Adam and the Ants:"Prince Charming"

In 1981, a young boy was given this album while he was living in Kuwait. Granted, the album was on a very dodgy bootleg cassette (as they all were then), but he played it over and over again. Something in the music stirred something deep inside, and that album became one of that boy's favourites. It was also probably the first album that boy ever owned (we won't mention Shaky by Shakin' Stevens, or The Kids from Fame - well, at least not here).

Fast-forward 23 years (23! Good grief!), and now Prince Charming has been remastered, repackaged and re-released, (as have Dirk Wears White Sox and Kings of the Wild Frontier, with the others to come) along with a few bonus demo tracks. The album itself is just brilliant, from the huge and storming opening track, "Scorpios" with one of the greatest drum sequences in history, through the baroque and quite splendid (and gloriously named) "Picasso Visita El Planeta De Los Simios", and out to the hot and passionate decadence of "S.E.X." (which I'm amazed still made it onto the bootleg tape in Kuwait). And that's all without mentioning the two most famous tracks on the album, "Prince Charming" and "Stand and Deliver". Who can forget the videos? The Dandy Highwaymen, and Diana Dors doing the "Prince Charming" (brilliantly revived in the latest Pimm's advert), are both iconic moments in pop history.

The remastering has really helped the album, removing all the hiss, and really allowing the incredibly high production values to shine through. The track breaks on the CD have been readjusted from the last CD release (when "Mile High Club" and "Ant Rap" were merged into one track, and the reprise of "Los Rancheros" was given its own track for some reason), so the whole package flows much more seamlessly. The demo tracks at the end of the album, are interesting, as they show how the songs developed, as well as highlighting how much all the production helped the finished product.

Punk? No, not really. But this was probably the first great pop album of the eighties - and that's not a bad thing at all.