2. Adam and the Ants - Kings of the Wild Frontier
I first got into pop music properly, as in contemporary chart music, in the Spring of 1981, thanks to Robert Hutchinson who brought his copy of Adam and the Ants' Kings of the Wild Frontier to our primary school trip to Somerset. On the last night in the hotel, we had an 'Entertainment Evening'. Each room had to perform something. I was in a room with Robert, Gerard Lynch and some other 'cool' people. I'd decided that they were cool, because they wore Harringtons and Crombies and the girls liked them. So I abandoned my old friends for a while, friends I'd shared a room with on previous trips, friends who actually returned to be life-long best friends (John and Darren), in order to attempt to be cool for a little while. We mimed to Adam and the Ants in front of everyone. I thought we were cooler than John and Darren who mimed to the Beatles (how wrong I was) and by then I had ceased liking the Beatles, because they were OLD and for OLD PEOPLE. I didn't feel so cool being directed by Robert to mime along on the piano, because we had guitars and drums covered by the other room mates and there's no fucking piano on Kings of the Wild Frontier. And I didn't feel cool with a stripe of white toothpaste crossing over my nose from cheek to cheek, making my eyes burn from the minty fumes.
When I got home, I became a BIG fan of Adam of the Ants. My walls were plastered with posters, usually from 'Look-In'. So many in fact, that my Dad would scowl at them, clocking Adam Ant's make-up and saying, 'What a poofter!' He'd then say to me, 'You aren't turning poofter as well are you?' Despite the assertion from some in society, not all men have some degree of homosexuality in their constitution - an assertion that serves a particular agenda I find - but clearly I admired the way Adam Ant looked and I wanted to look like him. I'd tie small bows in my fringe like he did. After the video came out for Stand and Deliver (filmed in Trent Park, very local to our house in Southgate) I even bought a Dick Turpin hat and a toy pistol in the same 18th century style. I definitely looked like a Dick Turpin. Well, maybe not the Turpin bit.
Coincidentally, and following on from the last post for song #1, Adam Ant (under his real name of Stuart Goddard) lived in St John's Wood at the same time as my parents and went to the same primary school, Barrow Hill, as my Uncle Jim, just opposite the flat where he and my mum lived at the time. And he walked Paul McCartney's dog, apparently. I read about that in Look-In.
The following Christmas, I think it was, I asked for his new album, Prince Charming. After unwrapping it, I let my Dad look at it. As he read the track-listing, I was mortified to hear him respond to the fact that one song is called S.E.X. Oh Jesus! I could never handle sex coming up in any respect in front of my parents. I think that was the beginning of the end of my boy-crush (if you insist on poofterising it, like my Dad did). But the whole thing was a turning point, because now I was watching Top of the Pops with a vested interest. And the best songs on there were no longer the novelty ones. I had become a pop music fan.
When I got home, I became a BIG fan of Adam of the Ants. My walls were plastered with posters, usually from 'Look-In'. So many in fact, that my Dad would scowl at them, clocking Adam Ant's make-up and saying, 'What a poofter!' He'd then say to me, 'You aren't turning poofter as well are you?' Despite the assertion from some in society, not all men have some degree of homosexuality in their constitution - an assertion that serves a particular agenda I find - but clearly I admired the way Adam Ant looked and I wanted to look like him. I'd tie small bows in my fringe like he did. After the video came out for Stand and Deliver (filmed in Trent Park, very local to our house in Southgate) I even bought a Dick Turpin hat and a toy pistol in the same 18th century style. I definitely looked like a Dick Turpin. Well, maybe not the Turpin bit.
Coincidentally, and following on from the last post for song #1, Adam Ant (under his real name of Stuart Goddard) lived in St John's Wood at the same time as my parents and went to the same primary school, Barrow Hill, as my Uncle Jim, just opposite the flat where he and my mum lived at the time. And he walked Paul McCartney's dog, apparently. I read about that in Look-In.
The following Christmas, I think it was, I asked for his new album, Prince Charming. After unwrapping it, I let my Dad look at it. As he read the track-listing, I was mortified to hear him respond to the fact that one song is called S.E.X. Oh Jesus! I could never handle sex coming up in any respect in front of my parents. I think that was the beginning of the end of my boy-crush (if you insist on poofterising it, like my Dad did). But the whole thing was a turning point, because now I was watching Top of the Pops with a vested interest. And the best songs on there were no longer the novelty ones. I had become a pop music fan.
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