It’s the present day. It’s Adam Ant. Standing in front of an advertising poster featuring Liam Gallagher. Liam is draped in the Union Flag evoking the classic image of The Who used on the cover of The Kids Are Alright. Adam is mocking Liam’s signature Mancunian gait. Adam is also pulling what we, in our playground days, would call a “Joeyface”, which would normally be used to demonstrate the opinion that someone was retarded.
This picture sums up my life as I hurtle toward my forties. I loved Adam Ant as a kid from around the age of nine to eleven, he was the coolest bastard on the planet for me, him and Rocky. Then I “grew up” and Adam seemed naff. He looked like a little boy lost on Live Aid. The last thing I bought by him should have been amazing, on paper, the idea of Adam going through a spaceman phase seemed too good to be true, sadly the single ‘Apollo 9’ was duff and it was time to move on.
Fast forward ten years and Oasis’ ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ was exploding out of the Pepsi Chart Show one Saturday morning and the twenty-one year old me was hooked. The Stone Roses has been good, but who can really get behind lyrics about waterfalls and magical drummer girls? This was kick in the bollocks stuff. I was unemployed, drunk and only planning on getting drunker. Finally I could marry my love for music with my attitude to life. And then Oasis bloated up like a beached whale packed with sherbet and Pepsi in the tropical sun.
And now, here’s Adam, back again, dandy as ever, symbolising my childhood, mocking my clichéd and pompous twenties, warning me not to take life seriously – while simultaneously reminded me that, as he had once said, ‘Ridicule is nothing to be scared of.’
6 psychotic reactions:
Adam Ant - Goody Two Shoes. Holy crap, that just makes me feel sooo old...
I feel old all the time Sybsy.
Adam Addendum: Best of Adam Ant on Toxic Towers
Bloody Pirates http://toxicmonday.blogspot.com/2007/01/pirates.html
"Perhaps it’s surprising that I have never gone through a pirate phase, what with my obsession with Adam Ant when I was a nipper. Adam went through a pirate thing at the same time as his African and Native American phase. Shortly before the highwayman, voodoo, space explorer thing. He even toured on a giant stage pirate ship. Giving my childhood predilection for drifting off into fantasy characters it’s odd that the pirate never surfaced. There were no shortage of other piratey things... Possibly there is a deep-seated fear of pirates lurking in my sub-conscience? ... Or perhaps I may have been put off by the outlandish clothes and the ridiculous West Country accents... Whether pirates are evil, cool, or just plain fucking stupid seems to be as unanswerable as any of life’s questions... Maybe the last word should be left to Adam Ant, who should know a thing or two about ups and downs. Maybe he knows that he too is about to be thrust back up in life’s great cycle when he says: ‘People over 30. Anyone over 30 belongs to me. Bisexual, male, female, gay, whatever.’"
Confessions of a Bongo Stalker
http://toxicmonday.blogspot.com/2006/10/confessions-of-bongo-stalker.html
"I was introduced to [U2] in 1983 during a time when my dad ... used to announce the Irishness of his country folk every time one of them would pop up on the telly. I was used to a Paddies being suited older gentlemen with soft cultured demeanours like Eamon Andrews or Terry Wogan. So it was something of a surprise to discover that this short imbecilic pale-skinned troll with a footballer's mullet, leather kecks, and cap-sleeved t-shirt, waving a white sheet, stomping around like he had peanut butter on the soles of his shoes painfully yelping, 'sunday bloody sundaaeeey' was also from the Emerald Isle. Being ten as I was, and still into Adam Ant, I remember feeling a little nonplussed by his efforts, mentally filing him next to that other mono-monikered rainforest oddity, Sting."
If you eat enough acid nothing screams genius like songs about waterfalls and magical drummer girls... that said i might get the phrase Ridicule is nothing to be scared of, tattooed on my forearm.
He looks like he's doing a cocksucker sign rather than a Joey meets Manc gait… there again with Gallagher I struggle to see the difference.
Happy Birthday, Gulfboot!
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