His Dark Materials

I am watching BBC 1’s Lavish 8 Part adaptation of Philip Pullman’s epic fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, hoping it does more justice to The source trilogy than the film did. It stars James McAvoy, Ann Marie duff, and Ruth Wilson. It takes place in an alternate universe and features a twelve year old orphan named Lyra Belacqua, who lives a carefree existence at Jordan College, Oxford under the guardianship of the College’s Masterwith herFriend Roger and her daemon Pantalaimon. Daemons are the physical manifestation of humans’ souls which naturally exist outside of their bodies in the form of sentient “dæmons”, talking animal spirits.

Meanwhile her Uncle, Lord Asriel is off exploring the North Pole researching the controversial nature of an illusive substance called dust, however this could get him into serious trouble, as it is considered heresy by a mysterious, all powerful and rather sinister religious group called the “Magisterium”. Lyra then meets the seemingly pleasant and glamorous Mrs Coulter. Then when her Uncle Lord Asriel returns she witnesses the Master poison wine intended for Lord Asriel, Lyra’s rebellious and adventuring uncle. She warns Asriel not to drink the wine, then spies on his lecture about “Dust”, mysterious elementary particles attracted to adults more than to children. Asriel shows the college scholars images of a parallel universe seen through the Northern Lights amidst a concentration of Dust.

Lyra’s best friend Roger then goes missing, and is presumed kidnapped by mysterious child abductors called “Gobblers”. Mrs Coulter, a charming socialite, adopts Lyra. Before Lyra leaves Jordan, the Master secretly entrusts her with an alethiometer, a strange truth-telling device, which she quickly learns to use intuitively. After several weeks, Lyra discovers that Coulter is actually involved with the sinister Gobblers, or “General Oblation Board”, a secret Church-funded project. Horrified, Lyra flees to the Gyptians, canal-faring nomads, many of whose children have also been abducted including a Gyptian named Billy Costa And they reveal information concerning Asriel and Coulter.

So the Gyptians led by Farmer Coram journey to the Arctic with Lyra, where they believe the Gobblers are holding their children. They stop in Trollesund, where Lyra meets Iorek Byrnison, the dispossessed royal heir of the panserbjørne (armoured bears). Lyra uses her alethiometer to locate Iorek’s missing armour; in return, he and his human aeronaut friend, Lee Scoresby, join her group. She also learns that Lord Asriel has been exile on Svalbard. Trollesund’s witch consul tells the Gyptians of a prophecy about Lyra which she must not know, and that the witch clans are choosing sides for an upcoming war.

The search party continues towards the Gobbler research station at Bolvangar. Where, Guided by the alethiometer, Lyra discovers the Gobblers sinister agenda. Unfortunately Lyra is then captured and taken to Bolvangar. Meanwhile Lee Scoresby, Iorek, Roger, the Gyptians, and the witch clan of Serafina Pekkala, are in hot pursuit in Lee Scoresby’s hot air ballooon. However This does not go well and Lyra is then taken by the panserbjørne to the castle of their usurping king, Iofur Raknison who eventually confronts Iorek Bernyson to reclaim his rightful place as King of the Panserbjorne throne. Lyra, Iorek, and Roger continue onwards to Svalbard, looking for Asriel and Lyra learns more wonderful things Concerning the nature of Dust, including Parallel Universes, however she also learns that there are many who believe it is evil and who would stop at nothing to destroy it

Godzilla

The original Japanese science fiction kaiju film “Godzilla” (ゴジラ Gojira) was originally released 3 November 1954. Produced by Toho and Directed by Ishirō Honda with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya, The film stars Akira Takarada, Momoko Kōchi, Akihiko Hirata, Takashi Shimura and Haruo Nakajima who portrayed the titular character until his retirement in 1972. The film features a very large prehistoric monster called Godzilla, which has been created and repeatedly resurrected by nuclear tests in the Pacific, who travels towards Tokyo and ravages Japan, reigniting horrors of nuclear devastation to the very nation that experienced it first-hand.

It stars after a Japanese fishing boat is mysteriously destroyed near Odo Island, another ship is sent to investigate but also sinks. Reporters arrive on Odo Island to further investigate. A village elder tells one of the reporters that he believes the disasters are being caused by an ancient sea creature known as “Godzilla”. That same night, an unseen force comes ashore during a storm and attacks the village. So Paleontologist Kyohei Yamane leads an investigation crew to the island, where they discover giant radioactive footprints and a living trilobite. Soon Dr. Yamane and the villagers encounter Godzilla up a hill and Doctor Yamane races back to Tokyo to warn them that Godzilla has been resurrected by repeated nuclear tests. So ships are sent to deal with him, However they are no match for Godzilla who appears to have survived and makes for the mainland causing nationwide panic. Then Officials appeal to Dr. Yamane for ideas to kill the monster,however Yamane wants him kept alive and studied.

Meanwhile Dr. Yamane’s daughter, Emiko, is given a demonstration by Dr Yamane’s work colleague Dr. Serizawa of his recent project which horrifies her. Later That night Godzilla surfaces from Tokyo Bay and attacks the city. So a line of tall electrical towers is constructed along the coast of Tokyo, However Godzilla breaks through the electrical fences, proceeding with his rampage across Tokyo. Distraught by the devastation, Emiko asks Hideto Ogata, a salvage ship captain, for help and informs him of Dr Serizawa’s unethical project, meanwhile Dr. Yamane warns that if more nuclear tests are conducted they could have continuing trouble with monsters….

Léon Theramin

Pioneering Russian inventor Léon Theremin sadly died 3 November 1993. He was born Lev Sergeyevich Termen in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire in 15 August 1896 into a family of French and German ancestry.He had a sister named Helena.He started to be interested in electricity at the age of 7, and by 13 he was experimenting with high frequency circuits. In the seventh class of his high school before an audience of students and parents he demonstrated various optical effects using electricity.By the age of 17 he was in his last year of high school and at home he had his own laboratory for experimenting with high frequencircuits, optics and magnetic fields.

His cousin, Kirill Fedorovich Nesturkh, then a young physicist, and a singer named Wagz invited him to attend the defense of the dissertation of professor Abram Fedorovich Ioffe. Physics lecturer Vladimir Konstantinovich Lebedinskiy had explained to Theremin the then interesting dispute over Ioffe’s work on the electron.On 9 May 1913 Theremin and his cousin attended Ioffe’s dissertation defense. Ioffe’s subject was on the elementary photoelectric effect, the magnetic field of cathode rays and related investigations. In 1917 Theremin wrote that Ioffe talked of electrons, the photoelectric effect and magnetic fields as parts of an objective reality that surrounds us everyday, unlike others that talked more of somewhat abstract formula and symbols. Theremin wrote that he found this explanation revelatory and that it fit a scientific – not abstract – view of the world, different scales of magnitude, and matter. From then on Theremin endeavoured to study the Microcosm, in the same way he had studied the Macrocosm with his hand-built telescope. Later, Kyrill introduced Theremin to Ioffe as a young experimenter and physicist, and future student of the university.

Theremin recalled that while still in his last year of school, he had built a million-volt Tesla coil and noticed a strong glow associated with his attempts to ionise the air. He then wished to further investigate the effects using university resources. A chance meeting with Abram Fedorovich Ioffe led to a recommendation to see Karl Karlovich Baumgart, who was in charge of the physics laboratory equipment. Karl then reserved a room and equipment for Theremin’s experiments. Abram Fedorovich suggested Theremin also look at methods of creating gas fluorescence under different conditions and of examining the resulting light’s spectra. However, during these investigations Theremin was called up for World War I military service.Despite Theremin being only in his second academic year, the deanery of the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy recommended him to go to the Nikolayevska Military Engineering School in Petrograd (renamed from Saint Petersburg), which usually only accepted students in their fourth year. Theremin recalled Ioffe reassured him that the war would not last long and that military experience would be useful for scientific applications.

Beginning his military service in 1916, Theremin finished the Military Engineering School in six months, progressed through the Graduate Electronic School for Officers, and attained the military radio-engineer diploma in the same year. In the course of the next three and a half years he oversaw the construction of a radio station in Saratov to connect the Volga area with Moscow, graduated from Petrograd University, became deputy leader of the new Military Radiotechnical Laboratory in Moscow, and finished as the broadcast supervisor of the radio transmitter at Tsarskoye Selo near Petrograd (then renamed Detskoye Selo).

During the Russian civil war, in October 1919 White Army commander Nikolai Nikolayevich Yudenich advanced on Petrograd from the side of Detskoye Selo, apparently intending to capture the radio station to announce a victory over the Bolsheviks. Theremin and others evacuated the station, sending equipment east on rail cars. Theremin then detonated explosives to destroy the 120 meter-high antennae mast before traveling to Petrograd to set up an international listening station. There he also trained radio specialists but reported difficulties obtaining food and working with foreign experts who he described as narrow-minded pessimists. Theremin recalled that on an evening when his hopes of overcoming these obstructing experts reached a low ebb, Abram Fedorovich Ioffe telephoned him.[Ioffe asked Theremin to come to his newly founded Physical Technical Institute in Petrograd, and the next day he invited him to start work at developing measuring methods for high frequency electrical oscillations.

The day after Ioffe’s invitation, Theremin started at the institute. He worked in diverse fields: applying the Laue effect to the new field ofX-ray analysis of crystals; using hypnosis to improve measurement-reading accuracy; working with Ivan Pavlov’s laboratory; and using gas-filled lamps as measuring devices. He built a high frequency oscillator to measure the dielectric constant of gases with high precision; Ioffe then urged him to look for other applications using this method, and shortly made the first motion detector for use as a”radio watchman”.while adapting the dielectric device by adding circuitry to generate an audio tone, Theremin noticed the pitch changed when his hand moved around.

In October 1920 he first demonstrated this to Ioffe who called in other professors and students to hear. Theremin recalled trying to find the notes for tunes he remembered from when he played the cello, such as the Swan by Saint-Saëns. By November 1920 Theremin had given his first public concert with the instrument, now modified with a horizontal volume antenna replacing the earlier foot-operated volume control. He named it the “etherphone” to be known as the Терменвокс (Termenvox) in the Soviet Union, as the Thereminvox in Germany,and later as the “theremin” in the United States. Theremin went to Germany in 1925 to sell both the radio watchman and Termenvox patents to the German firm Goldberg and Sons. According to Glinsky this was the Soviet’s “decoy for capitalists” to obtain both Western profits from sales and technical knowledge.

During this time Theremin was also working on a wireless television with 16 scan lines in 1925, improving to 32 scan lines and then 64 using interlacing in 1926, and he demonstrated moving, if blurry, images on 7 June 1927.After being sent on a lengthy tour of Europe starting 1927 – including London, Paris and towns in Germany– during which he demonstrated his invention to full audiences, Theremin found his way to the United States, arriving on 30 December 1927 with his first wife Katia.He performed the theremin with the New York Philharmonic in 1928. He patented his invention in the United States in 1928 and subsequently granted commercial production rights to RCA.Theremin set up a laboratory in New York in the 1930s, where he developed the theremin and experimented with other electronic musical instruments and other inventions. These included the Rhythmicon, commissioned by the American composer and theoristHenry Cowell.In 1930, ten thereminists performed on stage at Carnegie Hall. Two years later, Theremin conducted the first-ever electronic orchestra, featuring the theremin and other electronic instruments including a “fingerboard” theremin which resembled a cello in use.Theremin’s mentors during this time were some of society’s foremost scientists, composers, and musical theorists, including composerJoseph Schillinger and physicist (and amateur violinist) Albert Einstein. At this time, Theremin worked closely with fellow Russian émigré and theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore.

Theremin was interested in a role for the theremin in dance music. He developed performance locations that could automatically react to dancers’ movements with varied patterns of sound and light.Theremin abruptly returned to the Soviet Union in 1938. At the time, the reasons for his return were unclear; some claimed that he was simply homesick, while others believed that he had been kidnapped by Soviet officials. Beryl Campbell, one of Theremin’s dancers, said his wife Lavinia “called to say that he had been kidnapped from his studio” and that “some Russians had come in” and that she felt that he was going to be spirited out of the country. Many years later, it was revealed that Theremin had returned to his native land due to tax and financial difficulties in the United States.However, Theremin himself once told Bulat Galeyev that he decided to leave himself because he was anxious about the approaching war.Shortly after he returned he was imprisoned in the Butyrka prison and later sent to work in the Kolyma gold mines. Although rumors of his execution were widely circulated and published, Theremin was, in fact, put to work in a sharashka (a secret laboratory in the Gulag camp system), together with Andrei Tupolev, Sergei Korolev, and other well-known scientists and engineers.]The Soviet Union rehabilitated him in 1956.

During his work at the sharashka, where he was put in charge of other workers, Theremin created the Buran eavesdropping system. A precursor to the modern laser microphone, it worked by using a low power infrared beam from a distance to detect the sound vibrations in the glass windows. Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the secret police organization NKVD(the predecessor of the KGB), used the Buran device to spy on the British, French and US embassies in Moscow.According to Galeyev, Beria also spied on Stalin; Theremin kept some of the tapes in his flat. In 1947, Theremin was awarded the Stalin prize for inventing this advance in Soviet espionage technology.Theremin invented another listening device called The Thing. Disguised in a replica of theGreat Seal of the United States carved in wood, in 1945 Soviet school children presented the concealed bug to U.S. Ambassador as a “gesture of friendship” to the USSR’s World War II ally. It hung in the ambassador’s residential office in Moscow, and intercepted confidential conversations there during the first seven years of the Cold War, until it was accidentally discovered in 1952. After his “release” from the sharashka in 1947, Theremin volunteered to remain working with the KGB until 1966. By 1947 Theremin had remarried, to Maria Guschina, his third wife, and they had two children: Lena and Natalia.

After working for the KGB, Theremin worked at the Moscow Conservatory of Music for 10 years where he taught, and built theremins,electronic cellos and some terpsitones (another invention of Theremin).There he was discovered by Harold Schonberg, the chief music critic of The New York Times, who was visiting the Conservatory. But when an article by his hand appeared, the Conservatory’s Managing Director declared that “electricity is not good for music; electricity is to be used for electrocution” and had his instruments removed from the Conservatory. Further electronic music projects were banned, and Theremin was summarily dismissed. In the 1970s, Léon Theremin was a Professor of Physics at Moscow State University (Department of Acoustics) developing his inventions and supervising graduate students. After 51 years in the Soviet Union Theremin started travelling, first visiting France in June 1989 and then the United States in 1991, each time accompanied by his daughter Natalia. Theremin was brought to New York by filmmaker Steven M. Martin where he was reunited with Clara Rockmore. He also made a demonstration concert at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in early 1993 before dying in Moscow, Russia in 1993.

Henri Matisse

French artist Henri Matisse sadly passed away on November 3rd 1954. Born 31 December 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Nord, he is known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. Matisse was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter commonly regarded, along with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Although he was initially labelled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.

Matisse was also recognized as a leader of an artistic movement known as Fauvism which began 1900 and continued beyond 1910. The leaders of the movement were Matisse & André Derain; who were friendly rivals, each with his own followers. Other members were Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck. The Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau (1826–1898) was the movement’s inspirational teacher who pushed his students to think outside of the lines of formality and to follow their visions. In 1905, Matisse and a group of artists exhibited together & The paintings expressed emotion with wild, often dissonant colours, without regard for the subject’s natural colours. Matisse showed Open Window and Woman with the Hat at the Salon. Matisses’s fondnes for bright and expressive colour became more pronounced after he spent the summer of 1904 painting in St. Tropez with the neo-Impressionists Signac and Henri Edmond Cross. In 1904 he painted the most important of his works , Luxe, Calme et Volupté. In 1905 he travelled southwards again to work with André Derain. His paintings of this period are characterized by flat shapes and controlled lines, and use pointillism in a less rigorous way than before.

Around April 1906 he met Pablo Picasso, & The two became lifelong friends as well as rivals and are often compared; one key difference between them is that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was much more inclined to work from imagination. The subjects painted most frequently by both artists were women and still life. Matisse and Picasso were first brought together at the Paris salon of Gertrude Stein and her companion Alice B. Toklas, who became important collectors and supporters of Matisse’s paintings during the first decade of the 20th century. They also collected many paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, and Picasso at the Salon. Gertrude Stein’s two American friends , the Cone sisters Claribel and Etta,also became major patrons of Matisse and Picasso, collecting hundreds of their paintings. The Cone collection is now exhibited in the Baltimore Museum of Art.

In 1917 Matisse relocated to Cimiez on the French Riviera, a suburb of the city of Nice. His work of the decade or so following this relocation shows a relaxation and a softening of his approach. After 1930 a new vigor and bolder simplification appeared in his work. American art collector Albert C. Barnes convinced him to produce a large mural for the Barnes Foundation, The Dance II, completed 1932; the Foundation owns several dozen other Matisse paintings. This move towards simplification and a foreshadowing of the cutout technique are also evident in his painting Large Reclining Nude.In 1941, he underwent surgery and started using a wheelchair, and was cared for by , Lydia Delektorskaya who was formerly one of his models, Then With the aid of assistants he set about creating cut paper collages, often on a large scale, called gouaches découpés. His Blue Nudes series feature prime examples of this technique he called “painting with scissors”;

During World War II Matisse, was shocked to learn that his daughter Marguerite, was active in the Résistance and had been captured & tortured in Rennes prison and sentenced to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, but avoided further imprisonment by escaping from the Ravensbrück-bound train and survived in the woods until rescued by fellow members of the Resistance. In 1947 Matisse published Jazz, a limited-edition book containing about one hundred prints based on his colorful paper cutouts accompanied by his written thoughts. In the 1940s he also worked as a graphic artist and produced black-and-white illustrations for several books and over one hundred original lithographs at the Mourlot Studios in Paris. Matisse was much admired and repeatedly referred to by the Greek Nobelist poet Odysseas Elytis. Elytis was introduced to Matisse through their common friend Tériade, during the work on the Cutouts. Matisse had painted the wall of the dining room of Tériade’s residence, the Villa Natacha in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.

In 1951 Matisse finished designing the interior, the glass windows and the decorations of the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence, often referred to as the Matisse Chapel. This project was the result of the close friendship between Matisse and Sister Jacques-Marie’ He had hired her as a nurse and model in 1941 before she became a Dominican nun and they met again in Vence and started the collaboration. In 1952 he established a museum dedicated to his work, the Matisse Museum in Le Cateau, and this museum is now the third-largest collection of Matisse works in France. Matisse’s final work was the design for a stained-glass window installed at the Union Church of Pocantico Hills near the Rockefeller estate north of New York City. “It was his final artistic creation; the maquette was on the wall of his bedroom when he died in November of 1954 of a heart attack at the age of 84. He is interred in the cemetery of the Monastère Notre Dame de Cimiez, near Nice. A large amount of Nazi plundered art worth €1bn in Munich, including lost works by Picasso and Matisse, has also recently been discovered.

Adam Ant

English Singer- songwriter and actor Adam Ant, (Adam and the Ants) (Stuart Leslie Goddard), was born on 3 November 1954, in Marylebone, London. He attended Robinsfield Infants School, where he created a considerable stir by throwing a brick through the head-teacher’s office window on two consecutive days. Afterwards, Goddard was placed under the supervision of teacher Joanna Saloman, who encouraged him to develop his abilities in art. Goddard then attended Barrow Hill Junior School where he boxed, was a member of the cricket team. He passed the eleven plus exam to gain a place at St Marylebone Grammar School which was an all boys school where he enjoyed history lessons, played rugby and later became a school prefect. After taking and passing six O levels and three A levels in English, History and Art, Goddard then attended Hornsey College of Art to study graphic design and for a time was a student of Peter Webb. He later dropped out of Hornsey, short of completing his BA, to focus on a career in music.

The first band Goddard joined was Bazooka Joe, in which he played bass guitar. In 1975 Goddard saw the Sex Pistols at Saint Martin’s School of Art, London, who were supporting Bazooka Joe. This inspired him to leave Bazooka Joe and form a group of his own called the B-Sides. Whilst at Hornsey, Goddard married fellow student Carol Mills, and lived at her parents’ residence in Muswell Hill. Shortly after, he developed anorexia with tragic results and After Overdosing and After having his stomach pumped, he was sent to Colney Hatch mental hospital in North London. Upon his discharge from the hospital, Goddard renamed himself Adam Ant (Adam being the first man and Ant because “they are resilient little buggers”) with Mills renaming herself Eve. Ant remade connections with fellow former B-Sides Lester Square and Andy Warren and together with drummer Paul Flanagan, they formed Adam and the Ants (initially named just ‘The Ants’) in 1977, with the inaugural band meeting held in the audience at a Siouxsie and the Banshees performance at the Roxy Club in London’s Covent Garden.

Adam and the Ants started as part of the burgeoning punk rock movement. Ant later acted in Derek Jarman’s seminal “punk” film Jubilee in 1977, as Adam and the Ants were beginning to gig around London with manager Jordan from the SEX Boutique on Kings Road. His debut as a recording artist was the song “Deutscher Girls”, which featured on the film’s soundtrack, along with “Plastic Surgery” which was performed in the film itself, and was re-released as a single in 1982. The band toured extensively around the UK, but proved to be unpopular with much of the British music press who disliked their fetishistic lyrics and imagery. Late 1979 saw the release of their début album Dirk Wears White Sox (1979, Do It Records), with Matthew Ashman on guitar, Leigh Gorman on bass and Dave Barbarossa on drums.

Adam Ant approached Malcolm McLaren (the manager of The Sex Pistols) and asked him to manage the band. McLaren subsequently took the rest of the Ants from the original group when he introduced the singer Annabella Lwin and began the process of honing Bow Wow Wow for chart success. A new version of Adam and the Ants was formed with Marco Pirroni (guitar), Kevin Mooney (bass guitar), and two drummers, Terry Lee Miall and Chris Hughes (ex-Dalek I Love You), who used the name “Merrick.” The band signed a major label deal with CBS Records and recorded Kings of the Wild Frontier during the summer of 1980. That album was an enormous hit in the United Kingdom and the “Antmania” that ensued put the band at the forefront of the New Romantic movement. The single ‘Antmusic’ went to No. 2 on the UK singles chart by December 1980. Following the abrupt departure of Mooney in February 1981, the well known bassist Gary Tibbs, formerly of Roxy Music, joined the band.

In November 1981, Adam & the Ants released another highly successful album, Prince Charming. The album featured two United Kingdom No. 1 singles – “Stand and Deliver” and the title track “Prince Charming” – as well as the No. 3 UK hit “Ant Rap”. This trio of singles were promoted by some of the most lavish music videos of the period, and paved the way for Adam Ant’s later acting career. The work schedule Adam Ant imposed upon himself was punishing. In March 1982, feeling certain band members “lacked enthusiasm” Ant disbanded the group. A few months after the split Ant launched a solo career (though he retained Marco Pirroni as guitarist and co-songwriter). Merrick returned to the band Dalek I Love You and subsequently produced many hits for Tears for Fears. After the split, Ant went solo, taking his song writing partner Pirroni with him. Merrick also briefly stayed aboard as drummer/producer for the UK edition of the first solo single “Goody Two Shoes” and demos for the upcoming Friend or Foe album before moving on to other production work, while Miall and Tibbs’ contracts were left to expire. The “Friend or Foe” album also produced another top ten single, “Friend or Foe”, which reached no.9 in September 1982.

Ant recruited a new band for touring, consisting of new dual drummers Bogdan Wiczling (ex-Fingerprintz) and Barry Watts (ex-Q-Tips), plus guitarist Cha Burns (also ex-Fingerprintz), bassist Chris Constantinou and the former Q-Tips brass section of trumpeter Tony Hughes and twin saxophonists Stewart van Blandamer and Steve Farr. The new band made its debut at London’s Astoria Theatre on 1 October 1982. A US tour began in New York on 8 November. On the nineteenth tour date on 20 February 1983 in Cleveland, Ohio, Ant suffered a knee injury onstage (a relapse of a previous injury suffered while filming Jubilee in 1977), forcing the postponement and/or cancellation of dates throughout February and March while he recuperated. Ant eventually returned to performing, performing as a guest on the NBC’ show Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, joined onstage by Diana Ross. He resumed the US tour, completed on 18 May 1983 at the Bronco Bowl in Dallas, Texas. During his recuperation from the knee injury, Ant worked with Pirroni on new material that formed the basis of Ant’s second solo album Strip which contained a top ten single, “Puss’n’boots”, which reached no.5 in October 1983. Ant formally unveiled a new four-piece band at the 1984 Montreux Pop Festival. In 1984 Ant released “Apollo 9”, followed by the album Vive Le Rock. Between 1985 and 2003 Ant also appeared in over two dozen films and television episodes. between December 1982 and February 1995, Ant’s only public live concerts outside North America were Live Aid,a 1987 fanclub party performance, and a September 1994 EMI corporate event in Brighton. In 1990, Ant returned with Manners & Physique, a collaboration with André Cymone, a solo artist and an early member of Prince’s band. The album featured the songs Room at the Top, Rough Stuff and Can’t set rules about Love. In 1995, Ant released the album, Wonderful. Ant also played three shows at Shepherds Bush Empire in London and did a mini tour of Virgin Record Shops playing selected tunes from the album Wonderful and signing records. Adam and his band also played shows in Dublin, Glasgow, Middlesbrough and Stoke-on-Trent.

In 1996, Ant and Pirroni recorded two new songs, Lamé and Inseminator, for the soundtrack to Ant’s latest film Drop Dead Rock. They also recorded a cover version of the T.Rex song Dandy in the Underworld. The duo continued to demo other songs around this time, including such titles as Tough Blokes, Justine, Picasso Meets Gary Cooper and Call Me Sausage. They also guested with such bands as Dweeb and Rachel Stamp. In 2001, following the 11 September attacks, Ant recorded a charity single for New York firefighters; a double A-side of Neil Diamond’s America with an X-rated new song of his own entitled Big Trouble.

Ant was poised to join the 1980s-focused Here & Now tour in January 2002, but charged with throwing a car alternator through a pub window and carrying a firearm, after receiving threats to himself and his young daughter from the jealous husband of a female Camden Market stallholder whom he sought to confront at the Prince of Wales pub in Camden, pub patrons then mocked his appearance and he was asked to leave as it was a private members’ club. Some hours later, finding a discarded car alternator in the street, Ant returned and threw it through the pub window. The broken glass injured a local musician. Chased through the backstreets of Camden by pub security and others, he then pulled out an old World War II-era starting pistol, once the property of his father. Returning afterwards to the main street, he was arrested by a police patrol, gun in hand. Ant was brought to court at the Old Bailey. The charges against him, which included criminal damage and threatening members of the public, were reduced to a single count of causing affray, to which he pleaded guilty. He was fined £500 and ordered to psychiatric care with a suspended sentence. In June 2003, he was arrested again by police after a conflict with a neighbour resulted in him attempting to smash in the neighbour’s patio door with a shovel, and then lying down on the concrete floor of a café basement with his trousers pulled down, curling up, and trying to sleep. Once again he was charged with affray and criminal damage and spent time in psychiatric wards. In September of that year he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983, and spent a further six months receiving in-patient psychiatric care. He was eventually granted a conditional discharge by the judge at Highbury Magistrates Court.

Ant made a guest appearance on an EP, Mike’s Bikes by former Ants bassist Kevin Mooney’s new band, the Lavender Pill Mob, on Mooney’s own label Le Coq Musique. Ant provided lead vocals for Black Pirates, a reworking of the song Chicken Outlaw by Mooney’s earlier band Wide Boy Awake. In 2003 a television special entitled The Madness of Prince Charming was aired in the UK in 2003 documenting Ant’s career and his struggle with mental illness (he was diagnosed as suffering with bipolar disorder). In 2006, he published his autobiography, Stand & Deliver. In 2010 Adam Ant registered his new label Blue Black Hussar Ltd. as a private limited company at Companies House. Ant’s also made his first live appearance since The Bloomsbury in 2007 at “Through The Looking Glass” bookshop in London Performing “Ants Invasion”, “Cartrouble”, “Physical”, and a cover of Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” and guested at a Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction gig at the Pipeline Bar, London E1, in which he provided lead vocals for the band’s Top 20 hit “Prime Mover”. Ant also performed another low key show at the Southwark Playhouse on Saturday 20 March. In 2010, Adam Ant was returned to psychiatric hospital in London where he remained until mid-June, before returning home. He performed a solo show at the Dark Mills festival at London’s Colour House Theatre in September for the launch party of the Illamasqua store on 16 September (at which Boy George served as DJ), and a guest spot at the Monster Raving Loony Party’s annual conference in Fleet, Hampshire.

Ant also performed at the Union Chapel, London in October and headlined at the Scala where he was joined by a trio of female backing singers which included Georgina Bailie and Tiffany Vivienne Brown. He also topped the bill at a tribute concert for former Ant Matthew Ashman at the same venue, in a show also featuring Bow Wow Wow, Chiefs of Relief, Agent Provocateur and London rock act Slam Cartel. Ant and Baillee guested onstage at the Christmas party of West Rocks at Shepherds Bar in Shepherds Bush and played live again at Proud, Camden on 5 January 2011, at Madame Jojo’s in Soho and played two nights at the 100 Club. In 2011 Ant played shows in Paris and in March 2011, BBC Radio 4 transmitted an interview of Ant by John Humphrys for the On the Ropes series in which Ant discussed his bipolar condition and its impact on his career. Ant also embarked on an eleven date UK concert tour from May to June 2011 which was expanded to fifteen dates due to popular demand. The tour closed at the Manchester Academy. Ant also toured Seaside resorts and appeared at Hard Rock Calling 2011 in Hyde Park alongside Rod Stewart and Stevie Nicks Ant also performed at the Soho Festival in London’s Wardour Street. Ant appeared with his tour band in Bedford in September before reuniting with 2010 band members Crewdson and Love for a charity show on board HMS Belfast. Ant embarked on another tour, which was increased from12 dates to an eventual 21 dates running from Frome to Norwich, (with a non-tour acoustic gig at a benefit event for London’s Wilton Hall. Ant also performed at a charity event at Ronnie Scott’s. Ant also released the Sex Drugs and HIV compilation album featuring Ant’s version of Get A Grip.

An exhibition of photographs of Ant – entitled Adam Ant – Dandy in the Underworld ran from 7 March 2012 to 29 April 2012 at Proud Camden in London, featuring images of Ant throughout his career, including the work of Chris Duffy, Gerard McNamara, Jill Furmanovsky, Denis O’Regan, Chris Cuffaro, Hannah Domagala, Robert Matheu, David Corio and Janette Beckman. To promote this exhibition, Ant performed a solo charity concert at the gallery although he was heckled by an inebriated Chrissie Hynde. Ant toured Australia playing Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane, plus an appearance on the Adam Hills for the Gordon Street Tonight show. Ant also made further Australian TV appearances including a return to Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight performing of Stand and Deliver and new album track Vince Taylor. He also performed Goody Two Shoes, Ants Invasion, Physical, Stand and Deliver, Antmusic Prince Charming. In 2012 Ant headlined at the Bearded Theory festival in Derby and also performed the at Parkpop festival in the Zuiderpark in the Hague, Netherlands, which was broadcast on Dutch national TV. Ant also headlined at the Silverstone Classic Festival, Rewind in Perth, Camp Bestival and the Summer Sundae Weekender Festival. Ant also embarked on a US Tour in 2010 starting in Los Angeles and finishing in Anaheim. The Blueblack Hussar Tour, commenced in Glasgow and finished at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire and released the single Cool Zombie, b/w Gun in Your Pocket. New Year’s Eve 2012, Ant and his full band appeared on Jools Holland’s New Year Hootenanny performing Vince Taylor, Stand And Deliver and Antmusic. Ant also re-recorded the song Who’s A Goofy Bunny Then? in tribute to the late Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. The song took its name from a term of endearment bestowed upon McLaren by Ant – referring to his “quite prominent teeth”. His latest album ‘Adam Ant is The Blueblack Hussar” was released 2013, containing the song Gun in Your Pocket, Shrink,”Hard Men, Tough Blokes”,”punkyoungirl” and “Cool Zombie”. It features collaborations with former 3 Colours Red guitarist Chris McCormack, Ant’s long-time songwriting partner Marco Pirroni, Andy Bell and Morrissey’s writing partner Boz Boorer. Ant embarked on a UK Tour during April and May culminating in a gig at The Roundhouse on May. A free concert in Rome took place on June and a second full length 40 plus show US tour startingJuly in San Diego and finishing September in Anaheim. Ant also appeared on NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.