Adam Ant and English Beat Review (Minneapolis) and Sunday Live Music Calendar

Here is the Sunday calendar, afterward, you can catch my review of Adam Ant and The English Beat in Minneapolis last night. I will be sending out another post later today with the new release album list, thoughts, and playlist. Normally I would add that here, but I have been traveling and behind on writing. Supposed to get a foot of snow here in Minneapolis today, so I should have plenty of time to get it done. Tomorrow, we will post the new calendar for the week. Make sure to subscribe, so you get it in your inbox and get a jump on next week's happenings.

Tonight, popular smooth jazz artist Brian Culbertson will perform at Steelhouse Omaha. Is that the first jazz act there? Denver prog-rock band Squeeky Feet will be at Beach House Bar and Grill with Secret Formula and Mr. McMoney. Philly band Mo Lowda and The Humble are at Barnato this evening, and our friends Marty Bush and Natalie Prauser make their way to Lincoln at 1867. I talked about them in yesterday’s post.

Here are the rest of today’s live music events.

Sunday March 24th

Marty Bush and Natalie Prauser at 1867 (Lincoln)

Squeaky Feet and Mr. McMoney with Secret Formula at Beach House Bar and Grill 7PM door (Omaha)

DJ ARahb at Bar 415 (Omaha)

Somnuri and The Machete Archive at Cosmic Eye 6:30PM (Lincoln)

Mo Lowda and The Humble at Barnato 7PM (Omaha)

Brian Culbertson at Steelhouse Omaha 7PM (Omaha)

Gunnar Guenette at Mouth of the South Old Market 11AM (Omaha)

Brian Eckleberry at Mouth of the South Lakeside 11AM (Omaha)

Adam Ant and The English Beat at Uptown Theater-Minneapolis March 23rd

So, my story is that I have tried to see Adam Ant five times, actually six, with the one reschedule that turned into a cancellation. I never got to see him, though, until last night. 

Most of my love of 80’s music happened for me in the 90's, as during the 80’s my pre-teen and teenage selves were deep into the hair metal. When I started working at the record store in 1991, I delved deep into a lot of music. One of the first 80’s acts I deep-dived into was Adam Ant, and at the time I had to order all of these expensive imports to fully experience his catalog. And I did. 

Just a couple years later, I made my first attempt to see him and drove to Minneapolis, only to arrive at 1st Avenue with a poster in the window with a cancelled banner across it, like out of a scene from a movie. I drove to Minneapolis thirty years later, yesterday, with some doubt as to whether it would happen again. Adam Ant can cancel; he has mental health needs that he has to consider. I was more worried about the snow this time. Thankfully, it’s arriving today, and yesterday was quite pleasant. 

So we get into the Uptown Theater, which is a mid-sized venue, and my guess is that when they put seats down, it’s a little over 1000 people. It was sold out. The English Beat opened, and the irony of this is that they are the band that is not local that I have seen the most. I counted this as number 17 for seeing frontman Dave Wakeling in some form or fashion as The Beat, English Beat, or Special Beat. My last time seeing Dave was not good. He didn’t sound good, he did not seem happy, and the set list was not where I liked it, with too much focus on the ska songs and not enough on the songs I prefer, like “I Confess” and the more “new wave songs." Though I love the ska songs also. 

I went into the English Beat set with low expectations, but maybe that last show was a bad night. He sounded like his old self vocally tonight; he was back to his old personality on stage, and even though he didn’t do “I Confess,"  he did do “Doors of Your Heart” and “Save It For Later." He, of course, was in General Public as well, and sang “Tenderness” and the Staple Singers cover of “I’ll Take You There.” They also did “Twist and Crawl,"  “Too Nice to Talk To,"  Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown,"  “Mirror in the Bathroom,” and more. If I could get one more “Ackee 1,2,3” “Best Friend,"  “I Confess,” and “Never Die” off the 2018 album live one more time before he hangs it up, that would be great. This was a good set from them though. 

Adam Ant took the stage to the song “Antmusic” while all five members of the band played rhythm on the two drum sets and three bass drum set-ups. The two drummers would go all night in tandem and would be the hardest working members of the night. Adam was dressed in a toned-down version of his dandy regalia and wore a brimmed hat with scarves. He was in great shape, and the mirage of the 80’s pop star was intact on stage. He danced, swayed, and did a lot of sudden moves, sometimes to the rhythms happening and sometimes not. During the first few songs, he sounded good, but he really dial it in after that. Ant is not known as some vocal powerhouse, and so many of his songs are kind of chant-ish punky sing-a-longs, but you want him to sound like Adam Ant, and he sure did. That mirage held up, too.

I didn’t think he would engage the crowd much after he only said a few awkward “thank you"s” during the first few songs. We didn’t get any real stories or anything, but he set up sing-a-longs, introduced songs, and played to the crowd a bit. This was my concern. You always want to see the artist you love, doing what they love because they still love it. Not because they have to. That is always a concern, but more so here than usual. Thankfully, it at least came off like he was still loving doing this.

The set list was as good as one could ask for. Twenty songs that really covered his entire career up to Wonderful. The only thing left off was that there was nothing from his overlooked 2013 album, Adam Ant Is The BlueBlack Hussar Marrying The Gunner’s Daughter. Of course I could add 20 songs I would want to hear just as much as the 20 I did hear, and then 40 more I sure wouldn’t mind hearing, but Adam represented his catalog well tonight. I was surprised he did “Room at the Top,” as that album really sounds dated as it didn’t fit with a lot of his catalog, but that one gave me a lot of joy. I love that cheeseball album probably more than most do. He did a lot of the early Ants stuff with real vigor, helped by his crack band that did what little propping up needed to happen, but did what needed to happen. “Car Trouble,"  “Dog Eat Dog,"  "Xerox,"  Kings of the Wild  Frontier," “Beat My  Guest," “Ants  Invasion," and “Stand and Deliver” had all of the bondage punk swagger still.

I didn’t expect “Killer in the Home” to be the highlight for me, but it was. That song really stands up, and it was a song where Adam’s vocals had to do a little more range and acrobatics than many of his songs, and it sounded perfect. At that moment, I knew I was not seeing a past his prime artist that should have called it a day, but I was seeing Adam f’ng Ant, a musician and performer still able to deliver. He did “Strip” and "Wondeful,” which the fans who were there because of youthful crushes on him went wild for. I love those songs, but they were the two that didn't quite land  live for me. He would be late in the set to do “Red Scab,"  which is another nice surprise as it is a B-side, but Trent Reznor covered it-so that is probably why it makes the set list. I was glad it did, as that was another highlight. He encored with a fun “Goody Two Shoes,” and all of the band members went back to rhythm for a fantastic version of “Physical (You’re So).”

Would I have liked to see Adam Ant thirty years ago? Ten years ago? Last year? Sure. Honestly, though, he was touring on new albums then, and last year would have been a 45 minute set. I think this ended up being the best time for me to get to see him, if it was only going to be one time. I don’t think I would have gotten that full of a setlist covering that much of his career, and that is the happy ending to this story.