The cover of Crime SuspenStories #27, 1955; first publication of ‘Maniac at Large’
 
John Frankenheimer, the director of The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May and Seconds, got his start working in TV in the fifties. After a long absence, he returned to the medium in 1992 with this episode of Tales from the Crypt.

In “Maniac at Large,” Adam Ant plays a crime-obsessed nerd whose preoccupation with murder terrorizes the new librarian, Blythe Danner, who is all het up about a serial killer on the loose. Ant’s quite good; I’m puzzled that his acting career faltered after his promising debut in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee, and he wound up in movies like Sunset Heat and Cyber Bandits. (Someday I’ll get around to watching Wayne Wang’s Slam Dance, just to see Harry Dean Stanton, John Doe of X and Adam Ant in the same movie.)

Frankenheimer’s psychological direction, which foregrounds the distorted perspective of one of the characters, transforms the public library where the story is set into a clammy tomb of terror. I got the fears!
 

A kid version of Adam Ant in his “Prince Charming” getup. Awww.
 
Halloween is nearly upon us, and that means that it is also the only time of year that you get a pass for letting your toddler hold a bottle of Jack Daniels because it happens to be part of their “costume.” If your kid is still a baby, they, of course, have no real say in the Halloween costume decision-making process, mostly because they can’t yet express themselves verbally, which leaves you to dress your said baby like Björk when she made her famous red-carpet appearance at the 2001 Academy Awards in a dress made to look like a swan (created by designer Marjan Pejoski). You wouldn’t be the first parent to do so—and I’ve got photographic proof of that.

This post was inspired by my discovery of one of Glasgow’s coolest inhabitants, photographer, and lecturer Simon Murphy who delights in helping dress up his two daughters as various musical icons such as Janis Joplin, or the alcohol-swilling vocalist for The Pogues, Shane MacGowan. To achieve an authentic look based on MacGowan’s notorious dental problems, Murphy used cake icing that had been colored black to mimic his infamous mouth-full-of-decaying-teeth “smile.”  As a child of the 80s, I spent a lot of time dressing up like Ace Frehley from KISS along with every other kid that liked to rock and roll all night—so I had to include some choice, vintage images of the youngest members of the KISS Army all dressed up to trick or treat. Now, in honor of our Lord and savior The Great Pumpkin, check out the photos of kids looking cooler than we ever did dressed up as rock stars ranging from Angus Young, to our dearly departed Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie, that I’ve posted below.
 

Baby Björk FTW!
 

A mini-version of Prince.
 
More after the jump…

Edward Woodward and Adam Ant on the cover of Ant News Today, 1985
 
The Equalizer was a crime drama starring Edward Woodward (The Wicker Man‘s Sgt. Howie) as Robert McCall, a secret agent turned private detective. Like the contemporary Miami Vice, The Equalizer brought in guest-star musicians to play the sinister jerks peopling its slough of rank criminality.

Also like Miami Vice, it was considered racy. Comparing the two series’ depiction of “raw, sometimes shocking underworld grit,” the LA Times reported in October 1985 that “several advertisers pulled their sponsorship of the [recent Equalizer] episode titled ‘The Lock Box,’ which starred Adam Ant as a purveyor of bizarre and forbidden sex.”

Many full episodes of this morally corrosive, sexually perverting entertainment are now playing on the world wide internet, and collected here are the ones with famous rockers. Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz (not yet 20!) plays the title role in “Mama’s Boy,” in which he gets mixed up with such drug dealers as Alex Winter’s Jeffrey. John Cale of the Velvet Underground wears his Songs for Drella ‘do in the role of “Aryan Leader” in “Race Traitors.” David Johansen of New York Dolls and Buster Poindexter fame and Stewart Copeland of the Police (writer of the series’ theme song) appear in “Re-Entry.” Though I haven’t watched Meat Loaf’s performance as Sugar Fly Simon in “Bump and Run,” I’m sure it’s some of his best work. And Adam Ant forces nice young women into prostitution in “The Lock Box.” (I haven’t been able to find the Quentin Crisp or John Cameron Mitchell episodes, but they must be on the DVD set.)

After the jump, watch John Cale’s, ah, “understated” performance as a neo-Nazi in the episode “Race Traitors”...

 
In the mid-1980s Honda had a series of quite dauntingly cool musicians hawking their scooters. They had particularly playful, sexy commercial in which Adam Ant and Grace Jones flirt with each other and then presumably fuck because they are so preposterously vital and attractive. Others featured DEVO, Berlin, Lou Reed, and Miles fucking Davis.

The Adam Ant/Grace Jones ad was “racy” enough that there was an edited version. In the full version Jones bites Ant’s ear, an act that doesn’t seem especially interesting. In any case, there was second version that trimmed the ear bite. The video below features both versions.

Were the commercials successful? I don’t know, Honda is still in business so probably, yeah. Do you know anyone who owns a Honda scooter? Hmmmmmm.
 

 
References to Reed‘s Honda commercial are inevitably rather amusing. Mick Wall in his book Lou Reed: The Life writes:
 

New Sensations was so listenable that ... it attracted the attention of an advertising agency executive, Jim Riswold, then chief copywriter for the Madison Avenue [actually Portland] giants Wieden & Kennedy. ... So he approached Lou Reed to help make an ad for Honda scooters.

At the time, Riswold recalled, “advertisers didn’t put people in commercials who had a long history of drug addiction, and of course [Lou Reed] was a man who at one time in his life was married to a man, and that man was a transvestite, so I guess you could say he wasn’t your typical spokesman. But if you looked at who we were trying to sell scooters to, it was natural. Actually, when you look back at that commercial it seems pretty damn tame today.”

Actually, at the time it just seemed plain hilarious. Lou Reed in a TV commercial? Selling scooters?

 
As Wall points out later, it was doubly weird because in the title track of New Sensations, Reed rhapsodized about a competing vehicle, the Kawasaki GPx750 Turbo motorcycle, singing that “the engine felt good between my thighs.”

Similarly, here’s Nick Kent, in the anthology Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis:
 

America’s TV heartland has already witnessed this curious image of a man, a skinny figure with gleaming skin and what remains of his hair curling all over his shoulders: his hands grip (what else?) a trumpet, his lithe form is slouched against a small Japanese scooter, his eyes stare out at the viewer with imperious disdain. Then the voice, emanating from that shredded, node-less killing-floor of a larynx, mutters, “I ain’t here to talk about this thing, I’m here to ride it.”

 
Watch the Honda scooter commercials after the jump….....

Klaus Nomi

I’ve blogged about Sean Bright‘s fun pop-up cards featuring Roxy Music, Delia Derbyshire, Grandmaster Flash, De La Soul, and many other pop culture notable in the past here on Dangerous Minds. This time it’s his jumping jack puppets and felted dolls that have me swooning. They’re damned adorable. I’m especially smitten with his Moondog felted doll. Incredible!

The jumping jack puppets include Klaus Nomi, David Byrne, Adam Ant, David Bowie and Morrissey.

Prices for the jumping jack puppets are around $18.00. The Moondog felted doll is priced at $45.00.

 

David Byrne
 

 
More after the jump…

 
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…

Adam Ant trying his hand at comedy during his appearance on the Cannon and Ball show, 1982.
 
Here’s something you don’t see everyday—Adam Ant dressed up as a caballero dancing his own version of a “Jarabe Tapatío” (or Mexican “hat dance”) during his appearance on Cannon and Ball, a UK comedy television program that was on the air from 1979 to 1988. Say WHAT?

Of course seeing Adam Ant dressed up like a caballero isn’t really much of a stretch given the fact that for much of his career he looked like a punk rock version of Tonto—but that’s besides the point. On the show, the then 28-year-old Ant (born Stuart Leslie Goddard) and the show’s stars, Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball (Thomas Derbyshire and Robert Harper respectively) put on an amusing song and dance routine with Ant playing his role to the hilt all while maintaining a straight face.

According an article published back in 2013, Ant actually credited his appearance on the show with helping his 1982 smash “Goody Two Shoes” hit number one on the UK singles chart. While the footage isn’t great great quality it is a fantastic “who knew?” moment involving one of my fave raves. Plus Adam Ant lipsynching for his life and dancing by himself for three-plus minutes until he’s out of breath on Cannon and Ball doing you guessed it, “Goody Two Shoes.” Vive Le Ant and Olé!
 

Adam Ant performing in a comedy routine on ‘Cannon and Ball’ along with his totally 80s precursor of punk rock aerobics

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Young Adam Ant looking like a pretty punk rock Adonis

 
I recently stumbled upon the fascinating Stand & Deliver: The Documentary on You Tube and found myself enthralled as the extremely well-read Adam Ant revealed influences and historical roots behind his music, wardrobe, and various stage and video set pieces. Some fascinating stories are divulged, many of which I, as a more-than-casual-but-less-than-rabid Adam Ant fan, had never heard before. The most intriguing of these stories was the tale of how he got called out by Native Americans for cultural appropriation… and then got a free pass.

In the film, Ant discusses his use of feathers and Native American war paint as part of his early costuming. According to Ant, “I always wore a few feathers to project an Apache image on stage,” and “the Apache war line [painted across his face]... was a declaration of war on the music business.” Apparently this appropriation did not sit well with some Native American groups, who reputedly wrote in to Ant’s record label to express dismay.

Sally James, presenter for the British program, Tiswas:

Someone had written to him that he had upset the Native American Indian community because they had felt that the line across his face [was problematic]... Instead of ignoring it, he went to their headquarters to see them. He said ‘please come and see my act,’ and they all went along and then they wrote to the record company: ‘this guy is fantastic, we won’t have a word said against him.

Writer Karen Krizanovich adds:

He met up with ten leaders of the Native American nations and he said ‘the dancing that I’m doing on stage, the way I’m looking with feathers and the paint… if you find that disrespectful to your people I will stop it immediately.’ Actually, he cared enough to see if he was offending anyone with what he was doing.

 

 
According to the story revealed in Stand & Deliver: The Documentary, Ant’s invitation to the tribal leaders led to his being given the “A-OK” vis-à-vis the war paint and feathers.  Ant seems to corroborate the story in an interview with louderthanwar.com:

I already had the Native American Indians on my back about the look but when I met them I said I’m a Romany and that’s a tribal culture and I’m very serious about this and I’ve studied it and we have also had lots of our people knocked off as well.

The genocide in America of the Native Americans affected me, and the songs that touched on that like “Kings Of The Wild Frontier,” “Human Beings,” and even “Catholic Days” singing about Kennedy had been banned. Now I know I was right singing about that stuff.

Anyway, at the time, this good looking six foot plus Indian comes in to see me and says that they were suspicious that some white boy was singing about them, so I went there and spoke to the people at their centre. They showed me their system and their history and I basically said to to them come to the show and if you don’t like what I’m doing or if you think that I’m taking the piss I will fucking take the stripe off and not wear it again.

Fortunately they liked the gig but I had to go to them to speak to them. It’s their country and you have to go to them. I was very passionate about it, and I still am. I don’t do politics, but this is beyond politics. It’s about justice, but nobody is innocent. I mean look at our empire. I’m a musician not a politician, but there was stuff that I was singing about like I was suffering years of taming and the kids like me were inspired about this wildness, and they got it and when they came down to the gig they got it.

Now, the ‘80s were a much less, shall we say, culturally sensitive time, and a what got a “pass” then might not fly today—and giving concert tickets to a handful of tribal leaders—who may or may not speak for the Native population at large—doesn’t necessarily make Ant’s costuming choices less “problematic” by today’s standards; however, the fact that Ant met with these leaders and offered to drop his iconic look, upon their say-so, speaks to his integrity, respect for Native culture, and his desire to do the right thing. 
 

Ant has more recently been accused of cultural appropriation by Cap’n Crunch.

There are other incredible stories in Stand & Deliver: The Documentary. One reveals a late-night phone call from Michael Jackson asking Ant where he got his military jacket (note - Jackson soon showed up in public wearing a very similar outfit), and how he got his drum sounds. Jackson subsequently got Adam Ant a gig on the infamous Motown 25 TV special, by actually refusing to appear himself unless Ant was allowed to go on after him!

Ant recounts this same story in his autobiography Stand and Deliver
:

The ringing of a telephone cut sharply through my sleep. I fumbled for the receiver.

‘Hello?’ A soft, highpitched voice echoed down the line to me.

‘Hello,’ it repeated. ‘Is that Adam Ant?’

The voice had an American accent and sounded vaguely familiar, but my fuzzy brain reacted angrily.

‘Terry,’ I said, thinking it was one of the Ants’ drummers playing a prank. ‘Stop pissing about. It’s 4am and I’m trying to sleep.’
‘No, it’s not Terry,’ said the voice. ‘It’s Michael. Is that Adam Ant?’ ‘Very funny, Terry, now fuck off.’ I slammed the phone down, rolled over and tried to get back to sleep.

The phone went again. ‘Hello,’ I barked into the receiver. ‘Hi, no, really, it is me, Michael Jackson,’ said the funny voice, ‘and I just want to ask you…’ ‘Terry, if you don’t stop this I’m going to come over there and fucking thump you.’ Bang. Again the phone went down.

Again I rolled over. Again the phone rang. I grabbed the receiver and shouted: ‘Terry! That’s IT!’ ‘Er, hi, is that Adam Ant?’ This time the voice was deep, sonorous, American and calm. It didn’t sound anything like Terry. ‘Oh, oh,’ I stammered.

‘Yes, this is Adam. Who are you?’ ‘I’m Quincy Jones, calling from LA. Sorry, we probably woke you, but I’m here with Michael Jackson and he’d like to speak with you. Is that OK?’ A pause, and then that same soft voice. ‘Hi, Adam, it’s Michael. Sorry if we woke you.’

‘Oh, no, sorry to have been so rude,’ I apologized. He said he had just seen the video for our song “Kings Of The Wild Frontier.” ‘It’s great,’ he said. ‘How did you get the tom-tom sound?’ ‘Oh, thanks. Well, we use two drum kits and then add loads of other percussion on top…’

‘That’s great, Adam,’ Michael interrupted. ‘I really like your jacket. Where’d you get it?’
‘Huh? My jacket?’ I tried to think. ‘Berman’s and Nathan’s in London’s Covent Garden. They supply costumes for movies.’

‘Wow. That’s great,’ he replied. ‘How do you spell that? Bowman’s and who?’ ‘No, B-E-R-M-A-N-apostrophe-S and N-A-T-H-A-N-apostrophe-S.’

‘Great, thanks. Let’s meet up next time you’re in America, huh? Bye.’

The line went dead.

I got invited over to LA and I went to his family home, because he was still living with his mum and dad. All his brothers and sisters were there and I just spent the day walking round the house with all the snakes and llamas. I actually followed him onstage right after he did the moonwalk for the first time.

 

 
Watch the Adam Ant documentary after the jump…

 
Adam Ant was featured as a hero in a comic book series published in a short-lived British magazine called TV Tops. Tops normally featured articles and comic strips based on popular TV shows of that era like Buck Rogers, Fame, Hart to Hart, The Metal Mickey TV Show etc. And for whatever inexplicable reason Adam Ant had his own comic series. I guess Tops was trying to capitalize off his fame? I don’t know. “The Fantastic Adventures of Adam Ant” issue was published April 17, 1982, when Antmania was at its absolute height.

It’s amusing to see Adam Ant fighting against evil, depicted as a Native American, a Lawrence of Arabia-type, highwayman robber and a cowboy. What can’t our hero do?!

I’ve compiled a few scans from the magazine. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find them in their entirety (except for “Stand And Deliver - Adam Ant’s Story” which is at the bottom), but I think you can get the drift of what’s going on by the ones posted below. Good stuff!
 

Click here for larger image.
 

Click here to read larger image.
 

Click here to read larger image.
 

Click here to read larger image.
 
More after the jump…
 

 
I remember seeing Adam Ant for the first time in the early 80s at New York’s Palladium Theater and being blown away by just how fucking great he was. Over 30 years later he still has some buckle in his swash. Here he is on last night’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon doing “Goody Two Shoes.” Please no Johnny Depp jokes and be kind… Adam’s had a rough time of it in the past couple decades.
 

With a poster like this, I shouldn’t even have to try and convince you to watch it!
 
Since the election is now in the rear-view miror (and I have yet to hear riots in the streets), we can all go back to enjoying the dystopic visions of the future that felt all-too-prescient a few weeks ago. Might I suggest the 1988 classic World Gone Wild? First of all, Adam Ant is a major character, and he gives a performance that makes his acting in the “Goody Two Shoes” music video look positively understated. This is, of course, all a part of the charm, since the appeal of the movie is pure grandiosity.

The synopsis says it all:

After the colossal nuclear wipeout, who inherits the earth? Adam Ant’s crazed band of Charles Manson worshipers, or hippie-magician Bruce Dern’s flower children who follow the great teachings of Emily Post? Finding out is all the fun in this tongue-in-cheek- sci fi adventure with action that makes Mad Max look like a tea party.

I’d argue that it makes Mad Max look like an Oscar-winner, but I understand making comparisons when you’re trying to ride the coattails of what is frankly, a much higher quality product. Sadly, because we live in a cruel and unfeeling world, you can’t find World Gone Wild on DVD, but VHS copies are still floating around, and this outdated format really feels like the appropriate vessel for such a product of its time. I don’t know about you, but I like my post-apocalyptic flicks like I like my New Wave musicians: over-the-top and short on shelf life!
 

 
Punk may be long dead, but the interest in its music, ideas and artifacts continues.

Recently over at the Independent, writer Michael Bracewell introduces a selection of photographs by Simon Barker, a former member of the legendary Bromley Contingent, the group of original Punks that included Siouxsie Sioux, Steven Severin, Jordan, Bertie “Berlin” Marshall, Tracie O’Keefe, and Billy Idol. Barker was a participant and witness to some of the key events during the 14 months, in 1976 and 1977, when Punk changed everything - as Bracewell explains:

[Barker’s] photographs share with Nan Goldin’s early studies of the New York and Boston sub-cultures of the 1970s, a profound and joyously audacious sense of youth going out on its own into new freedoms and new possibilities.

In this, Barker’s photographs from this period capture a moment when the tipping point between innocence and experience has yet to be reached. The model and sub-cultural celebrity Jordan, for example, is photographed as a self-created work of art – her features resembling a Picasso mask, her clothes more post-war English county librarian. The provocation of her image remains untamed and unassimilated, nearly 40 years later; and within her surrealist pose there is the triumph of art made in the medium of sub-cultural lifestyle.

Barker/Six was a member of the so-called ‘Bromley Contingent’ of very early followers of The Sex Pistols and the retail and fashion work of McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. Other members would include the musicians Siouxsie Sioux and Steven Severin, and the writer Bertie Marshall, then known as ‘Berlin’ in homage to the perceived glamour and decadence of the Weimar republic. Originating from suburbia, but all determined to leave its security as soon as possible, the Bromley Contingent became the British sub-cultural equivalent, in many ways, of Andy Warhol’s notorious ‘superstars’ – volatile, at times self-destructive or cruelly elitist, but dedicated to a creed of self-reinvention and personal creativity.

It is this creed, as opposed to the swiftly commercialised music of punk, that Barker’s photographs from the period anatomise so well. At once intimate and forensic, austere and camp, documentary and touchingly elegiac, these photographs capture a milieu experiencing a heroic sense of being outsiders – a condition that has always been the privilege of youth, and which has long claimed many victims in its enticing contract with the thrill of taking an oppositional stance.

Read the whole article and see more of Simon’s photographs here.

Simon Barker’s book Punk’s Dead is available here.
 

Poly Styrene
 

The Banshees: Steven Severin, Kenny Morris and John McKay
 
With thanks to Derek Dunbar
 
More punk memories after the jump…
 

 
This excellent documentary on Malcolm McLaren was originally shown as part of Melvyn Bragg’s South Bank Show in 1984, when McLaren was recording Fans—his seminal fusion of R&B and opera.  Apart from great access and behind-the-scenes footage, the film and boasts revealing interviews with Boy George, Adam Ant, Bow-Wow-Wow’s Annabella Lwin, Sex Pistol, Steve Jones, as well as the great man himself.

Everyone whoever came into contact with McLaren had an opinion of the kind of man he was and what he was about. Steve Jones thought him a con man; Adam Ant didn’t understand his anarchy; Boy George couldn’t fathom his lack of interest in having success, especially when he could have had it all; while Annabella Lwin pointed out how he used people to do the very things he wanted to do himself.

All of the above are true. But for McLaren, the answer was simple: “Boys will be boys,” and he saw his role was as:

“To question authority and challenge conventions, is what makes my life exciting.”

It did, Malcolm, and still does. Enjoy.
 

 
Previously on DM

Who Killed Bambi?: the Roger Ebert Sex Pistols screenplay

Scenes from the Malcolm McLaren funeral

 
More from Malcolm McLaren after the jump…
 

 
It’s been a lifelong struggle with manic depression for Adam Ant, and, sadly, the 80’s pop icon seems to have lost the latest round.  After a series of increasingly erratic public appearances, Ant, nee Stuart Goddard, showed up at a charity event to raise money for starving children in the Phillipines.

While performing a cover of Sympathy For The Devil, Ant asked if there were any “Christians in the room” before telling them to “fuck off.”  According to The Daily Mail, he was then “sectioned under the mental health act,” and is now in recovery.

You can see footage of the charity event here.  But speaking, I think, for many of us here at Dangerous Minds, it might be best to simply wish Ant the best of luck and watch him in a more bouyant mood in the video below:

 
Bonus: Adam Ant in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee