Beyond The Drums And The Wires Lies...XTC: Explode Together: The Dub Experiments 78-80

This compact disc (issued at the same time as Rag & Bone Buffet)
compiles the GO+ EP (initially released with Go 2) and Mr. Partridge's Take Away/The Lure Of Salvage LP (released in early 1980). Taking preexisting tracks of songs - mainly from Drums & Wires - and re-processing them, either taking drum, keyboard parts and adding effects, slowing them down, turning them up/down, re-recording vocals, guitar, whathaveyou and giving them a whole new identity. The experiment surprisingly works most of the time. Partridge was obviously enjoying himself in the studio and it makes for a truly unique listening experience.

If you're looking for an album of catchy singles of joyous XTC pop - don't look here. This is very much a "dub" album in the truest sense of it's original meaning. Which was very popular in reggae music in the second half of the 1970's in the UK punk scene (oddly enough). "I Sit In The Snow" (over the bridge of "Roads Girdle The Globe") is very interesting as is "Madhattan" (over the backing track of "That is The Way"). "Commerciality (Signal Ad)" is a great song (over the unreleased "Refrigeration Blues"). "Beat The Bible" is a fine dub version of "Jumping In Gomorrah", "Clap, Clap, Clap" is a dub version of "I Am The Audience".

This is a collection that truly deserves repeated listens as there's always something else interesting on the listening horizon. And it's not an easy listen given the very empty nature and space of most of the material. It sounds like, in some cases, listening to the individual backing tracks in the studio and with added effects to them. Which is pretty cool given the nature of the excellence that is XTC.

It Was (Just About) Twenty Years Ago Today...XTC: Oranges & Lemons

Cliched and overused as it may sound, I seriously cannot believe that it's been twenty-years since the release of XTC's tenth album Oranges & Lemons. I became a fan of XTC in a pretty random way and almost as an afterthought. I had in fact unwittingly half-knew nearly a half-dozen of XTC's songs but never really knew anything beyond the choruses for "Sgt. Rock Is Going To Help Me" and "Senses Working Overtime".

Overlong back-story begins in exactly...

Sometime in early 1988 I was browsing through a book by Danny Quatrochi entitled The Police Confidential - a photo diary on the de facto Beatles of the New Wave. In the book there are several photos of Police founder Stewart Copeland and book author/Sting's bass tech Danny Quatrochi in which they sport several different Drums & Wires tour T-Shirts. Being all of almost twelve years-old and for one reason or another taken with the interesting T-Shirt design - I investigated just what was XT something or other? What does it say? XTC?

Upon further investigation, it just so happened that my older brother not only owned the Virgin International vinyl version* of Go 2, but the Epic Records vinyl editions of both Drums & Wires & Black Sea as well. These three albums made a tremendous impression on me and in short XTC became my favorite band. Being a fan of a critically-acclaimed fringe band at a young age is pretty frustrating. There's no name-recognition among your peers which can be a bit alienating and you're too young to fully indulge in being a holier-than-thou hipster.

XTC's then-most recent albums were Skylarking (with the controversial then-hit "Dear God") and Psonic Psunspot (the latter under their Dukes Of Stratosphear pseudonym). I went to Tower Records that Summer and bought the Geffen cassettes of everything from White Music to Psonic Psunspot and whatever used vinyl or UK import CDs I could find (aside from English Settlement & Skylarking - XTC CDs weren't available domestically until early 1991 as Geffen were desperately slow on the uptake). It was pretty much all about XTC (for the most part) for sometime.

Fast forward to all but a few months later in January of 1989. I'm watching MTV - when they were still a viable source for new music and not a reality television channel - and lo and behold I catch the world premiere video a few seconds in (just after the band/song/album/label credits) of "The Mayor Of Simpleton" and by the bridge I'm thinking that this is my new favorite band. The song is a concise Beatlesque tour de force with cyclical Beach Boys vocals and jangle Byrds guitars and a bass line that is absolutely sick. Of course, it turns out to be XTC. That day I march to local record store Sounds Alive Music and happily plunk down one dollar for the one-song promo CD single. Followed by the 7", 12" and import 3" CD singles.*

A month later Oranges & Lemons is released and I'm very seriously overjoyed. It's better than I think it would be - and even the lesser tracks ("Poor Skeleton Steps Out"...) are only lesser comparatively. It gets four-star reviews everywhere and gets significant exposure on MTV and lots of airplay on the local "new music" radio station WDRE-FM & local cool college radio station WBAU-FM. It was the first time in my life that I was able to enjoy (or simply witness) an album by my favorite band and actively enjoy the whole release & promote the singles/album process. And in XTC's case it was slightly unconventional. They stopped touring in 1982 but actually did tour for Oranges & Lemons. Only in XTC's case they went to radio stations & MTV and played acoustic mini-sets of a few songs and a few medleys. They even played the second single from the album ("King For A Day") on Late Night With David Letterman in late June. I actually got to meet them that year (very briefly) at an in-store signing at Record World in Garden City, NY - the day before their appearance on Late Night. "King For A Day" got lots of airplay as did the ill-conceived remixes that were (unbeknownst to the band) commissioned by Geffen.

"Chalkhills and Children", "Hold Me My Daddy", "The Loving" (the third and final single from O&L), "The Garden of Earthly Delights", "King For A Day", "Here Comes President Kill Again", "Miniature Sun", "Merely a Man" and "The Mayor Of Simpleton" - all from Oranges & Lemons - remain some of my very favorite XTC songs (you know, out of about a hundred or so). And in addition to a few exclusive others XTC are still my favorite band. The album is slightly dated - not horribly so - but ever so slightly. It's an incredible collection of songs and is still every bit now as good as it was then.

* Forgive such expressions of vinyl record geekdom but there's no turning back at this point.

XTC's psychedelic pseudonym The Dukes Of Stratosphear get Deluxe Reissue Treatment

XTC have just given their psychedelic alter-ego pseudonym faux-60's band The Dukes Of Stratosphear the full-on deluxe reissue treatment.

In December of 1984 the band went into the studio with drummer (and guitarist/keyboardist Dave Gregory's brother) Ian Gregory and producer John Leckie (XTC, Wings, PIL, Radiohead, Robyn Hitchcock, The Stone Roses) and recorded the EP 25 O'Clock and yet again in the June of 1987 to record the LP Psonic Psunspot. Both releases were very well-received both critically and with the general public and sold far better than the then-recent XTC releases Mummer and The Big Express. The tracks on these recordings were virtual homages to The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Byrds, The Small Faces, The Kinks, The Hollies, The Move, The Electric Prunes, Pink Floyd, and The Strawberry Alarm Clock.

Both releases have both been reissued - fully remastered with a collective fifteen bonus tracks, the complete music videos for "The Mole From The Ministry" and "You're A Good Man Albert Brown (Curse You Red Barrel)" with 24 pages of lyrics and liner notes by Dave Gregory, Colin Moulding and Andy Partridge in a hardcover book-style format - on Andy Partridge's own APE label.

Amazingly after such an awful relationship with their former label, Virgin Records have relinquished the rights to a handful of XTC recordings and awarded them to XTC.

Other XTC albums to get the deluxe treatment to be released later this year will include English Settlement, Oranges & Lemons and Skylarking.