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August 31, 2004

making plans for a really huge xtc collection on disc

since i didn't buy any xtc cd's during the month of august, i decided to do a double-buy today. two for august; two for september.

sadly, 'english settlement' was "temporarily out of stock". i hopehopehope it's really just a temporary condition. 'english settlement' was the first xtc record i ever owned and i am quite attached to it.

purchased last month...

'skylarking'. their most popular record, and many say their best or most successful. produced by todd rundgren whose battles with andy partridge during the recording are now legendary. it is a pastoral song cycle, staring with summer and moving through the seasons. apparently when it came out in 1986 i was already a rabid xtc fan, because i bought it quickly enough to get the first version, the version with "mermaid smiled" rather than "dear god" on it. it's something of a collector's item at this point. since i didn't have a tv and didn't listen to commercial radio at the time (my first semester of college), i wasn't exposed to the "dear god" single for quite a while. when i was, i hated it. i'm still not all that fond of it. "mermaid smiled" is a much nicer song, as no bratty english schoolgirls sing on it, and i find the message in "dear god" a little heavy-handed.

'go2'. this is that famous record that's black with white typewriting all over it. the LP says "This is a RECORD COVER." the cassette says, "This is a CASSETTE COVER". when the cd version first came out, it said, "This is a CD COVER". I was saddened/bemused to note that this reissue cd acutally says, "This is a RECORD COVER". it's their second record, released in 1978 (the same year as their first record, 'white music'). this is the punk or post-punk herky-jerky xtc. it includes a wildly mysoginistic tune called "my weapon", written by an early band member (barry andrews) who left the band shortly after. i imagine now that it's probably meant to point up mysogyny rather than to promote it, but for a long time i didn't like that barry andrews guy much and i was glad he left the band.

purchased for august/september:

'black sea'. this is supercatchy early-eighties xtc. the political messages become quite heavy-handed and obvious ("living through another cuba", "majors and generals") but the songs are so utterly hook-laden that i forgive andy every time i start to get annoyed with him over the lyrics. i think this is also the first really fascinatingly photographed cover on an LP of theirs. the boys are dressed in great huge diving apparatus, you know the kind where the helmet is a cast iron ball and you've got to stay attached to a canvas hose for your air? it's probably not a record cover that made it into any books about great record covers, because it's not eyecatching in that way, but i've spent some time poring over it, looking at all the wonderful little details. it's also possible to still find versions of this with a crisp green paper bag fitted over the sleeve. i have one or two of them, one having been shredded by a cat or rabbit somewhere along the line.

'the big express'. andy's love-affair with the england of the past starts to come to the fore, along with some deeply romantic songs that i just love, especially, "seagulls screaming kiss her kiss her". if you were ever a girl who loved dorky shy glasses-wearing boys, this is the song for you, because it's got to be what they're thinking when they're walking down a cold wintry beach in england next to you, talking about something mundane and/or geeky, but you can tell they really want to kiss you instead. which came first, my love of andy, or my love of glasses-wearing dorky boys? i could not tell you. oh, and apparently they actually used a mellotron on this record. a mellotron!!

'mummer'. their first pastoral. for some reason, i resisted this record for a long time, but when i finally broke down and bought it and really listened to it, i just loved it. here you can read about english mummer plays. to go from being a punk band to being the band that could produce this record was a huge journey. by this point, i believe they'd stopped touring and that had a lot to do with their change of sound. this also saw the beginning of the "homo safari" series, a series of songs that were shoved onto EP's and 7-inches wherever they'd fit, that were instrumental, slow, strange, and experimental-- some of my favorites.

'white music'. this was their first record, released in 1978 but recorded a little earlier. they're pretty much just a punk band at this point and the music is of course insanely fast and brittle. i love to play songs like "set myself on fire" and "red" on the radio when i can, but they're so damn fast that they're impossible to mix. at the end of "red", andy sounds like he's about to have an aneurism. fortunately, he didn't. anyone who dismisses xtc as a band that just sounds like the beatles really needs to listen to 'white music' because the beatles never made anyone want to pogo to the point of exhaustion.

and that, my friends, is it until october.

Posted by lisa at August 31, 2004 06:03 PM | TrackBack

Comments

have you looked on ebay?

Posted by: joy on August 31, 2004 07:40 PM

I love the XTC album write-ups/reminiscences, though I don't have anything specific to say about these in particular. Except that "mummer" means something very different in the Philadelphia area. I used to watch the Mummers Parade on tv every year, and to me a mummer will always be a guy wearing sequins and ostrich feathers dancing to string band music.

Posted by: Sarah on September 1, 2004 12:44 AM

excellent stuff. i think the first xtc i heard was 'drums and wires' era. probably 'making plans for nigel' on the radio first. then my brother had the album. i also had the green paper bag cover from 'black sea'
after barry andrews left xtc he formed shriekback who started out in that superfunky early 80s disco-no disco way ('my spine is the bassline') and ended up overly slick and kinda pointlessly odd ('nemesis')
and speaking of my brother and xtc, he had tickets to see them (i think it was the 'english settlement' tour) but of course that was the tour that was cancelled, just days before they were supposed to hit pittsburgh. and then they never toured again...

Posted by: georg on September 1, 2004 07:01 AM

i'm trying to buy these from a small label that now represents the band, rather than places like amazon or ebay, because that way the money mostly goes to the band, and the discs are autographed. english settlement is readily available through other avenues, i just hope to get a copy that andy has touched! i mean, signed. signed. :)

i did not know that barry andrews formed shriekback! well, well. i have to admit that 'nemesis' is the only shriekback song i really know.

i think a lot of people were introduced to xtc via 'drums and wires', which i have to admit is one of my least favorites.. it'll probably be one of the last ones i decide to buy.

Posted by: lisa on September 1, 2004 09:14 AM

'bassline' and 'lined up' (both early shriekback) are definitely worth checking out. xdu may have that vinyl, even.
i'm definitely down with buying CDs as directly from the band as possible. i got the new Orbital disc from the band's website. there was no US release date listed at that point (altho the import did show up on amazon a few weeks later).
i know there are some japanese CD releases of xtc (we've got "oranges and lemons" that way) but isn't that pretty much it, other than these new ones?

Posted by: georg on September 1, 2004 09:36 AM

i was pleased to see that xtc has some digital downloads of the more recent releases available from their site; i'm a lot less interested in having those in cd form and a d/l would be perfect.

"i know there are some japanese CD releases of xtc (we've got "oranges and lemons" that way) but isn't that pretty much it, other than these new ones?"

not sure exactly what you're asking? amazon has scads of xtc available, as does the xtc web site. or if you mean the station's holdings, we've got most of the old stuff on vinyl, and a few things on cd including 'rag & bone buffet' which is a collection of singles and rarities, i think.

Posted by: lisa on September 1, 2004 10:29 AM

for some reason (i'm blaming a lack of caffeine), i was under the impression that most of xtc's back catalog was out-of-print on CD. apparently, i could have found out that this was a mistaken impression on something called the interwebnet... who knew...

back to Drums and Wires - haven't listened to it in ages but i've always had a fondness for its less-overplayed tracks, like "roads girdle the globe"

Posted by: georg on September 1, 2004 10:45 AM

my favorite XTC is English Settlement, though the first one I heard was indeed Drums and Wires.

Posted by: Sarah on September 1, 2004 11:11 AM

did you initially hear the US release of 'english settlement' (the one-disc version) or the import (the two-disc version)? i think if my first xtc record had not been the import version, i would not have become such a big fan-- my favorite songs were left off of the US release.

i'm having a lot of trouble figuring out how to approach an xtc compilation mix that really does them justice, because they've done so many disparate things in their career. punk -> lush string arrangements -> dub experiments... sigh. i don't know where to start. maybe a simple chronology would be best.

Posted by: lisa on September 1, 2004 11:23 AM

I have a couple of Shriekback albums--Oil & Gold and Big Night Music, I think. For some reason "Gunning for the Buddha" is the song that comes to mind when I think of them--must have gotten some airplay where I lived at the time but I don't even remember if I liked the song. I think I saw them live too, back in the day (before I had kids) when I used to go to shows. Sigh. Why do Lisa's posts keep reminding me of things I miss?

Posted by: minty on September 1, 2004 11:40 AM

I LOVED Oil and Gold!

ooooo...nostalgia.

Posted by: pinky on September 1, 2004 02:17 PM

My copy of English Settlement was the 2-album set. I probably bought it at Poindexter, I didn't know it was a special import or anything.

Now that I think about it, I can't remember whether I first heard Drums and Wires or Oranges and Lemons. Whichever was first, I went and bought the other immediately.

Posted by: Sarah on September 1, 2004 02:51 PM

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