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…

 
I learned many things during my recent conversation with David Tibet (Current 93 and related projects) and Youth (Killing Joke, the Orb, the Fireman, Brother Culture, Pink Floyd, et al.) about their fabulous new album as Hypnopazūzu. One of these was that during the early 80s, a British pop magazine had, at Tibet’s urging, numbered its final issue 666 and put Aleister Crowley on the cover. Tibet had written the cover story, too, about the Beast and his influence on pop musicians.

Both Youth and Tibet seemed to think the magazine in question was Smash Hits, but in fact Flexipop! was the one that employed Mark Manning/Zodiac Mindwarp as art editor and concluded with the Crowley issue. Though I wasn’t there, Flexipop! seems much hipper than Smash Hits from my vantage point: Every issue came with a flexi disc, and alongside the shit (and not) pop stars of the day, they profiled quality bands like the Birthday Party, Pigbag, Motörhead, Bauhaus, and Killing Joke (Youth dropped his pants in the pages of No. 19).

Having reached the kabbalistically significant number 32 with their second-to-last issue in June 1983—featuring both Killing Joke sans Youth and Brilliant, Youth’s new band with Jimmy Cauty—Flexipop! made a daring editorial decision at its perch atop the Tree of Life. For the cover of their valedictory number, instead of Paul Young or Sting, they took a chance on this fresh-faced, golden-voiced up-and-comer with a song in his heart and an Enochian key on his lips.

More after the jump…

Motörhead on the cover of Flexipop! magazine, June, 1981.
 
UK music magazine Flexipop! was only around from 1980 to1983, but in that time it managed to put out some pretty cool content within its pages, such as the sweet 7” colored flexi discs that featured music from bands featured in the mag like Motörhead, The Cure and The Jam. One flexi-disc from the February 1981 issue was a recording of Adam and the Ants riffing on the Village People anthem “Y.M.C.A.” called “A.N.T.S,” which you can listen to in all its early 80s glory (as I can’t embed it), here.
 

Adam Ant on the cover of Flexipop! #4.
 

Adam and the Ants Flexipop! flexi disc from Flexipop! #4.
 
Another thing that Flexipop! featured were cool “live-action” storyboards as well illustrated strips that detailed the the fictional exploits of various bands and musicians. Starting with the September 1981 issue, there was a three-part-series about the career to date of Adam Ant drawn by Mark Manning. Manning—who would go on to assume the cool-as-fuck moniker “Zodiac Mindwarp” and form the biker sleaze band Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction in the mid-80s—was Flexipop!‘s acid-dropping art editor at the time. I’ve included Manning’s “Adam and the Ants” comic strip in its entirety, as well as some scans from the magazine’s inner-pages.

Surprisingly, given its short existence, you can find lots of issues of Flexipop! out there as well as flexi discs from the magazine’s colorful discography on auction sites like eBay and Etsy. Cooler still is the fact that you can look through even more pages from Flexipop! that have been scanned and uploaded at the blog Music Mags 1970s-1980s.
 

Siouxsie Sioux and Budgie (The Creatures) on the cover of Flexipop! March, 1983.
 
Much, much more after the jump…