Adam Ant, then just plain old Stuart Goddard was perhaps one of the first people in the UK over which the Sex Pistols cast their spell. Many musical luminaries of the past 50 years who witnessed the Pistols at one of their early gigs (Screen On The Green, Notre Dam Hall, Lesser Free Trade Hall....) have stated that the experience was transformative, a catalyst that compelled young men and women to by a cheap instrument and form a rock 'n' roll band... with no thought of musical ineptitude at all. As the bass playing member of Bazooka Joe, young Stuart, was witness to the first Pistols gig at St Martins Shool of Art on 6th November 1975. Before long Stuart became Adam and he started to carve a presence on the London punk scene. In this he had the benefit of being well connected with the movers and shakers of the nascent scene, Jordan, punk face extrordinaire and future manager of Adam & The Ants. As was the case with Siouxsie & The Banshees it took The Ants an inordinate length of time to get the backing of a record company for studio releases. That is not to say that the Ants just fell back on their electric live performances. Long before the final release of their debut album, the band recorded a wealth of demo material. It is a loss to the genre that these demos, although in wide circulation for many years, never received a proper studio treatment since they represented some of the bands finest material. Some of it did surface in the form of B-sides re-recorded for the Ant/Pironi version of the band.
The formative months and years of the Ants were turbulant with frequent personnel changes before the line up stabilised with Adam Ant on vocals, Matthew Ashman on guitar, Andy Warren on bass and Dave Barbe on drums. This quartet has built up a reputation based on dramatic live performances. These shows drew in a fiercely loyal hardcore following. Unfortunately, the band's gigs also attracted gans of skinheads intent on smashing up gigs and smashing heads. In all probability is was Adam's flirtations with the imagery of Fascism and Nazism that attracted the skins as moths to a flame.
It was the Ant/Ashman/Warren/Barbe line up that finally laid down tracks in the studio that would become their debut 'Dirk Wears White Sox', released in 1979.
So why is it that I hold this album in such high regard. Well, personally, I heard it first at around the same time that I bought 'King's of the Wild Frontier' (a massive album that transformed Adam from the S&M whipping boy (pun intended) of the music press to fully fledged rock/pop star) and to be honest even at the age of 11/12, 'Dirk' was superior (if less polished). Looking back on it later in the context of other contemporary punk/new wave albums, what stands out is that it is so different. No punk thrash this, rather the album moves between slow numbers like 'Cleopatra' and 'Tabletalk' through to dark matter, the likes of 'Never Trust A Man (With Egg On His Face), via the whimsical 'Car Trouble' and abstract 'The Day I Met God'. The music is so different with Matthew Ashman's jagged guitar and the band's harmonies making 'Dirk' truely stand out from all other '77 ilk bands.
I have located two contemporary reviews of the album, one grudgingly favourable, the other scathing. Of Paul Morley's New Musical Express review, according to Wikipedia, Adam Ant was still seething about it in 2010, thirty-one years later!
Aside from his 1979 slating of the album Adam also railed against the fact that Morley " "is now being commissioned by Sony to write my liner notes ... Go and write for Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Or go on TV and talk shit for three hours. That represents the old school. He's fucked. He's got no credibility. Fuck him."
New Musical Express (8th December 1979)
THROBBING GRISTLE
20 Jazz Funk Greats
(Industrial)
ADAM AND THE ANTS
Dirk Wears White Socks
(Do It)
ADAM And The Ants and Throbbing Gristle are shadowy extremes, lurking in dark corners, lethargically scratching through their overscrubbed private parts, grinning sweetly at anyone who glances their way. Come here little girl! It's a dreary induIgence.
The Ants are at the extreme of the Banshees-Joy Division line, Gristle of the Cabaret Voltaire-Normal, but neither really 'belong' or burst with the same naivety and spontanety, the compelling intimacy. Adam and the Gristle academics are very sharp, but far too tame. They lack the intuition and idiosyncrasy that makes for great art, resounding rock 'n' roll. They are playful analysts, but there is no passion in their work, no depth; actually, no shock, no risk and nothing really but a dubious battle with their own cunning.
TG have compiled a follow-up to their previous, equally glossy Christmas present,.'D.O.A. . .' This 'new bag of scraps has lyrics neatly printed on the back sleeve, surrounding a photograph of a reclining Range Rover. Words to 'Still Walking', 'Convincing People', 'Hot On The Heels Of Love', 'Persu'asion', 'What A Day' and 'Six Six Sixties' are inscrutable and spare, lists rather than images, intoned with preoccupied mock-litany - on the brink of coy. Words that indifferently trace neutral desires.
The atmosphere of 'Jazz Funk Greats' is deliberately listless and loveless. Their pieces are winsome and sombre, electronic models place in rock or art or my lacking the humour and arrogance of Fripp-Eno's similar sounding treatments, the morose hilarity of The Human League, or even the persuasive pop detail of Gary Numan (in some ways Gristle's 'Greats' is the supercilious opposite to Numan's seductive blend of bewildered values and frozen noise).
It's an unstimulating, inconclusive sound, full of grubby textures and scattered effects, and will satisfy only the most self-conscious. Maybe that is some sort of success. But there is nothing to suggest that TG are cryptic critics or symbolic satirists, nothing that confirms their mystique. You can read much into the minimalist lines and landscapes to observe that TG have their eyes directed straight at this or that or a hell, but mostly I think they're just licking the lolly of conscious. triviality, nonchalantly laying traps for the gullible.
One day TG will deliver the punch line and we'll all have a good giggle. Until then…
Adam of the Ants is a is creature of style. This impertinent outsider takes his sneer/philosophy a lot more ,seriously than the Throb four. His mock-heroic escape into an improbable and meticulously immoral Ant-mythology is to some extent justified. Previous critics' casual dismissal of Adam, based on his superficial sensationalism of the Ants' choked erotica and falsely assumed fascists fascination, ignored the versatility of Adam's art.
His work merits dismissal because it fails to live up to his ambition, but his cleverness, his expert usage of words, his ability to hold distorted mirrors up to nagging conventions, deserves more serious attention than has so far gone his way. Abrupt dismissal adds weighty credence to his own considered defence of his work, which is gradually bringing him misguided respect and a growing following. The implication of this following (somewhere near Crass territory) is potentially more damaging than his sly, slick inventiveness could ever be.
Adam imagines himself to be a flawless marriage of Lenny Bruce, Lou Reed and Jean Genet; ridiculing and hopefully ridding through exaggeration and absurd examination all manner of dark secrets and burdensome taboos. How he does this will undoubtedly offend Daily Express readers, ELO listeners and those who find baggy leather trousers and eye make-up on males strange.
On the other hand, faced with Adam's diligently . organised decadence, the rest of us can feel little threat in Adam's vividly structured attacks on and denials of conventional codes and rituals. Adam may toss off expertly, may have useful targets, but his work has the deadened air of contrivance rather than the sensual and scouring (re)defining and defiling of his mentors. He uses old techniques without any new urgency.
Monroe, Cleopatra, God, John F Kennedy, Buddy Holly, the Pope, all float helplessly at the foreground of his fantasies; spunk, brains on Jackie Onassis' knee, piss are greedily mixed away in the background. Love is placed inside inverted commas, a 'digital tenderness'. Religion one hell of a let down, people are not to be trusted. Unless, of course, they share his posturing. Somewhere, sometime, Adam sees a saviour; it's probably himself but that's nothing to be condemned.
But Adam is limited by his own self-indulgence, and his songs, though certainly ingenious, are ultimately pale and heartless. His Kennedy flashback 'Catholic Day' is more kitsch than horror. His vision of God as a big boy with a big cock and streaks in his hair is mildly amusing but reveals more Adam's insecurity and careful unpleasantness than any ' infallibility in religion or disturbing immorality. Though a potent actor, Adam is just ineffective as critic, philosopher, satirist or pioneer; no amount of exhibitionism or' imagination can make up fo rthat.
And the music? Imagine the Banshees without the exquisite insistence and hostility, or Joy Division if they'd plummeted downwards after 'Ideal For Living' instead of shooting skywards.
Adam is ambitiously curious, but,that's not enough. You can admire the skill of it all, but he creates no tension, no disorder; he does not innovate, so he , continually fails to incite or inspire.
No amount of enigmatic isolation, dour defensiveness or articulate explanation can cover up the fact that these records just aren't very good. In this case 'good' is easily defined: the distinction between tedium and passion.
Of course, Gristle and Adam are as much comic as anything else, but their work, with its oblique wise-cracking, semi-surreal absurdity and tactical masquerading, takes pains to point out that life is tragic, trivial, tentative arid doesn't succeed. It consistently avoids the complexity and fumbling of life; it's always over-confident, and it seems cowardly. It can be easily flicked away, like a.scab, or swept away like the dust it is - not because of any 'horror' or nastiness, but because it is ' , - patronising, deceitful, and simply too conservative for a'place in rock or art or my heart.
Pete Scott was a little less dismissive in the pages of Record Mirror.
But Adam is limited by his own self-indulgence, and his songs, though certainly ingenious, are ultimately pale and heartless. His Kennedy flashback 'Catholic Day' is more kitsch than horror. His vision of God as a big boy with a big cock and streaks in his hair is mildly amusing but reveals more Adam's insecurity and careful unpleasantness than any ' infallibility in religion or disturbing immorality. Though a potent actor, Adam is just ineffective as critic, philosopher, satirist or pioneer; no amount of exhibitionism or' imagination can make up fo rthat.
And the music? Imagine the Banshees without the exquisite insistence and hostility, or Joy Division if they'd plummeted downwards after 'Ideal For Living' instead of shooting skywards.
Adam is ambitiously curious, but,that's not enough. You can admire the skill of it all, but he creates no tension, no disorder; he does not innovate, so he , continually fails to incite or inspire.
No amount of enigmatic isolation, dour defensiveness or articulate explanation can cover up the fact that these records just aren't very good. In this case 'good' is easily defined: the distinction between tedium and passion.
Of course, Gristle and Adam are as much comic as anything else, but their work, with its oblique wise-cracking, semi-surreal absurdity and tactical masquerading, takes pains to point out that life is tragic, trivial, tentative arid doesn't succeed. It consistently avoids the complexity and fumbling of life; it's always over-confident, and it seems cowardly. It can be easily flicked away, like a.scab, or swept away like the dust it is - not because of any 'horror' or nastiness, but because it is ' , - patronising, deceitful, and simply too conservative for a'place in rock or art or my heart.
Paul Morley
Pete Scott was a little less dismissive in the pages of Record Mirror.
Record Mirror (13th October 1979)
'Dirk Wears White Sox' was to see various rereleases, notably in late 1981 when Adam was at the zenith of his swashbuckling, Royal Variety friendly pop stardom. I haven't come across a re-review but I bet it would read rather differently than Mr Morley's!
New Musical Express (28th November 1981)
