Out of all us RLF writers, I probably own the least amount of vinyl. But for some reason, rather than vary up my listening habits, I tend to gravitate to one particular record, especially every day I come home from work: a beat up old copy of Adam Ant’s Friend or Foe that I bought at a record show a couple of years ago for about two bucks.

It might have been the best two bucks I’ve ever spent on music. I mean, come on. These days, two bucks can get you two tracks of cheerfulness on iTunes. But this record brings me more completely not guilty pleasure than I can even express.

From the first sounds of the title track, we get everything we love about the eighties. Frenetic drum beats, played mostly on snare rims, spastic and elastic bass, and repetitive lyrics. The sound of the record as a whole is very much of its time, but it doesn’t seem to lose any value today. Take the second track – “Something Girls” – the singable (and whistleable) melody with that seems to lilt heavily back and forth like a pendulum and the simplistic arrangement. And you’ve even got a ukulele playing in the back here.

What I love about this record so much is not only that it’s popariffic, and encapsulates so much of what I love in pop music of this era, it’s also very, very smartly done. Sure, some of the tracks start to sound the same after awhile, but 30 seconds into each of them, they become distinct earworms. Particularly in terms of arranging and producing, Ant knew what the hell he was doing.

I also have a problem with vinyl – I am very prone to picking up the needle and dropping it back on the same place. Again, more so than any other record I own (even the B52’s, who I’m convinced were meant to be listened to on loop), I do this with Friend or Foe. I start Side A, and I think, “Oh man, I love this song! I have to listen to that again!” But then the segways keep me pushing into the record, particularly that between the title track and “Something Girls”. I want to put every song on repeat ad naseum.

And then we get to “Desperate but Not Serious” (again, the transitions between tracks cannot be duplicated in any other format but vinyl, one true reason to hold the medium dear). I start bobbing my head and I’m transported away to nights in a smoky local alterna-bar, where only the hippest of the hipsters are dancing to this track. Following this is a surprisingly genuine track about being a one-hit wonder, “Here Comes the Grump”. The song is so thickly layered with hooks and melodic lines it’s impossible to escape.

The biggest hit Ant was known for in the 80s (the one on all the compilation CDs) doesn’t arrive until Side B, but as you move further through the record, you realize that “Goodie Two Shoes” is not the best song on the album. Not by a longshot. “Crackpot History and the Right to Lie” could beat it up on the playground after school. You get to “Try This for Sighs”, and you think you’ve had enough, but no. The hooks take over your being and force you to at least wriggle. Seriously, I am puzzled as to why every song on this record was not a huge hit each time I listen to it.

Of course, this excludes the ends to both sides – Side A ends with quite possibly the most unnecessary cover of all time, a hokey “Hello I Love You” including that signature all the way up and all the way down the guitar neck sound. The second side ends with an instrumental track that tries to emulate Morricone, “Man Called Marco”. Meh. Some of the whistling wishes the listener adieu on the right notes, but still. I’m not really a fan of pop instrumentals – if I want to listen to instrumental music, I know of better places to find it.

Other than that, the more I look back to some of the one or one plus the songs that were played on whatever constituted alternative radio in the 1980s (I was at maximum seven years old throughout that decade) and the albums that supported them, I appreciate Friend or Foe even more. I mean, seriously – how many Human League or Soft Cell albums can you make it all the way through? 23 years later, I still salute Ant for this little poppy gem, and will keep it spinning until I get violently ill from it. Which I think will be never.