Flexipop! magazine only existed for a couple of years, ending a run of 26 issues in 1983. Having been founded by a pair of Record Mirror refugees, Flexipop! featured music journalism adequate for a young-adult readership, but so did plenty of other rags, so to set itself apart from the pack, it featured in every issue a preposterous photo-comic story about a featured band, and a flexi-disc.

Lots of mags at the time used flexis to supplement their coverage, but with Flexipop! as the name implies, the disc was pretty much the reason you bought it, and they made it worth buying. Like later adopters of the practice Trouser Press and The Bob, Flexipop! had the prescience to include underground and up-and-coming artists who have gone on to achieve cult classic status. Cure, Bauhaus, The Jam, XTC… it’s a stunning list, check out the mag’s Discogs page and drool.
 

 
But we’re here today not to praise the magazine generally (we’ve done that…) but to focus on the flexi disc from the mag’s 4th issue, featuring Adam and the Ants, who were experiencing astonishing success in the wake of an unlikely image makeover, and who could have simply pumped up their Kings of the Wild Frontier album by providing Flexipop! with a deep cut and let that be that. Instead, they released in that magazine an exclusive recording of their crazy parody of the Village People’s 1978 single “Y.M.C.A.,” titled “A.N.T.S.”
 

It’s a pretty fine line, isn’t it?

Fans of Adam’s live performance will be familiar with ‘A.N.T.S.’, the multi coloured maverick’s anthem to his fans (or should that be f.a.n.s.?). The original Village People superhit ‘YMCA’ is one of Adam’s all time fave songs (see Fallout Favourites last ish) and this cover with amended lyrics reprinted below for your delectation, was once featured as an encore on Ant tours. This studio version, especially recorded for Flexipop, is the first time ‘A.N.T.S.’ has appeared on vinyl.

 

 
More after the jump…

 
It was 1981, disco was dead, and the Village People were left out to dry, having just suffered the embarrassment of starring in the hilariously terrible box-office bomb Can’t Stop the Music.

RCA had just picked up the “YMCA” and “In the Navy” hitmakers from Casablanca, seeking to give the group a last-ditch makeover for the new wave era.

According to the Village People’s “construction worker,” David Hodo, in a Popmatters interview:

They had a couple of people there passing around ideas. The first one was these leather outfits that were monochrome — someone in solid red, someone in solid yellow. They had fringe on them. They were awful. We nixed that one. Then they had these guys trying to convince us of this New Romantic look, which was Adam Ant and Spandau Ballet. That was the better of the two choices.

 

Village person David Hodo in 1978
 

Village person David Hodo in 1981

And so with the marketing angle determined, the Village People released the LP mega-turd, Renaissance, which noted music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine described as “simply an embarrassment that never should have seen the light of day.”

Hodo had turned in his signature hardhat for a doublet, lip gloss, blush, and (at least five) beauty marks.
 

 
Despite the deceptive packaging, Renaissance has nothing musically to do with the New Romantic movement. The music barely even qualifies as new wave. Most of the tracks are simply bad 80’s MOR rock and bargain basement Kool and the Gang-ish r&b. That is, with one notable exception, which Hodo himself provides vocals for: the improbable final track on the album, “Food Fight,” a fake-punk masterpiece easily as good as anything Plastic Bertrand or Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias ever laid down. 

“Food Fight” is an anomaly in the Village People’s oeuvre: a first and last attempt to cash in on the punk audience from a band clearly grasping at straws, willing to try absolutely anything to stay relevant.

Musically, one can hear the best elements of DEVO, as well as The Dickies, and Hodo’s nerdcore vocals sound remarkably like Weird Al.

“Food fight” plays out like the music you’d hear in an early 80’s teenage T & A movie where there’d be some marginally “punk” band playing on the beach in wrap-around sunglasses and clam-diggers, while a bunch of girls in string bikinis did robot dances in the sand. Yes, it’s that good. The subject matter would seem to indicate the Village People’s new target demographic was middle school children.

Hodo himself hates the song, calling it “some of the worst” music the group ever recorded. It’s a shame, because had the Village People followed Renaissance with an album full of songs in the “Food Fight” vein, they easily could have been the greatest fake punk band of all time.

The Village People’s fake punk student rebellion anthem, “Food Fight”:
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Hilarious musicless music video for the Village People’s ‘YMCA’

 
It’s Monday, and as we can already pretty much agree on (at least some of us) is that Monday’s suck, but ESPECIALLY Mondays in August, for all sorts of reasons. Why not watch this musicless video for the Village People’s “YMCA.”

It may put a smile on your Monday-hatin’ face.

 
via Laughing Squid

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Bowie and Jagger are ‘Dancing in the Street’ to silence in this ridiculous ‘musicless’ music video

 
A handsome young Duglas T Stewart of BMX Bandits gave this brief tour of his favorite things for 1980s pop show FSd. Amongst the items on display in Duglas’ den were: a fan’s portrait made from sticky-back plastic, records by Village People, The Beach Boys and Throbbing Gristle (nuff said?), and his plastic fish tank. This will go in some way to explaining why BMX Bandits are one of the most beloved, beautiful and inspiring bands of all time. As has been said by others in the documentary film Serious Drugs, BMX Bandits’ music is like being hugged by all the people you love, all at the same time. Pretty heart-warming.

Duglas’s piece to camera segues into a quick clip of Wray Gunn and the Rockets, featuring a very young Keith Warwick, now with The New Piccadillys, before we return to Duglas and BMX Bandits performing a subversively delightful version of “(You Gotta) Fight For the Right (To Party!)”

Serious Drugs - The Film about BMX Bandits is to be shown at the Portobello Film Festival, in London on 7 September 2012, check here for details.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
This is better than The Who and Springsteen’s Superbowl half-time shows combined!

“By using long poles and four adult-sized puppets—with himself in the middle – Christopher is able to be all five Village People at one time.”
 

 
Via