Adam Ant: Antics from the Forbidden Zone

Adam Ant: Antics from the Forbidden Zone

1990

Epic Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing:  1. Zerox  2. Whip in my Valise  3. Car Trouble  4. Kick  5. Kings of the Wild Froniter  6. Antmusic  7. Dog Eat Dog  8. Los Rancheros  9. Killer in the Home  10. Stand and Deliver  11. Beat My Guest  12. Prince Charming  13. Ant Rap  14. Desperate but Not Serious  15. Place in the Country  16. Friend or Foe  17. Goody Two Shoes  18. Strip  19. Puss N' Boots  20. Apollo 9  21. Vive Le Rock

This compilation album offers an excellent overview of Adam's career up to this point. Despite the almost uniform quality of the tracks here, I'm still a little hesitant to recommend it as a first purchase. I would probably still go with "Kings of the Wild Frontier," since it's all killer. This has a few duds on it and some of the tracks don't quite come across as well  outside of the context of their original albums.

The material from the first four albums are of course the highlights of the disc, but we've already discussed those, so, let's move onto "Beat my Guest"... I was already well familiar with this song from the cassette version of "Kings of the Wild Frontier" that I discussed a few days ago...It's a fast paced  punk-type song featuring lots of yodeling, that was originally the B-side to the classic "Stand and Deliver" single. Despite its B-side status, it easily holds its own against the A-sides here.



(yodel-ay-hoo!)

( I used to watch the Price is Right just so I could see the yodeling guy...I loved the yodeling guy.)

The album also features two tracks from the 1983 album "Strip."



Which I would probably be too embarrassed to buy based on the cover alone. I try and skip the song "Strip" whenever I can.  Yuck! "Puss N' Boots," is fun though, and I always get a laugh at the deep-voiced  backing vocal in the chorus that sounds to me like  "PUSSY!"(Yes, I realize he's probably saying "PUSS'N!" But let me have my fun, please?)

The disc ends with a couple of tracks from 1985's "Vive Le Rock," which was his last album for quite awhile...



The bouncy, catchy "Apollo 9" is dangerously close to being 100% up to snuff. Go, Adam!  Uh oh, the next track is "Vive Le Rock." A big bloated 80's-fest that sucks out almost everything that made Adam Ant cool.  A bit of a sad way to end a great compilation, but there it is...

There's an awful lot of incredible stuff here, and really only 2 songs I'd ever skip, so I really do heartily recommend it. Holy shit, I can't believe there was a time when pop music wasn't completely retarded baby talk. (Even though I'll concede that "Apollo 9" does indeed have some baby talk in it....) can we get back to this, please?

Thanks, now let's check out the video for "Puss N Boots" starring future techno superstar Deadmou5 (pronounced Dead-Mow-Five):