Urban Hat€monger ?

Adam & The Ants were my first ever favourite band. I can't remember which song introduced me to them. All I remember was seeing him perform on TV & being really excited by it , and then pestering my mother to get me some Adam Ant records for my next birthday. Sure enough by the time it rolled around I was given his Kings Of The Wild Frontier & Prince Charming albums.
These were played to death every morning before I went to school for ages afterwards.I remember reading the sleevenotes for Kings Of The Wild Frontier & seeing all these names I had never heard of , Patti Smith , Iggy & The Stoogers , The Velvet Underground , New York Dolls , Siouxsie Sioux , Lou Reed , David Bowie , Andy Warhol. I had no idea who all these people were (Apart from Bowie) but they sounded interesting.
I remember going to my mums work one day & chatting to this guy called Kevin she worked with. Kevin told me that there was another Adam & The Ants record I didn't have & that he would give it to my mum to copy for me. So a couple of days later my mother comes home with DIrk Wears White Sox & a few of his early singles. I ended up liking this album more than the others. I liked it that when I went to school and people talked about Adam & The Ants they had no idea about this record , my first taste of musical elitism ...HA!
Dirk Wears White Sox seemed to be more grown up than his other stuff , darker & more serious and there seemed to be this air of mystery about it that attracted me to it. Sadly just as I was getting into Adam & The Ants he decided to quit music to concentrate on acting ...oh well.


A bit later on from this I received my first record player , second hand for something like £2. Didn't bother me how much it was or how crap the sound quality was, it meant I could play records in my room rather than have to listen to them in the living room & have to ask permission everytime I wanted to hear something. Before this my mother had decided to give me a broken record player as a toy and she'd make me all these records out of cardboard , I decided real records were much more fun so used those , that led to me pestering her to get me a real one.
One I got it I was allowed to be let loose on my parents record collection. As far as albums go they didn't have many but they did have a couple of hundred singles. Most of my dad's stuff was from the late 50s early 60s , stuff like Buddy Holly , The Shadows (Without Cliff Richard thankfully), PJ Proby , Joe Brown , Freddie & The Dreamers & Adam Faith. My mothers collection was much more towards the mid - late 60s with stuff like The Small Faces , The Beatles , The Move , Traffic and a couple of Rolling Stones singles (She saw them live with Brian Jones ... bitch). I used to love going into the cupboard pulling out a handful of records & just seeing what they sounded like. This was probably one of my favourite times in my life as I was just listening to new music without any bias & without knowing who these people were. But the only problem was none of it was my music , but that was about to change when something different was about to enter my life .... PUNK.

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