Since 2013, Adam Ant has made something of a comeback. He released his first album since 1995's Wonderful - the very fine Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner's Daughter album, toured the UK in celebration of the reissue of Dirk Wears White Sox, embarked on a world tour to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Ants' basically perfect Kings Of The Wild Frontier album, and now he's on his Anthems: The Singles Tour.
His Anthems tour is basically the vast majority of his singles and a good portion of his best B-Sides. I'd seen Adam on tour earlier this year, so I knew what to expect in terms of his live band (he's got a cracking band that actually sound like a real band and not just backing musicians - Will Crewdson is an excellent lead guitarist and the two drummers are perfect - especially Jola). Adam himself has a lot more energy than one would expect from someone who's been through the Punk wars of 1977. He didn't disappoint on this night either.
The twenty-five song set was basically an Ant-fans dream set. The band opened with a fiery rendition of "Beat My Guest" and the show never really let up. Early singles "Young Parisians" (and its B-Side "Lady"), "Zerox" and "Car Trouble" all earned enthusiastic responses. Adam ran through plenty of obscure B-Sides such as "Greta X", "Christian D'Or" and "B-Side Baby". It was certainly nice to hear Adam perform hits that he doesn't do very often (excepting this tour) like "Apollo 9", "Can't Set Rules About Love" and "Puss N Boots". The ebbs and flows of the set felt fairly natural/organic with the energy level boosting up several notches on "Friend Or Foe" (which sounded amazing live, and truly benefited from having two drummers) and on "Kings Of The Wild Frontier" - which seemed to get the entire audience up and moving in a speaking in tongues sort of way.
Of course, Adam and his band performed the staples "Stand And Deliver", "Vive Le Rock", "Antmusic" and "Goody Two Shoes" all to the expected fervent response.
The only singles Adam didn't tackle were "Ant Rap" (for obvious reasons...Marco, Merrick, Terry Lee and Gary Tibbs were not on tour with "Yours Truly"), "Deutscher Girls", "Rough Stuff" and the US Top 40 single "Wonderful". None of which were missed too greatly.
I was basically a spoiled Antfan on this night - as I'd had my VIP package (which included a T-Shirt, a bandanna, buttons/badges, a tote bag and a numbered, limited edition autographed poster). Not to mention my eighth-row seat and sterling companionship.
Opening for Adam were the Glam Skanks. They're a quartet from LA who come off like a television producers dream of an a homogenized version of The Runaways. Their material didn't really resonate with me at all (it felt very affected and faux to put it lightly...very LA, very plastic). Their sound in terms of the house engineer and the room itself was fine though. About 3/4 through Adam's set, it was slightly overloaded and louder, which was basically unnecessary. The Beacon is a great sounding theater and really needs no help in terms of artificial loud sounds via the sound engineer. But I digress.
A great night.
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