Xmas message

Just in case anyone browses by, I am on holiday until January, so there will be no posts till then.

Happy Xmas!

Come back in 2006 for Terry Lee Miall and more from Marco.
Maybe I can get some of the other Ants interested too, watch this space!

AM4SP!

Ant Gif(t) for you!

These pix and others can be found at AntFan.com





















I shall be adding more over xmas from my collection.

updated burundi mp3

Ok sorry, the previous mp3 of burundi was a remix that came out later, this is the original version

Marco addendum....

My memory's failing me, Burundi black isn't warriors of the drum speeded up, but if you play it at 45 you have c39 c60 c90 go.

This is the orginal album (which I still have) that the burundi beat comes from (well you know what I mean)
you would probably spot other familar vocal phases- Antmusic, Prince Charming etc.....

After thoughts by Mr Pirroni

Of course the real inspiration for the whole Ants/Bow wow wow thing was BURUNDI BLACK by BURUNDI BLACK, an astounding single that came out in the early 70s (i think)and a big favorite with skinheads.
I dont know anything about it except it seems to be the original recording of "warriors of the drum" played at 45 and overdubbed onto,remember this was at least 10/15 years before sampling was even thought of.

burundi black

It was on the SEX jukebox but didnt make it to the Sex album.
This is really where it all comes from, it was the record that Malcolm played to Adam and started the whole thing off.

Marco on Kings and Press Darlings

Today we have Marco's comments on Kings of the Wild Frontier and Press Darlings- enjoy!

Kings was played regularly right throughout your touring career with Adam, and was drummed up spectacularly with the 2 drummers on the wonderful tour. There are 2 versions of it- how much of a headache was it to record?

It took ages as we didnt really know what it was supposed to be, it has no real chourus or even very much music at all. Adam talked about it for ages and I listened, desperately trying to find a way into this idea and still have it be commerical. At one point we were thinking of working with John Kongas who had done Tokoloshe Man and "Hes gonna step on you again" which were records we both really liked. Adam also wanted to work with the drummers of "ipi tombei", I wished we had done, that would have been completely unexpected but we already had two drummers and the logistics were daunting. Now it would be easy but we had no experience in recording anything except in the standard way at that time.

What is it with Adam and Sausages- in version one on Antbox he has a middle line about "all that grunty and groany business isn't worth a sausage"- Ii hope he always meant to remove that line!??

Actually no he didn't, I loved that line, but the last part was too long and something had to go.

The video looks very cool even now and the song always sounds great when you play it loud and I have to admit it's one of my favourite Ants singles and many an Ant fan's too.

Press Darlings was played a bit too during 1980 and 81- the recorded version sounds pretty much as the Ants played in during 79. What were your thoughts about that as a song? Who chose to do it?

I thought it was ok, Adam wanted to do it as his comeback at the press but I thought it was giving them too much creedence and really who cares what they thought? Adam always wanted to be loved and I wanted to be hated (which did cause some problems) but we did it anyway. I thought the intro was a bit lackluste so I added that Elected/ dream home heartache/out of the blue type chord sequence on the front. But we never played it very well, it needed that staccatto attack that the old Ants had, we were too "wall of sound" to do that.

It had an Alice Cooper bit added too sometimes- Schools Out- who's idea to do that?

Probably mine, I always liked puting references to other songs in things, it was also was coz Alice was coming to a show in LA and we wanted to crawl to him coz we loved him. Lovely guy tho, really funny. It's weird when the people you idolized as a kid know your name and say Hello, and you just chat about muso things - "How longs the tour?", "Who's doing your sound?", "Here's my number lets do lunch", its still weird.

Tell me something I might not know about Kings.

It had a vocal intro that went "kings of the wild frontieeeeeer" or something, but it was rubbish and we elbowed it and wrote a new one.

Ants Family Tree

Ok this is one of the first scans from the collection of cuttings I have been amassing. I guess it was done by Pete Frame as he did all these. I don't know where this came from though I think it's from a book not a magazine. I have a larger A3 one of these from Sounds, when I can find a way to scan that I will.

**edit added, doh, it says Pete Frame bottom left corner, so yes it was done by him!**