On Being 12 and Witnessing Adam Ant Perform For the First Time
How an 80s legend awakened me to sex, new wave pop, and being joyfully outrageous.
I am a woman who loves myths, legends, fairy stories, folk tales, fantasy and science fiction. Imagine growing up on a steady diet of books that fed this love. Now mix this with a great love of music of all kinds of genres and performers and musicians. I perceive musicians, to my own admission, sometimes as an extension of those beloved characters I read about.
Some examples: I think of Kate Bush and Stevie Nicks as musical witches, Robert Plant as a reborn Taliesin, Iggy Pop as a chaotic satyr, and the Cocteau Twins as a sirenic entity that doesn’t kill you right away, but it will do it slowly with how beautiful the sound is.
Let me explain what Adam Ant was to me, in 1984.
How I discovered Adam Ant
When I was 12 years old, I babysat for a few couples in my parent’s church. One couple was very wealthy for the 1980’s, and they had cable with a television set that took three men to lift to another room. My parents had not jumped on board yet, as back then it was expensive. The only access I had, if I could manage it, was watching MTV at my neighbor’s house next door when we were cooling…
