There is always room at the top. Don’t let them tell you that there is not.” – Room at the Top
Adam Ant – Manners & Physique – 1990
Okay. So, in 1990 I was trying to start my acting career and needed a day job. Not wanting to work in an office (actually, not being able, really…fucking cubicles) I decided to try my hand at wedding and bar mitzvah DJ-ing. Never mind how I ended up doing that, suffice to say that the guy who introduced me to it went on to a very VERY successful television sitcom career and is a millionaire.
I’m not.
But, at one of these Bar Mitzvahs I was shocked to hear the guest of honor ask for a special request: He wanted “Room at the Top” by Adam Ant.
He didn’t have a clue who Adam was. In fact, why would he? Adam’s last album would have come out when this kid was 8. His last hit was in 1982, that kid was 1. To him, and just about everyone else, Adam came out of left field.
I was shocked.
Of course I got Manners & Physique. I gave it the cursory listen and realized that whatever Adam had 10 years before when he was on the cutting edge of new music was, for all intents and purposes, gone.
Sure, his vocals are there, although they sort of border on sounding like the Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet. And Marco’s guitars pop up every once in a while. But all the rest of the instruments and the production is done by ex-Prince protege, Andre Cymone.
NOW Adam sounds anonymous on his own record.
It’s dance pop at a time when that stuff was as innocuous and invasive and unctuous as it would be 20 years later.
This is the era of New Kids, you know?
One thing I realize as each song comes on is how much I wish the record would end. There are moments that work, “Rough Stuff”, “Room at the Top”, they sound like they could have worked on previous Adam records.
Of course, the title track harkens back in subject matter to the Adam of old: appearance and style trumps all. Too bad the song itself sucks hard. It’s ugly. It’s crass. It’s tired.
The third single, “Can’t Set Rules About Love” sounds half like it might have fallen off the plan for Vive’s recordings and half like it wants to be on the Beverly Hills 90210 soundtrack. It smells of faded jeans, high tops and denim jackets. And just when you think it can’t get any worse, “U.S.S.A.” rears its ugly, over produced, mess of a self and makes you want to hurl the record across the room. Or, in my case, toss my ipod across the airport, where I am currently listening and writing this entry.
I wonder what would happen if you went back in time and played Manners for the same Adam who was at the infamous Sex Pistols boat cruise. Or even grabbed him outside of the studio when he was booted from the Ants and said, “Please. I know you’ll be rich. But you’ll also be crazy. And you will put this music out.”
I think he would have gone back to art school.
As “Bright Lights, Black Leather” comes on I realize; I’ve never listened to this whole album. I must have decided at some point to just stop and never listen to it again. I was better off…
“Young, Dumb & Full of It” actually comes kind of close to approximating what “Antmusic” would sound like if it was twisted into modern dance pop. I don’t know if I like it for real of if I just appreciate anything outside the canned mid-tempo crap that has come before. But the album doesn’t let you down, you know. Sure there might have been that brief bright spot but the whole shebang comes crashing to a torpor with the sluggish “Anger, Inc”. Sure, Adam, yeah, you read Kerouac and all, but it doesn’t mean you can write a song about it. Count this among “Scorpio Rising” as among his worst.
The demo version of Manners & Physique included on the Antbox box set actually shows that song would have rocked in a Vive le Rock fashion if they had decided to go with that kind of sound. So sad.
That bar mitzvah kid is 33 now. I wonder what he’s doing now….
Grade: D-
A-Side: Room at the Top, Rough Stuff
BlindSide: Young Dumb & Full of It
DownSide: Manners & Physique, U.S.S.A., Picadilly
