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The "XTC are really really good" thread

Started by Stoneage Dinosaurs, July 19, 2015, 12:48:13 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Head Gardener

Quote from: MiddleRabbit on October 23, 2019, 08:15:14 PM
I got Sir John Johns'.  The surround mix is fucking ace: exactly as loony as you'd want a psychedelic mix to be.  I find most surround mixes far too conservative and respectful to the stereo mixes.  This one needed to be off its tits.  And it is.  Cracking stuff.

I have the bluray /instrumentals as a separate mp3 download if you need them please pm me ok

daf

#841
What Makes This Song Great? Ep.76 XTC

Rick Beato and Tim Jellyfish unpick Mayor of Simpleton.

Great to hear all the individual parts isolated (though the programmed "drums" sound comically like plastic crud on their own!)

Got to be one of the best bass lines ever that - proggily complicated, but sounding totally natural for the song.

DrGreggles

I do like WMTSG, but they do seem to cover a lot of songs that I don't consider great.
This is a happy exception.

Crabwalk

Very enjoyable to hear the individual tracks, but didn't really notice them attempting to answer the question 'what makes this song great?'. Seemed more like an exercise in breaking down the individual parts than evaluating the whole.

'Why is this song great?'

'Well, all the parts are really complicated, melodic and sound amazing'

'Ok, cheers mate'

The Culture Bunker

Yeah, would have been nice if they'd at least mentioned Dave Gregory by name when enthusing on the guitar parts. Did they even namecheck Colin?

Head Gardener



Happy Birthday today to Andy Partridge - 66 years young


Rich Uncle Skeleton

Anyone enter the convention poster competition? I emailed asking for advice on the whole vector image thing and never heard back so never really bothered. Will be interesting to see the entries though.

Absolutely loving the Dukes set. As always, worth it for the instrumentals alone, the usual headphones on/hearing all these little details or chords I'd never quite managed to pick out and just grinning like an idiot , talented bastards.
Vanishing Girl is an absolute joy and surprising how sparse the arrangement actually is without all the voices over it.

Enjoyed the booklet too, some interesting stuff in there, going to have to give that Partridge/Leckie chat on YouTube another listen as well

Rich Uncle Skeleton

In case anyone hasn't seen yet, that new band of Chambers, Tilling and so on, EXTC, will be playing at the Vic in Swindon on March the 10th. Then there's a gig up in Edinburgh supported by a band playing Associates' debut album in full.

The latter sounds like an interesting night but gutted I'm out of the country for the Swindon one.


Brundle-Fly

Lockdown In The Cockpit?  Andy Partridge rears his head again. yay!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvQiDJ3vwi0

DrGreggles

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on June 15, 2020, 05:38:32 PM
Lockdown In The Cockpit?  Andy Partridge rears his head again. yay!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvQiDJ3vwi0

He's got to be one of my favourite interviewees.
Always great value.

Rich Uncle Skeleton


PlanktonSideburns


Rich Uncle Skeleton

The XTC convention's been moved to 2021 and there's a virtual one instead this year and they were asking people to send covers if they wanted them played. Nothing earth shattering but thought some here might be tempted to record something.

PlanktonSideburns


Dave Gregory looks like Neil Breen, cant unsee

DrGreggles

Quote from: StewartLeehaslethimselfgo on July 28, 2020, 09:01:42 PM
Dave Gregory looks like Neil Breen, cant unsee

He looks like Future Breen, which may be even worse.

spaghetamine

The aggro between Andy and Todd Rundgren during the making of Skylarking makes for some amusing reading, is Andy generally considered to be a "difficult" guy to work with or was this more of a unique clash of personalities?

DrGreggles

As much as I love him, I'm not sure Andy is much of a collaborator.
Bit of a perfectionist in the studio too, so that will always cause aggro with a strong-minded producer.

But the XTC legacy is those songs and those albums, so it doesn't really matter if the butting of heads took place on the way.

He was nice about Todd's arrangements though.

spaghetamine

I'm not an XTC superfan by any means but Skylarking is as close as you can get to a perfect summer record, funny that it was clearly such a pain in the arse to make because that doesn't come across in the sound at all, the cover art is lush as well

daf

#860
One of George Harrison's favourite records -

Quote
Quote from: Andy's Twitter a few years agoXTC ‏@xtcfans  Aug 6
Met and chatted with Ringo. Paul said hello to me in corridor at AIR studios,I sort of ran...in fear. George loved SKYLARKING..
Quote from: RodneyRodney Yirped ‏@Yirped  Aug 7
How did you find out that George loved Skylarking?
Quote from: AndyXTC ‏@xtcfans  Aug 7
He said so in an interview on a Dutch radio station.The DJ told us. Nice of him.

Thinking about the timing, I wonder if he heard it via Jeff Lynne or possibly another Wilbury (Tom Petty?)

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: spaghetamine on July 29, 2020, 02:18:51 PM
The aggro between Andy and Todd Rundgren during the making of Skylarking makes for some amusing reading, is Andy generally considered to be a "difficult" guy to work with or was this more of a unique clash of personalities?
From the various XTC books, the impression I get is that Patridge had his nose put out of joint right off the bat when Tundgren picked the tracklisting before they'd recorded a note, based on the demo tapes he'd received.

Twonty Gostelow

Quote from: daf on July 29, 2020, 02:57:00 PM
One of George Harrison's favourite records

I wonder whether Harrison ever knew that it was a guitar that he used to play that DG used for the solo on That's Really Super, Supergirl.

daf

Here's a weird thing - I've always thought Gregsy was playing this painted guitar of Harrison's on the solo -



But - looking into it just now, it turns out that it was actually this painted guitar that Todd owned at the time!



. . . owned by Eric Clapton!

crankshaft

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on July 29, 2020, 03:37:54 PM
From the various XTC books, the impression I get is that Patridge had his nose put out of joint right off the bat when Tundgren picked the tracklisting before they'd recorded a note, based on the demo tapes he'd received.

He also out-sarcasmed Andy in the studio, made fun of the lyrics to "Season Cycle", made fun of his lyrics. But then, Partridge himself has described it as "two Hitlers in one bunker" so he's obviously aware that he can be a difficult presence himself.

Twonty Gostelow

Quote from: daf on July 29, 2020, 06:11:21 PM
Here's a weird thing - I've always thought Gregsy was playing this painted guitar of Harrison's on the solo -



But - looking into it just now, it turns out that it was actually this painted guitar that Todd owned at the time!



. . . owned by Eric Clapton!

Clapton lent it to Harrison for a time and it was in Harrison's hands when Clapton sold it to Jackie Lomax. Lomax then sold it to Rundgren.

daf

Ah, cheers - I thought there was a Harrison connection in there somewhere!

Quote from: Dave Gregory talking about the Supergirl soloI don't remember doing anything on the track except the guitar solo -- don't think those backing vocals are mine either, though it's neat the way they morph into that cloudy-sounding synthesizer track. I've told the story about Eric Clapton's SG many times elsewhere, but it's true to say that this instrument left a huge impression on my teenage musical sensibilities when I began learning to play.

The cover of the October 1967 issue of Beat Instrumental featured a classic colour shot of the psychedelically-permed Eric, complete with kaftan and beads, playing the guitar on stage in front of a big Marshall stack. You didn't even need ears to hear the amazing sound he was making! A month later, Cream's Disraeli Gears album was released, which re-defined the sound and role of the electric guitar forever.



So, to walk into Todd Rundgren's recording studio in the spring of 1986 and find this guitar gathering dust on a rickety stand was like discovering the Holy Grail in a pawn shop! I was already aware that Todd had ownership of it, but assumed it would be under lock and key in some vault somewhere. The Fool's amazing painting was pretty much intact, though it had been re-touched in a number of places. There was a serious crack around the control-cavity area -- "SG-itis" -- and I was amused to observe that the guitar was strung with bronze acoustic guitar strings, complete with a wound third. A small piece of masking tape covered the top-E pole-piece of the neck pickup. What could he have been doing with it?

There were 8 bars in the middle of the song which I requisitioned for a solo. I mean, what else was I going to do? I was practicing some ideas in my room at the guest house, using the little Dwight guitar I'd recently acquired and was falling in love with. The opening phrases were a tad dissonant -- though within the acceptable boundaries of XTC -- and were followed by four ascending arpeggios that I hoped I'd get away with, before re-stating the last line of the verse and signing off with a Larry Carlton-esque harmonic yodel. Seizing the opportunity, I asked Todd if I could use his famous guitar to record the part.

He looked a little bemused when I asked if I could put new strings on it -- as if to say, "Well, why would you wanna do that?" -- but I got my wish and sewed on a set of Ernie Ball 0.11"-0.48"s. We put the track up and I was happy to hear that the parts I'd worked out didn't clash too severely with the keyboard lines. Now, all I had to do was play fluently in the presence of "Mr. Two Strikes and You're Out"! I used the guitar's neck pick-up, and sat in the control room with it plugged into a Tom Scholz Rock Man pedal, from whence the signal vanished into a sonic labyrinth, tweaked by the Wizard Todd for that unmistakable Utopian effect. All for just 20 seconds of music!
http://chalkhills.org/articles/XTCFans20080420.html

wosl

George should've got The Fool to paint his Strat rather than doing it himself.  The story of Gregory's encounter with Todd's 'Clapton' SG is told in Paul Myers' Rundgren book (edit: and in the above reply, obvs.)

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: crankshaft on July 29, 2020, 06:21:34 PM
He also out-sarcasmed Andy in the studio, made fun of the lyrics to "Season Cycle", made fun of his lyrics. But then, Partridge himself has described it as "two Hitlers in one bunker" so he's obviously aware that he can be a difficult presence himself.
Partridge got his own back by playing (along with the others) the theme from 'The Munsters' when Rundgren appeared at the studio in the morning.

The sessions must have been really tense, though, as Colin briefly left the band while they were working in San Francisco after Andy became too unbearable while recording the bass part of 'Earn Enough For Us'. I think Rundgren and Dave talked him back in with a "finish the job and get your royalties" argument.

wosl

Quote from: crankshaft on July 29, 2020, 06:21:34 PM
He also out-sarcasmed Andy in the studio, made fun of the lyrics to "Season Cycle", made fun of his lyrics.

Partridge's should've responded by firing back a burst of Singring And The Glass Guitar ("Day of infamy, someone's captured Singring!/Day of tragedy, someone's captured Singring!"), or perhaps just by reminding Todd that he was responsible for once writing a song with that title.