!!!! :O :O :O
Jah Pork Pie
June 5, 2008 at 3:30 amWhat with the burns, the leeks and the Vicks this could be the start of the punk reunification, where the crusty, veggie and S&M threads of punk all come together (fnaar) for one last hurrah!
And the Marigold gloves? Christ knows. But for some reason, I am reminded of the word “santorum” (Google it along with “Dan Savage”!)
I bet those posh Ants fans never went for the DIY approach with the pain infliction. More yer Vivienne Westwood barbed-wire Y-fronts, I should think.
Nic
June 5, 2008 at 8:47 amSomeone wondered how Adam could have ended up singing about being a ‘Dandy Highwayman’…
Thinking about it, I would suggest that Adam’s primary interest was in fashion and other transient manifestations of aesthetics…His lyrics are replete with references to this area – from the wide-eyed exalting of the aestehtic taste of the ‘Young Parisians’ to the memory of JFK’s “sporty young hairstyle”…even ‘tabletalk’ seems to criticise Hitler on a purely aesthetic level (“Your style is so brash, and that silly moustache”…”Oh, what a square”, etc)…
It would make a lot of sense that he really focused on this area during his ‘pure’ Pop phase…
I didn’t see the Ants until 1980, so I can’t comment on their earlier live performances (live tapes never really do a band justice), but I’m not so sure that their recorded work has aged particularly well…many of the songs seem a little too ‘by numbers’ – it would have been interesting to see what may have come next if the ‘Dirk…’ line-up had continued to write songs together…
Sorry about that – just had to come in and rain on the parade as usual…
🙂
johng
June 5, 2008 at 9:42 ami’m still sure my copy had Deutscher girls on the b-side,when they got all top of the pops i gave it away to the 2 young girls who lived next door to my mother as they had become big fans of them….dunno what they made of it,or their mum and dad ,they never really talked to me much after that….
@Stewart-> great tale re.the bondage,s and m session,as for mike joyce,we couldnt belive it either,after watching him drum for ‘the hoax’ every sunday afternoon in a local scout hut,one week he had the ‘sid’ look, next time i saw him he was on telly with a bloodey fringe,always thought the hoax were much better than the smiths anyway,he does a radio show every sunday on xfm or revolution(cant remember which one),i keep txting him requests for him to play the hoax which seems to annoy him and he refuses to play anything by them.
right…..more tales of rubber gloves and stuff please!!
gerard
June 5, 2008 at 10:42 am@ Jah Pork Pie -> No, I’m not that guy, I’m someone else 🙂
Penguin • Post Author •
June 5, 2008 at 11:05 amSo Stewey, you got any more photos to send me? You know, the under the counter ones? Oh err… 😉
Phl
June 5, 2008 at 11:44 amStu> your post reminds me of the Marks and Sparks ad..
“These are’nt just any Leeks.” “These are S&M Leeks”.
Stewart
June 5, 2008 at 12:21 pmPenguin – I DO have photos, but they’re strictly for my ‘private’ collection. Sorry. *winks*
Phil – LOL! Maybe we should suggest it to their ad people? I could reprise my role…
I’m just glad I woke up! ‘cos we were very drunk by then! I remember waking, finding the bedroom completely on fire and filled with smoke, and shouting panic-stricken at the girl: “Jesus Christ! Your flat’s on fire!!!!” And she sort of lazily opened one eyelid and calmly replied: “Well put it out then…” :O What’s even funnier (in retrospect) is that I then actually took the duvet and sort of dabbed half-heartedly at this raging inferno surrounding us in a doomed-from-the-start bid to put out the flames… Before thinking ‘What the fuck am I doing????’ and trying to get the hell out of there. Ever the gentleman, I at least made sure she was awake before I made a run for it…!
(Actually, I owe her my life, cos while I was quickly suffocating in her front room and wondering what my girlfriend was going to say when she found out how I’d died, she managed to get the front door open and called to me and I blundered to safety. Both stark naked on the balcony at 4 in the bloody morning!
The firemen must have had a good laugh when they found all our melted toys on the floor… and at least one of us hadn’t left the other tied up and hanging from the ceiling still when we went to bed… now that WOULD have been deadly!
Ian S
June 5, 2008 at 12:52 pmThe Antz did come across as cooler and more sophisticated than most other bands at the time, up to and including the White Sox album.
Maybe Adam Ant was the first male punk singer who deliberately set out to appeal to a female audience as much as a male one, if not more so. The early Antz had a bit in common with the Goth scene that began to develop later, which was also a strongly female-driven ‘alternative’. A playful or perverse sense of darkness rather than the apocalyptic landscapes on the cover of ‘Feeding of the 5000’ or the first Killing Joke album.
Jah Pork Pie
June 5, 2008 at 1:46 pm@Nic-> I realise that Adam’s personae weren’t made of permanent stuff and were there for a purpose, but the Dirk era persona was brave and provocative – it did require a high level of commitment in terms of image and having to ‘understand’ the band’s art, from fans. It carried a lot of risk from punk-bashers (and maybe further risks to some from getting hooked up in the S&M community). It was brave for those reasons from the fans’ perspective. It was brave from Adam’s perspective because it wasn’t going to be popular.
Contrastingly, everyone and his/her kid brother/sister could paint a white stripe across their face, put a plait in the front of their hair and learn to do the “Ant dance” with little or no effort or risk. They didn’t have to learn anything important or difficult about art or politics, and they didn’t have to explain to their mum what all the whips and chains were about. In fact, mum was probably “doing the Dandy Highwayman” round the kitchen too! Fun for all the family.
Hieronymous Bosch’s paintings of visions of hell aren’t all that popular, and (whoever it’s by) the painting of happy anthropomorphised dogs playing pool is very popular. Unpleasant and dark subject matter is never gong to appeal to the mass audience. But it’s got a whole lot more artistic merit because of the complexity of the thoughts it demands and provokes in anyone who wishes to understand it.
@Ian-> I think that punk was intentionally very sexless up until the Ants period. I’m sure I remember a book that Wank Stain had which had a Rotten quote: “Sex doesn’t interest me. It’s just spunk running down some bird’s leg”. Maybe the fact that speed (and lots of it) was the drug of choice of early punk had something to do with that.
The Ants changed that… I think that Adam was overtly very sexual, but I think at the time that sexuality was very ambiguous – as, similarly, it was among the Ants fans. A lot of Ants fans seemed to align themselves as bisexual. Others aligned themselves as asexual (in the sense they didn’t want genital-based sexual contact) but were heavily into the S&M stuff. When you say “Adam Ant was the first male punk singer who deliberately set out to appeal to a female audience as much as a male one, if not more so”, you’re exactly right. And he was appealing to them in exactly the same way: with an overt display of sexuality. I’m not saying that he was courting the gay community in particular, just that he was telling people that it was all right to think and talk about, and to have, sex glorious sex.
Stewart
June 5, 2008 at 2:13 pmPork – interesting post, but I don’t think you’re right about punk being sexless. As an example, you only have to think of all-woman band The Slits and the topless photo cover of their first album Cut. Both the name of the band and the cover were intentionally provocative, particularly for 1979, and whilst they were using sex as confrontation/shock, they were still pretty damn sexual!
And, for that matter, the Siouxsie ‘breasts’ T-shirt so popular at the time
And, from a personal viewpoint, speed made me want to shag all night, and let me, too!!!! It was smack that took away that drive…
On the other hand, ATV’s Love did Lie Limp, so maybe you’re right after all (*winks*)
Jah Pork Pie
June 5, 2008 at 3:29 pmThe Slits were very much feminists in the 1970s sense (not in the present-day Camille Paglia mould). I think the Amazon-like cover of “Cut” was intended solely to portray women as being strong and independent. It was intended NOT to be sexually attractive to the average 1970s Joe who wanted his bit of page 3: sweet, passive and available – it was a slightly threatening and most deliberate reaction against that (think back – sexual politics were quite different then). I don’t think they had in mind the slightly pervier amongst us though 🙂
As for the Siouxsie tit-shirt, much the same thing but probably more just shock-horror. Remember, somebody got arrested and convicted for Obscenity for wearing a Wayne County “If you don’t wanna fuck me baby, fuck off” T-shirt down the King’s Road. There’s also the idea of a bit of playful subversion by using breasts – which all women have and are used for breast-feeding – in order to highlight male society’s attitudes towards the female body. It’s possible to go into all sorts of feminist analysis about reclaiming women’s bodies for themselves, but this probably isn’t the forum for it!
Nudity itself isn’t sexual – it’s the bits you DON’T see that are the come-on, I think. The S&M scene (as beloved by the Ants fans) wasn’t about plain vanilla nudity and the in-out mechanics of shagging, it was about being shown just a tempting glance of something you wanted, then denied it until you’d suffered and waited long enough, and maybe, just maybe, not even getting it then. That’s the sexual bit of it.
As for speed, I couldn’t stop talking long enough to get the love thang going. Mind you, the combination of speed and a few spliffs of nice strong grass used to work a treat!