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Adam and the Ants “Prince Charming”

sfilzen — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 19:17:11 +0000

Adam and the Ants “Prince Charming” 1981. Today, November 3rd, is Adam Ant’s birthday (b. Stuart Leslie Goddard, 1954) and at 62 he is still going full-pirate. Prince Charming, his third album and the last one to include “The Ants” in the title, was a major hit, peaking at #2 on the album charts in the UK, with two #1 singles: “Stand and Deliver” and “Prince Charming” (the latter fostered controversy later when it was decided in an out-of-court settlement that the single was musically identical to the 1965 song “War Canoe” by Rolf Harris, who then received a large sum of royalties from Ant). A third single, “Ant Rap,” made it to #3 in the UK.

Prince Charming is a mostly enjoyable new wave pop album, especially the hits (though “Ant Rap” is beyond silly). However there are a couple of real stinkers, including “Five Guns West” which is simply ridiculous, sounding like it belongs on the soundtrack to a spoof spaghetti-western soundtrack. “Mile High Club” is tiresome – its introductory chords sound promising, like a new wave version of “8 Miles High,” but then goes on for another 2:40 of monotony. “Mowhok” similarly drags, with the added, and somewhat offensively, inclusion of Native Americanish traditional beats and chants. The album concludes with a hidden track, “The Lost Hawaiians,” a very brief instrumental that is a remake of “Los Rancheros” from Kings of the Wild Frontier, the Ants’ second album, though to my ears it sounds a lot more like “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” on ukulele (that song originally recorded in 1939 by Solomon Linda, a South African Zulu musician, and it was made popular by the Tokens in 1961 when it became a #1 hit in the US).

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Adam Ant “Strip”

sfilzen — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 19:11:42 +0000

Adam Ant “Strip” b/w “Yours, Yours, Yours” 1984. As the summer days begin to wane and soon there will be “times like this the great heaven knows that we wish we had not so many clothes,” I decided to pull Adam Ant’s cheeky hit single from his ‘83 album Strip that reached #41 in the UK and #42 in the US. (And I learned, a bit to my chagrin, that Phil Collins both produced and played drums on the track.) Today’s date, August 31st, also happens to be when I saw Adam Ant perform at Turner Hall in Milwaukee in 2013. Or perhaps it was in October 2012. I can’t remember. Anyway, he went full-pirate for the performance.

We had a ball at the show, but I am not sure that Adam Ant was in the best shape. I found a (rather poor) video of the 2012 performance of “Strip” from Turner Hall and the song is, well, not that good. Thankfully his stripping is limited to his pirate jacket, though he does tease at his belt a few times. Here is “Strip” from the 2013 show, which is a bit better: his voice is stronger, he does his own speaking part in the middle of the song and his jacket removal is a bit less forced.

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The Human League “Fascination!”

sfilzen — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 14:22:51 +0000

The Human League “Fascination!” 1983. EP. Today, March 22nd, is the birthday of singer Susanne Sulley (b. 1963). Sulley as well as bandmates Philip Oakey, Joanne Catherall and Jo Callis all are featured vocalists on the hit track which reached #2 in the UK and #8 in the US. The EP has two versions of “(Keep Feeling) Fascination,” an extended mix and an improvisation. The song is relentlessly catchy and I suspect I’ll have it as my ear worm for the entire day. The video is worth watching if you want to see what overdone 80′s makeup looked like (for both men and women).

“Mirror Man” is also on the EP. The Human League released it as a single in ‘82 in the UK and in ‘83 in the US. “Mirror Man” is unique to the Human League sound as it featured the first non-synthetic instruments in the band’s output up until that point. According to Allmusic, lyricist Oakey has stated that the target of the song’s lyrics was Adam Ant “whose quite public transformation from bonage-trousered punk to doomy post-punker to flamboyantly colorful new pop pirate seemed crassly desperate to some. In this context, the otherwise inscrutable chorus clearly puns off of the most tabloid-like of British newspapers, The Daily Mirror, as well as the American gossip magazine People, references that wouldn’t make sense if this were the more conventional love song some have mistaken it to be.”

You know I’ll change
If change is what you require
Your every wish
Your every dream, hope, desire

Here comes the mirror man
Says he’s a people fan
Here comes the mirror man

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