Continuing from the triple-drum sound of yesterday’s brand new Soulwax release, we go back to 1980 to a double-drummer song that felt altogether new and fresh at the time, although it was certainly influenced, if not directly by the drumming culture of Burundi. Adam Ant was on his second Ants band – the core of the latest group, Dave Barbarossa, Matthew Ashman and Leigh Gorman, had left in early 1980 to form the players in Malcolm McLaren latest project Bow Wow Wow. Instead Ant was joined byMarco Pirroni, who had played with Siouxsie Sioux and others, and drummer-producer Chris Hughes to enter a New Wave period of huge success. The title track of Kings wasn’t a hit originally, but after the top-5 chart success of Ant Music and Dog Eat Dog in the summer, it was re-released in February 1981 and got to No 2.
Somehow the formula, with Ant - aka Stuart Leslie Goddard – seen as a sex symbol by a whole generation of women – and the message of a new tribe in town, albeit appropriating the look of Native Americans and using African drumming, really seemed to capture the imagination. The stripped-back sound on this title track of the album, with dead-string guitars also joining in the rhythms, alongside Ant leading a call-and-chorus vocal, seemed to evoke something wild and free, with the lyrics unashamedly channelling the idea of a new frontier of rebellious redskins refinding their voice in white skins, and reforming themselves into a pop group:
A new royal family, a wild nobility
We are the family …
I feel beneath the white
There is a redskin suffering
From centuries of taming
I feel beneath the white
There is a redskin suffering
From centuries of taming
No method in our madness (yeah)
Just pride about our manner (yeah)
Antpeople are the warriors (yeah)
Antmusic is the banner (yeah)
Over the next two years Ant enjoyed huge success with several other massive hits, followed by a solo career that gradually dwindled, followed by later mental heath problems and then recovery to tour again. But success wasn’t overnight for the man who had originally played bass in the pub rock group Bazooka Joe, that headlined when Sex Pistols played their first concert on 6 November 1975 at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. What goes around comes around.
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