XTC : Classic or Dud.

these days 'black sea' is my favourite. it's got the hooks and songsmarts of 'skylarking', but with a darker, more menacing edge and generally more balls. no matter how many times i play 'drums and wires' all the way through, i can only ever remember a handful of the tracks ('complicated game' is just incredible, however).

Drums & Wires is soooo goddamn classic, if only for "When You're Near Me," "Outside World," "Scissor Man," "Real by Reel," "Helicopter,"..... such a keeper.

you're forgetting XTC's best song, AINYC

oh it's ok, charlie mentioned it

for me, CG is one of those "where the fuck did that come from??" songs you hear every now and again.

well if everyone put it as high on their 20thC ballot as I did it'd be doing quite well :P

was introduced to it v young. distinctly remember having to turn the hi-fi volume right up to be able to hear the first bit. then being blown to smithereens.

Will never listen to the Smithereens in the same light again.

ayo 'the greenhouse' is the name of my dog [/xtc lolz]

"Black Sea" is maybe my favorite XTC album? "Towers of London" is probably my favorite track on it.

English Settlement above Black Sea for me but it isn't too much of a thing

Black Sea has motherfucken No Language In Our Lungs which is probably second to Complicated Game

I realize that Mummer was not really a great album

Tracks were in the wrong order. If you shuffle it so it doesn't end with Funk Pop a Roll it works better.

OT: In my first uni course I opened an essay with a lyric from Funk Pop a Roll and the lecturer 'corrected' a spelling error in the lyric. 'That should be "YOUR pegs", not "YOU pegs"!' etc. Was a shit essay anyway.

btw that rejected Skylarking cover is the worst piece of crap I have ever seen iirc.

Some of my favourite XTC moments come from the Transistor Blast boxset, which looks like a superfans-only item but was actually indispensable in acquainting me with the magic of some of their early material; also, contains ballsier, less fussed-over versions of many top tracks (including the definitive versions of "No Thugs in Our House" and "Life Begins at the Hop"). Dig it up!

^^Agreed, it's a great box (much better than Coat of many Cupboards).

btw that rejected Skylarking cover is the worst piece of crap I have ever seen iirc very bad

― aa (Schlafsack), Wednesday, December 1, 2010 6:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

plus can't imagine anyone going out of their way to buy an expensive copy with "dear god" on it when you can easily buy a nice one without for about five bucks. counterintuitive.

I have the Mermaid Smiled version and having not grown up with Dear God was kinda disappointed when I got round to hearing it

I'd possible name Dear God as my favourite XTC song but I never understood why they took off Mermaid Smiled it's such a great song, probably in my top five songs on Skylarking. I've only ever owned the 2001 reissue so I'm used to the album having both songs if I was to get rid of a track it would be Big Day or Another Satellite.

NO. Another Satellite is one of the best songs.

Taking off tracks to add the single always makes me grumpy.

We should have a thread for these...

That's so true! In the same year as Skylarking, no less a band than Cardiacs removed the splendid 'I'm Eating In Bed' from their debut wide-release record and stuck the kinda commercialised 'Is This The Life' on instead - it's easily the album's low-point

I mean, this shit was only really a thing in the pre-CD late 80s, right?

or rather, pre-CD-being-universal

Well, I don't know of any album that would have become untenably long with the added track.

I realize that Mummer was not really a great album

I will rep for Mummer till the end of time, but I know its reputation as a weak sister is not unfair. More so when you listen to the 80s/90s cd version with 5 B-Sides sequenced right in the middle. Throwaway shite like Desert Island and those two instrumentals throw the balance off greatly.

For me, the potentially gauche aspects of the record are also what make it unusual and loveable. Yes, the production and certain arrangement ideas do scream ‘1983 What Hi-Fi reader’s poll Album Of The Year’, in it’s pristine quality and execution but it’s very beautiful sounding and a lot more subtle than David Lord’s slightly dated ‘The Big Express’.

The songs that do it for me are Beating Of Hearts, Deliver Us From The Elements, Great Fire, Me & The Wind, In Loving Memory Of A Name, the B-Sides Jump and Gold and especially Ladybird, which always gives me a mental picture of AP, post-breakdown, sitting in a rickety bamboo lawn chair in his garden in Swindon decompressing from the whole touring/recording treadmill and writing touchingly about noticing the small things.

^^^every word OTM

Ladybird is my way into that album but it's also so good it almost overshadows the rest...

"Human Alchemy" totally gives my brain a meltdown.

listening now

I don't see how someone could like "Ladybird" more than "Love on a Farmboy's Wages".

okok I'll rescreen the whole album

There's a couple of Fuzzy Warbles tracks that never got through the Mummur selection process (or maybe they were rejected outright by Virgin) that I would love to have heard on the record, but annoyingly their names escape me :)

"Mummer" is great IMO, but it was more the beginning of even better things to come. It was probably the first album where they tried out the more pastoral style they'd perfect on "Skylarking" and the next two albums. Which for me represents XTC at their best. Their pinnacle remains "Skylarking".

Out of "Mummer"'s tracks, I particularly love "Wonderland". Yet another example of how Moulding is dwarfed by Partridge in quantity yet often trashes him in quality.

Human Alchemy will take a few listens to sink in properly, I think. Ladybird is an instant bolt of sunshine into the snowy scenery I see before me

Wonderland is good, aye - remember that one well off the Compact XTC collection (ditto Great Fire)

Geir, I have heard a demo of a bunch of Col's rejected songs, we were given second refusal on. We didn't like any of them (If Wonderland had been one of them, we'd have had that).

And before anyone asks, no I wasn't allowed to keep a copy.

Mummur>Mummer...tsk

Putting them side by side, I think the reason I'd take Ladybird over LOAFW has a lot to do with the sound of the recording, it's slightly gauzy and opaque and has this great repetitive piano which you don't notice till the fade.

LOAFW is a more akin to pastoral English Settlement style pop, which they were already adept at writing. Ladybird was something new and the sound of the band turning a corner.

Mark, in what capacity did you hear them if you don't mind me asking, did you work for Virgin>

No, a friend of mine worked at their rehearsal studio in Swindon (he's assistant producer on that demo version of "Making Plans" off Coat), and colin had gone in one day to demo a bunch of songs so used him and a bunch of his mates to add drums/bass/bvocals in a 'live to tape' situation.

Ah right, very cool!

That's so true! In the same year as Skylarking, no less a band than Cardiacs removed the splendid 'I'm Eating In Bed' from their debut wide-release record and stuck the kinda commercialised 'Is This The Life' on instead - it's easily the album's low-point

Dear LJ, "I'm Eating In Bed" is rad but once you have a job you will understand the joys of a Cardiacs song about hating yr job

please return to your regularly scheduled XTC chat now - think I shall look into this Transistor Blast box, if it is still available, because a more rocking, less fussy "At The Hop" sounds like something I need to hear ASAP

a Cardiacs song about hating yr job

That's, like, the rest of the album! At least the first track. Probably some of the others.

also I have a job ffs

I owe you at least two apologies because a) sorry / congrats re job and b) for some reason I was thinking of the lyrics to the first track and not Is This The Life anyway, and now I've realised that I can think of no reason to disagree that it's the weakest track

duh

hahaha PWN sorry I mean yeah it's ok :)

My version of A Little Man and a House has them both. "Eating in Bed" is track 3 and "Is This the Life?" track 4. I had no idea it was ever any different. Great album. Nice to see them mentioned in this thread.

For Skylarking; I still can't get over how god-awful that new cover is. I mean the old cover was bad but this is just grotesque. And I don't even think it's meant as a joke. Anyway I've always had the one with "Dear God" and to me it fit the album well. But it's not a really good song at all and I always found the lyrics kind of silly. "Mermaid Smiled" is amazing. Just a ridiculously great groove and a zillion hooks in about two minutes. Love it.

Re Ladybird: The last two seconds of that track is amazing. The song fades to silence, then you get a very very quiet vibrato organ chord. It wraps up the track beautifully.

SO many great songs on Mummer.

Anyone have MP3s of these oddities:
Beatown (live 7/20/79 @ Marconi Club)
Roads Girdle the Globe (live 7/20/79 @ Marconi Club)

I think they were on a compilation or maybe a foreign single.

Or how about the BBC sessions that didn't make it onto "Transistor Blast", anyone have those?

I have a pile of studio demos that didn't make it onto anything (Rip van Ruben, Raising a Family in a House Full of Mice &c.).

Gerald, I have that Marconi Club concert, if you mail me your deets I can send you a copy.

Got quite a nice Aus radio concert from the year after that too iirc.

I have a pile of studio demos that didn't make it onto anything (Rip van Ruben, Raising a Family in a House Full of Mice &c.).

gimme