Adam & the Ants: The Peel Sessions
So, I've got this huge CD collection, and this blog, so I decided to make my way through the collection and blog my reviews.
Artist: Adam & the Ants
Title: The Peel Sessions
Acquired: Purchased, early 1990s at the Exclusive Company on Madison's west side
Rating: 3/10
I couldn't decide which CD I wanted to review first, so I decided to grab the first CD from my alphabetically-arranged CD collection (yes, this does mean that there will be no ABBA reviews appearing on this blog).
Back in the early 1990s, the concept of a CD being "reissued" with "bonus tracks" was either not yet invented, or at least not yet prevalent. Recording artists basically had two buckets of recorded music: that which was good enough to release, and that which was not. A fan wanting to hear things from the second bucket generally had to find a place where he or she could purchase "bootleg" CDs in order to quench their completist thirst - there was no internet music trading, no youtube, and the only songs that inhabited a sort of musical gray area were non-album track B sides on singles - legitimately available, but not widely heard if, like me, you were the sort of person who bought full length albums almost exclusively.
Thus it was pretty exciting to find a CD of the Peel Sessions for Adam & the Ants for this antperson, containing not one, not two, not three, but four entire songs otherwise unavailble on CD or LP, interspersed with six other songs that had previously appeared on Dirk Wears White Sox or Kings of the Wild Frontier.
The first song, Lou, opens up pretty nice-sounding. This is music that would sound pretty good on a talk radio program coming back in from a commercial before the host starts ranting about politics or sports or whatever. Imagine how my teenage face must have fallen when the vocals kick in. This is not Adam Ant at all, but some person named "Jordan" screaming - er, make that screeching - at the top of their lungs. Pretty much ruins the song.
A little wikipedia research reveals that "Jordan" served as "a highly visible icon of the London punk subculture," in addition to briefly dating and managing Adam Ant. Nowadays, she's a veterinary nurse. What she is not, and was not, however, is a singer. And this is not coming from someone completely averse to unusual vocal techniques - but there is good screaming, and there is bad screaming. This is bad screaming.
Fortunately, the other nine tracks are sung by Adam. The recording dates predate Dirk Wears White Sox, so this is the "Jubilee"-era, black leather-clad, Adam Ant, not the pirate garb, pounding tribal drums Adam Ant. The less-interesting and -entertaining Adam Ant, in short.
Of the "unreleased" songs that show up here, we have It Doesn't Matter and Friends, which would later show up on the B Side Babies CD, and Ligotage, which to my knowledge has not shown up elsewhere. I prefer the version of It Doesn't Matter that is offered here to the version that is on B Side Babies, because the lyrics here make more sense, although they do still suck. Picking a favorite version of It Doesn't Matter, it should be noted, is akin to choosing whether one prefers elephant dung deep-fried or boiled.
I also prefer this version of Friends to the B Side Babies version. I think it benefits from the simpler arrangement presented here.
We also have songs that predate their finished state, such as Zerox (sic) without the middle section, and You're So Physical without the second verse (in its place the first verse is repeated). Compared to Dirk Wears White Sox, Zerox is slower, while Animals & Men is given a faster runthrough. All songs have many fewer overdubbed parts compared to the Dirk recordings.
Assessing the CD in whole, what you get here that's worth hearing (for only diehard Adam Ant fans) is the first few seconds of Lou, the mediocre unreleased number Ligotage, the fast version of Animals & Men, and versions of It Doesn't Matter and Friends that are arguably better than on B Side Babies. In other words, not much.
Artist: Adam & the Ants
Title: The Peel Sessions
Acquired: Purchased, early 1990s at the Exclusive Company on Madison's west side
Rating: 3/10
I couldn't decide which CD I wanted to review first, so I decided to grab the first CD from my alphabetically-arranged CD collection (yes, this does mean that there will be no ABBA reviews appearing on this blog).
Back in the early 1990s, the concept of a CD being "reissued" with "bonus tracks" was either not yet invented, or at least not yet prevalent. Recording artists basically had two buckets of recorded music: that which was good enough to release, and that which was not. A fan wanting to hear things from the second bucket generally had to find a place where he or she could purchase "bootleg" CDs in order to quench their completist thirst - there was no internet music trading, no youtube, and the only songs that inhabited a sort of musical gray area were non-album track B sides on singles - legitimately available, but not widely heard if, like me, you were the sort of person who bought full length albums almost exclusively.
Thus it was pretty exciting to find a CD of the Peel Sessions for Adam & the Ants for this antperson, containing not one, not two, not three, but four entire songs otherwise unavailble on CD or LP, interspersed with six other songs that had previously appeared on Dirk Wears White Sox or Kings of the Wild Frontier.
The first song, Lou, opens up pretty nice-sounding. This is music that would sound pretty good on a talk radio program coming back in from a commercial before the host starts ranting about politics or sports or whatever. Imagine how my teenage face must have fallen when the vocals kick in. This is not Adam Ant at all, but some person named "Jordan" screaming - er, make that screeching - at the top of their lungs. Pretty much ruins the song.
A little wikipedia research reveals that "Jordan" served as "a highly visible icon of the London punk subculture," in addition to briefly dating and managing Adam Ant. Nowadays, she's a veterinary nurse. What she is not, and was not, however, is a singer. And this is not coming from someone completely averse to unusual vocal techniques - but there is good screaming, and there is bad screaming. This is bad screaming.
Fortunately, the other nine tracks are sung by Adam. The recording dates predate Dirk Wears White Sox, so this is the "Jubilee"-era, black leather-clad, Adam Ant, not the pirate garb, pounding tribal drums Adam Ant. The less-interesting and -entertaining Adam Ant, in short.
Of the "unreleased" songs that show up here, we have It Doesn't Matter and Friends, which would later show up on the B Side Babies CD, and Ligotage, which to my knowledge has not shown up elsewhere. I prefer the version of It Doesn't Matter that is offered here to the version that is on B Side Babies, because the lyrics here make more sense, although they do still suck. Picking a favorite version of It Doesn't Matter, it should be noted, is akin to choosing whether one prefers elephant dung deep-fried or boiled.
I also prefer this version of Friends to the B Side Babies version. I think it benefits from the simpler arrangement presented here.
We also have songs that predate their finished state, such as Zerox (sic) without the middle section, and You're So Physical without the second verse (in its place the first verse is repeated). Compared to Dirk Wears White Sox, Zerox is slower, while Animals & Men is given a faster runthrough. All songs have many fewer overdubbed parts compared to the Dirk recordings.
Assessing the CD in whole, what you get here that's worth hearing (for only diehard Adam Ant fans) is the first few seconds of Lou, the mediocre unreleased number Ligotage, the fast version of Animals & Men, and versions of It Doesn't Matter and Friends that are arguably better than on B Side Babies. In other words, not much.
posted by RDConz at 11:51 AM
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