It’s October, and you know what that means—Halloween!
…er, it would if there weren’t a pandemic. Now we have to plan candy chutes to give kids candy and do Zoom costume contests. Not the same, and kind of a bummer if I’m being honest. But here we are.
It’s got me thinking about all the best Halloween costumes I’ve done over the years, however, and the best ones have all been in my adulthood—I can’t say I was terribly creative as a kid, and I’m sure after a while my parents had other things to worry about than making sure I had a good costume. In recent years, my wife and I have done a lot of couples’ costumes, but ones that aren’t necessarily “cute” per se—a magician and the assistant he sawed in half, Jack the Ripper and one of his victims (you see a theme developing—my wife likes to do gory makeup), Spike and Drusilla, and the one that was most popular with everyone else I’d wager, Agent Dale Cooper and Laura Palmer (again, dead).
But back at the end of my time in college, my band Cuneyt (the name is a story in and of itself) played a Halloween show at this weird bar in San Diego that isn’t there anymore called the California Club, which was half bar/nightclub and half card room. I never really understood the legality of it, but it existed and we played there a few times. And while most of my band was in ’80s glam garb, I was dressed as Adam Ant. And it was good—people could tell who I was. I had the makeup, scarves, plus this velour jacket that sadly I no longer own because it got moldy in a house flooding incident. (Read more about that here if you want to know more about a pretty frustrating chapter in my life.) Unfortunately I can’t locate a picture right now. It could be somewhere on my hard drive, but the last place I remember seeing it was on my MySpace page. If that tells you anything.
And yes, I like Adam Ant’s music! As you can see I wasn’t in a hurry to pick up any of his records, but that’s mostly because of when they showed up in the used bin. A lot of the time when I go record shopping, it’s less about what I’m looking for than simply what I find. You never know what you’ll find unless you’re not looking for it. Ancient koan. True story. (It’s not a true story.)
But this was the first one that I found when browsing through the crates at Record City in Hillcrest, and it’s a good one. Not quite to the peak of Kings of the Wild Frontier, but still good. It’s got some hits on it, like “Goody Two Shoes” and “Friend or Foe,” plus my favorite, “Desperate But Not Serious,” a track worthy of sneaking into a goth set. Overall it’s pretty much the signature sound of Adam Ant as you’d expect it to be—Duane Eddy-ish guitar twang from Marco Pirroni, the signature “Burundi” drums, plus lots of histroinics from the flamboyant frontman himself. A super fun new wave album.
My absolute favorite Adam and the Ants track though? “Beat My Guest,” which is a b-side. So I suppose I’ll have to pick that up at some point. (Discogs seems to have a lot of copies of the “Stand and Deliver” 7-inch up for pretty cheap, so not a whole lot of reason not to I suppose.) I enjoy the music on this record, but most of all it reminds me of the time I was Adam Ant for a night.
Rating: 8.9
Sound Quality: Great
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1000 Times Jeff 
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