Kings of the wild frontier

The first gig I went to was Adam and the Ants at the Barn in Penzance. Dog eat dog had entered the charts but the crest of their wave was yet to come, and the crowd was not the teenies that it would later be, but an older, more savvy bunch – even rural Cornwall had plenty of people who knew what good music was. Saying that makes me think of Karen B, who, when I was 15 was the woman I desired most in this world (I doubt I have ever yearned more for one). She was a huge Bowie fan, to the extent of copying his makeup when she went out to Peggotty’s in St Ives. She had an asymmetric hairstyle. She was rich (her father owned a large hotel in St Ives – well, it seems large when I recall it but I suspect it was nothing more than a glorified guesthouse). She seemed mature far beyond her years (I am reasonably sure she was no more than a year older than me, if that). She was comfortable going to nightclubs, hanging out with far older people, partying. At the time I couldn’t figure out why someone as cool as Karen would want to spend time with me. Now of course I know that she liked me (but not much, because I do not remember more than one weekend of her acquaintance; I remember she had a boyfriend who she said was a jealous type).

Adam and the Ants showed me what pop could be. I think that they put the last nail in the coffin that I buried my love of grebo rock in. There was just no way even AC/DC could match them. The sheer sexiness of Adam overwhelmed a shy boy like me. Here was a cool guy, a guy who had sex with women I could never dream of meeting (well, any women at all would be a start), singing about how cool he was, how liberating he found sex. And he loved to dress up and show off, rebelling against the dreariness of conventional England. Who could not love a guy who believed he was a Red Indian pirate? He strode around in clothes I would never be able to wear (although I did, despite a well-founded fear of a good kicking, wear my mother’s blouses and makeup that the ladies in the local pharmacy must have thought I was buying for my sisters). I don’t mind admitting that had Adam ever phoned, I would have packed my swag and set sail for London, ready for a life as his cabin boy, whatever that involved.

He was all about everything transgressive: sex, drugs, piracy, rejecting the norm and sneering at dullsville. The music, which passed as pop then, is rather more sinister, sinuous, brooding and hard than the stuff teens are fed now. The image, the Indian stuff, all that was silly enough for it to be dismissed by your mum and dad, without their actually listening to it. But Adam was singing about kinky sex (and not with the slightly offputting schoolmarmly manner of a Britney, who orders us to believe she is “nasty”), violence, being naughty.

And some of the music has stood the test of time very well. The more jaunty, yo-ho-ho stuff is of its era, and you are left with a definite sense of “you had to be there” (but that’s true of so much New Wave and even punk – although you’ll rarely get anyone to admit that much of Wire’s output, for instance, is entirely unlistenable, or that Gang of Four is a good name to drop and a poor thing to have on the stereo). But the dark, tense Killer in the home, for instance, hits the spot, and the three singles that made them, Dog eat dog, Antmusic and Kings of the wild frontier, all kick the proverbial ass. The first is a statement of intent: a royal like it or lump it, a slab of sound that is the clarion call for a tribe that any self-respecting teen would love to belong to; the second is sheer pop thrill, a restatement of the punk ethos: “that music’s lost its taste, so try another flavour”; the third a spit away from sheer insanity, but believe me, I knew what he meant: I too felt that beneath the skin I was something much realler, a savage, untamed.

Like all great pop phenomena, from Elvis with his sneer, through the Beatles with their moptops, sharp suits and Scouse snideness, Roxy Music, with their cosmopolitan chic, Bowie, well, being Bowie, to the Sex Pistols, with their rough clothes, green teeth and spiky, unkempt hair, and Duran Duran, the kings of flash, Adam was about the image. Of course, like all of them, he and the Ants also had great music – ultimately the image was a facet of the creativity that drove him. I feel saddened when I hear today’s pop because the image is off the shelf and creativity is frowned on, or seems to be, since it is so little in evidence, and never any more do the twain meet. Even those popsters who are at least somewhat creative – the Dizzee Rascals or perhaps Outkasts of this world – are not people whose gang you’d want to be in. I cannot imagine storming the barricades with Miss Dynamite, but if Adam called ...

posted by Dr Zen @ 10:48 am