You always want to be able to look back at your teen years and be able to reminisce about how cool you were (especially when you have reached 40!!). Now, one of these rights of passage is the first records you bought with your own money \u2013 not the dreadful disc that your Aunt had bought you for Christmas. My first 45, Golden Brown<\/i> by The Stranglers, fits the bill. However much I would like to claim that my first LP was The Clash, Buzzcocks or U2 (and thankfully it was not Duran Duran or Phil Collins), in reality, it was Adam & The Ants\u2019 Prince Charming<\/i>.<\/p>\n
It was a nervous moment when I recently replaced the long-gone vinyl copy with a CD, but thankfully it was a pleasant surprise when played. There is a great argument that the early \u201880s was the last golden age of pop music before the soulless manufactured acts from Stock Aitken & Waterman and X Factor, and Adam & The Ants proves the point. Can you imagine the pitch in the EMI offices \u2013 \u201cI\u2019ve found this group who dress like a cross between 18th<\/sup> century dandies, highwaymen, and pirates, and sings about pantomime characters, sex, and red Indians; right, let\u2019s offer them a big record deal!\u201d But luckily, that is what happened and Prince Charming<\/i> finds the group at the height of their success.<\/p>\n The first thing to note is this album, compared to most pop albums, is not hit singles surrounded by filler; every tune has its merits. However, let\u2019s start with the songs that everybody knows: the title track is a monster with the opening \u201cEhaw Ahaw\u201d and the drumming kicking in (which was always a feature of the Ants\u2019 work), and I defy anybody not to be doing the dance, crossing your arms above your head. Alongside this is \u201cStand And Deliver,\u201d where Adam establishes his highwayman character. <\/p>\n The final single from the disc, while flawed, shows the group\u2019s desire to try something new: \u201cAnt Rap.\u201d Adam\u2019s MC skills certainly aren\u2019t going to challenge Chuck D, but I couldn\u2019t help but join in with the chorus: \u201cI Got Marco, Merrick, Terry Lee, Gary Tibbs and yours truly in the naughty North and in the sexy South \/ We\u2019re all singing I have the mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, \u201cScorpios\u201d or \u201cPicasso Vista El Planta De Los Simios\u201d both could easily have been substituted in to replace any of the three singles with the potential to be just as successful.<\/p>\n Adam manages to slip \u201cMile High Club\u201d and \u201cS.E.X.\u201d through, both of which are clear in their subject matter and again shows the license that \u201880s pop stars were allowed.<\/p>\n The other track that stands out is \u201cFive Guns West,\u201d which is all about the famous female pirates Mary Read & Ann Bonny and dangerous women which contains the line \u201cI\u2019m a big tough man with a big tough plan \/ Gonna take a whirl with a big tough gal.\u201d<\/p>\n While the extra tracks, which are all demos for the album, don\u2019t particularly added anything to the record, they do prove in this age of the plastic popstar controlled by the Simon Cowell\u2019s of this world, that Adam & the Ants was a genuine band who could play their instruments and write their own songs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":30505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8111],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-42170","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-adam-and-the-ants","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42170"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}