In Praise of.....Kings of the Wild Frontier by Adam & the Ants

I was reading the Adam interview in Ask the other day and felt sad thinking about how his life has turned out now.

One of many, many, many great moments. Hopefully he'll find some better state or peace soon.

it is just so much damn FUN!

this is probably one of my most heavily played pieces of vinyl. until i switched to mix CDs, i put assorted songs from it on many a mix tape of the years - mostly the tracks you have noted as standout. i just picked it up on CD for convenience when i was in SF a few weeks ago - it was in the bargain bin, right by the checkout at Amoeba - clever folks. (i just did a mix for a mix-swap-club, and the required theme was 'best song ever' - and kings of the wild frontier' was track 2.)

I was a schoolkid in London when "KOTWF" came out, and I remember it really being a record that united the different camps of musical tastes among my schoolmates -- punk fans liked it, new wave fans, pop/Top 40 followers, even hard rockers.

Also one of the only bands who would set people off into air drumming when they came on the radio (the other being Bow Wow Wow, from whom The Ants lifted the Burundi/tribal sound, but that's another story).

This is a bit arse-up, innit? M. McLaren managed the Ants and introduced them to the Burundi drum sound, but then stole the backing band and added a singer to create Bow Wow Wow. This forced Adam to find new Ants - which was just as well, because without Marco Pirroni, Kings of the Wild Frontier wouldn't be nearly as great.

I was 8 when I got it from Columbia House and I appeciate it a lot more now than I did then. Instead of the excellent "Making History," my copy includes "Physical (You're So)" (which I think is a little over-rated) and "Press Darlings" (which is great fun - if a little out-of-place), and despite this messing about by the American record company, it's still a solid album.

And if evil be the food of genius
there aren't many demons around...

I'd never really known the circumstance, just that what I'd heard of Bow Wow Wow sounded like that before the Ants did -- I was pretty young at the time. It didn't diminish my liking for the Ants. And, of course, I had no clue what Burundi drumming was back then, either. In the spirit of full honesty it took Peter Gabriel and Joni Mitchell's appropriations of that kind of drumming to lead me to figure out what it was.

Hey now, so ungenerous! ;-)

Haha Tom is so OTM right now. That's my absolute favorite moment in any Adam Ant video. It's so, so literal.

nothing sounds better
when you're high on mountain dew
and feeling rowdy

and cruising in joe's
shit-orange honda civic
and feeling sixteen

By comparison I think Dirk Wears White Sox has aged far more (dis)gracefully.

He christened his first-born Adam Youth and had a huge tattoo of the original Ants logo done - just prior to The Ants completely losing all punk credibility and becoming a teeny-pop sensation - ooops!

I remember reading an interview with Marco just after KOTWF came out in which he said that in a few weeks over the course of the promotional tour, he watched their audience change from being a bunch of snotty punkers to hordes of screaming teenage pop kids.

talking of fashion, i also think the time has been right for a while for a (insert dance genre here) remix of Deutsche Girls.

TPL also praises the album: http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/adam-and-ants-kings-of-wild-frontier.html

was just listening to this album last week - the drums on this, as well as Adam & the Ants, in general, are so good, and maybe the most interesting of the pop new wave 80s bands?

Feeling aged and bleakly unmoveable on reading this thread yesterday, today I thought fuck it, let's see what happens. 2:16 in and my heart is dancing awkwardly. it makes me proud

And as if Dog Eat Dog wasn't good enough, the intro to Ant Music is a shot in the arm. Drumming on the table, risking the ire of the rest of the household. Huzzah.

TPL write up is great, thank you Marcello! Also curse you, because this album and your talk of revolution have just radically transformed my own WIP, which is 4 months in, and created a fuckload of extra work, I hope it's worth it u bastids.

Might as well revive this due to the combination of the remaster:

https://www.discogs.com/Adam-And-The-Ants-Kings-Of-The-Wild-Frontier/release/8567303

...and the American tour-the-album thing, following on from the UK version:

http://exclaim.ca/music/article/adam_ant_announces_kings_of_the_wild_frontier_tour

Which based on this setlist from the UK version looks pretty killer all around:

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/adam-ant/2016/o2-academy-brixton-london-england-7bfe1264.html

the tour poster should come with a disclaimer stating that the youthful and shirtless Ant in the picture will not be in attendance

last time i saw adam he was wearing a shirt with a picture of young shirtless him on it.. was some interesting recursion

my wife and I saw him in Austin a few years ago. He played a lot of the hits, which was fun, though there were plenty of weird moments as well. The band was trying a bit too hard to be really heavy. The crowd at the show was made up of a lot of 40-somethings who were clearly taking it as their first opportunity in at least a decade to really cut loose, which was a disturbing thing to witness.

last time i saw adam he was wearing a shirt with a picture of young shirtless him on it.. was some interesting recursion

"Hey, if this is what you're expecting, here ya go."

a lot of 40-somethings who were clearly taking it as their first opportunity in at least a decade to really cut loose, which was a disturbing thing to witness.

uhhh take your ageism to another thread, pal

I am a 40-something as well, but I didn't use the Adam Ant concert as an opportunity to act like a drunk asshole

xxp this is the best of his recent looks imo

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/0c/7b/ba/0c7bbaf62a458a0a95edd90631037637.jpg

so you're using ilx to do so, just like the rest of us! congrats!

eh, I'd take obnoxious web commentary any day over IRL obnoxious people invading my personal space, but ymmv

I picked up the lp on its reissue about 5 years ago and really got back into it. Had had it when it was first around and thought it did stand up pretty well. Not gone as poppy as he did by the next lp so it does stand a s a decent post punk lp.
So it wasn't as yet all image. I think the next lp was ok and not heard much after that.

Were Bazooka Joe a rockabilly revival band before the Sex Pistols turned up as their support and Adam jumped ship?

They only did one album after Kings ... Prince Charming, which I will rep for, though it isn't genre consistent. Also, anyone who hasn't done so should track down the early demos, which are so good.

Is there any particular reason why 'Making History' was replaced by 'Press Darlings' on the American edition?

Anyway, that I love this record goes without saying. A post-punk and a pop record in one - everyone talks about the drumming, which of course is great, but I particularly love Kevin Mooney's bass playing on this record and think it's an incredible shame that this was the only album he did with the Ants. Part of the reason I don't like the follow-up (Prince Charming) anywhere near as much is that the playing and production is straighter and less quirky. Of course, Prince Charming is also a mixed bag of stuff - the best stuff on there is amazing, the awful stuff is horrid.

what is horrid about Prince Charming?

'Picasso Visita El Planeta De Los Simios', 'Prince Charming' and 'Stand and Deliver' are all-time for me, and even though I really should have overplayed the latter two by now, they still feel as fresh as ever to me. 'Scorpios' and 'Ant Rap' aren't too far behind, I love both of those.

On the other hand, 'Five Guns West', 'That Voodoo!', 'Mile High Club' and 'Mowhok/S.E.X.' have always felt like filler to me.