Vive le Rock: Adam Ant Glam-Rocks the Woodland Park Zoo

I’ve got little patience for acts that rest their rock-star keisters on their laurels, trotting out rote renditions of The Old Hits live. So I’ll be honest: That cringeworthy possibility made me approach Adam Ant’s August 2 concert at the Woodland Park Zoo’s ZooTunes series with trepidation.

During the halcyon days of the early ’80’s, I was as smitten as any punk-and-new-wave-huffing kid by the tribal, galloping pop generated by Adam and the Ants, and by their wonderfully over-over-the-top fashion sense (a mash-up of British colonial military, tribal warpaint, pirate chic, and the New York Dolls). Rock critics dismissed the band as a bunch of image-conscious poseurs, but the kids (myself resolutely included) got it.

Frontman Adam Ant stood at the center of the maelstrom that was the Ants’ percussive, insanely hooky music. Blessed with chiseled good looks, immeasurable charisma, and a cheeky, libido-driven sense of humor, Ant led his band through several international hits, and into the ’90’s he was able to hold his own as a solo artist to boot.

Like any pop act, Ant’s popularity waxed and waned with the passage of time. But the years have been damned kind to Adam Ant’s music. Haters overlooked the fact that Adam and the Ants started out toiling at the peripheries of the first wave of punk rock; and that early songs like “Beat My Guest” and “Cartrouble” were as sucker-punch direct and awesome as anything generated by more venerated members of punk rock’s old guard. Moreover, The Ants’ breakthrough pop hits were an imaginative extension of glam’s infectious stomp and playful androgyny, and a formative sonic influence on modern bands like Spoon and The Arcade Fire.

That legacy was what shone most brightly during Adam Ant’s ZooTunes show. Nary a laurel was rested on, and the set was nothing short of great—a display that provided enough unbridled fun for Gen-X punks and wavers, while still delivering enough fire and imagination to keep nostalgic laziness at bay.

This is the ANThems tour, which meant that the set included no newer tunes, but it was the delivery that made it special. Ant surrounded himself with a young, hungry, and good-looking backing band that looked like an anime version of a rock group. They gave muscle, freshness, and plenty of rock and roll roar to the old chestnuts.

The band opened strong with a blistering version of the Ants’ puckishly funny ode to sado-masochism, “Beat My Guest.” The dual drumming of Andy Woodard and Jola, and Joel Holweger’s thick bass, laid down a rhythm section every bit as immersive and blood-pumping as anything the original Ants ever committed to posterity. From there, the quality—and the energy—never flagged.

Practically everything an Antfan could’ve wanted to hear was played, of course. “Antmusic” stomped with abandon, goosed by Will Crewsdon’s and A.P. Leach’s fat Marc Bolan riffs and that insistent double-drum attack. Ditto “Stand and Deliver,” which retained its defiant rebel yelp, only with sharper teeth and a heavier hard-rock underbelly. The military march of “Prince Charming” got downright ferocious in Ant’s and his band’s primal delivery.

Ant’s post-Friend or Foe solo output contains several great songs that were lost amidst neutered, dated production, so some of the night’s biggest revelations came with how he and his band charged up those tunes. It was flat-out exhilarating to hear how the tougher arrangements turned “Vive le Rock” and “Apollo 9” into the marauding glam stompers they always wanted to be, and how the rough edges gave “Strip” a T. Rex wriggle way more lascivious than the original studio version.

Great as the band was, though, their solid work would’ve been meaningless if Adam Ant himself weren’t in grand form. Rocking a straw hat he somehow made look incalculably cool and clad in what looked like a leather Hussar’s uniform, he posed, strutted, preened, and cradled his mic with the aplomb of someone hard-wired to command a stage. Simply put, ’tis a fool’s errand trying to take your eyes off of the guy.

Ant was in solid voice as well, plying the cabaret silliness of “Young Parisians” with arched-eyebrow theatricality and more than keeping up with the instrumental attack on the crowd-rousing dance numbers.

The band careened through a four-song encore that included a defiant, punky take on “Goody Two Shoes” and a deliciously sleazy version of the Ants’ chestnut, “Physical (You’re So).” Adam Ant finished the evening as he’d started it: Dead center, relishing the rabid crowd response, and owning the stage full-stop.

Another ’80’s mainstay, The Fixx, lent strong support. The British quintet’s art-rock variation on new wave has likewise weathered the decades well. Lead singer Cy Curnin’s resonant voice was wonderfully intact, and he remains a charismatic frontman. Best of all, the band’s sound, buttressed by Jamie West-Oram’s multifaceted guitar work and Rupert Greenall’s textural keyboards, translated famously live. The highlights of their too-brief set turned out to be impassioned versions of “Red Skies” and “Stand or Fall,” two anti-war tracks that feel all the more hauntingly relevant given the timbre of the times, and an energetic take on their biggest hit, “One Thing Leads to Another.”

Full photo gallery below.