Chalkhills, Number 65

                 Friday, 10 November 1989
Today's Topics:
                        XTC videos
                   XTC on Compact Disc
                        xtc videos
                  Re: Oranges and Lemons
                    The End of Touring

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Date: Wed, 8 Nov 89 02:24:56 EST
From: ranjit@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Ranjit Bhatnagar)
Subject: XTC videos

Is there any place where an Ordinary Person can get a hold
of some XTC videos?  I've been suffering for lack thereof.
And interviews, too!  Definitely interviews.

	- ranjit

"Trespassers w"   ranjit@eniac.seas.upenn.edu	mailrus!eecae!netnews!eniac!...
	   "Such a brute that even his shadow breaks things." (Lorca)

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Date: Wed, 8 Nov 89 12:51 CDT
From: <BBHULSEY@uams.bitnet>
Subject: XTC on Compact Disc

Greetings!

Does anyone on this list know whether or not there are any plans to release any
pre-"English Settlement" CD's domestically here in the U.S.?  If not, does
anyone know of any mail-order vendors (U.S. only, please!) that might have
import copies of such discs?  I can't find them anywhere around here (Arkansas)
and no one seems to be able to special-order import discs.  In particular I am
looking for "Black Sea", "Drums and Wires", and "Mummer".  Any help would be
greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Bruce Hulsey
Univ. of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

bbhulsey@uams.bitnet

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Date: Wed, 8 Nov 89 12:11:17 -0600
From: Mike Berger <berger@atropa.stat.uiuc.edu>
Subject: xtc videos

I didn't realize that there were so many XTC videos.  I'm a big fan,
but information about XTC is hard to come by.  Although we're lucky
here in Champaign, Il. that virtually all conventional XTC releases
are readily available (among three record stores near the UI campus,
I can get every standard XTC CD right off the shelf, including the
Mayor of Simpleton and King for a Day CD singles - though "The Loving"
is only here on EP right now, and I've only seen one copy of Beeswax
in my life).  But there are no obscure recordings, radio programs, or
videos to be found.

Grateful Dead fans have generally been pretty willing to copy
material for other fans.  I wonder if the XTC fans are as generous?
I'd love to get copies of more obscure XTC music, and as many videos
as I can.

Would you be willing to help arrange for me to get ahold of some?

Thanks!

	Mike Berger
	Department of Statistics, University of Illinois
	AT&TNET     217-244-6067
	Internet    berger@atropa.stat.uiuc.edu
	UUCP        {pur-ee | convex}!uiucuxc!statcomp!atropa!berger

	[ I have seen videos advertised in _The Little Express_, and
          have also seen some at record swaps.  Does anybody know
          if the rumoured Japanese laser disc is playable on U.S.
          machines?  I have a copy of _Look! Look!_, but it's U.K.
	  PAL format, and I haven't checked into how much it costs
	  to convert to NTSC, but the folks at _The Little Express_
	  told me it's fairly (possibly extremely) expensive.	-- John ]

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Date: Wed, 8 Nov 89 15:34:06 -0800
From: relph@presto.ig.com (John M. Relph)
Subject: Re: Oranges and Lemons

In article <127586@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> batman@batcave.Ebay.sun.com
(that's you, Karl) writes:
>	O&L is just hackwork; it's *so* sad to see one of the greatest
>	songwriters of all time, Andy Partidge, release crap like
>	'The Loving'.
>
>	This is the Andy that said goodbye with 'Funk Pop A Roll';
>	He's sold out; he'd made his artistic contribution to the
>	world, and now just wants to get paid. I can respect that;
>	he deserves every dollar he'll ever make for English
>	Settlement.

I had never interpreted "Funk Pop a Roll" that way.  I think "Funk Pop
a Roll" was an obvious joke on Virgin, showing that they could write a
song with a great hook and danceable beat, just like the record execs
thought they wanted, but turn the whole thing upside down.  Yes, it's
danceable, but if you listen to the lyrics you get an idea of what XTC
were up against at that point in their career (pre-_Mummer_).

And if Andy was selling out with "Funk Pop a Roll", how did he come up
with the stuff on _The Big Express_?

We know what happened with _Skylarking_: Todd picked the songs out,
and left behind gems like "Gangway Electric Guitar", "Obscene
Procession", and some of the other _Skylarking_ demo tracks.

_Oranges and Lemons_?  Yeah.  I think it suffers from the "you guys
are great" syndrome.  The producer, Paul Fox, didn't have the balls to
tell XTC when they had gone too far and when their songs were cheese.
Or when they had recorded too many tracks and overdubs on any
particular song.  They just kept recording songs and overdubs, and
most of it went on the record.  Oh well.

	-- John

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Date: Fri, 10 Nov 1989 14:40:31 PST
From: John M. Relph <relph@presto.ig.com>
Subject: The End of Touring

I seem to have blundered in the account of the chronology of the
production of _English Settlement_ and the end of XTC's touring.
Since Stewart pointed it out, here is the reason why I got confused.
I had been listening to a number of interviews, and this question and
Andy's answer got stuck in my head.

    Q: How have your ideas for making records changed from
    those early _White [Music]_ and _Go 2_ records to the
    current one, _Oranges and Lemons_?

    Andy: They've changed inasmuch as we don't feel
    restricted into having to...  I think _Black Sea_,
    which was the last of the kind of albums made so it
    could be wheeled out onto the road and sound no
    different, I mean that's what we used to do.  We used
    to make records that you could take out on the road
    and they sounded the same: two guitars, bass, and
    drums, nothing tricky, nothing like harmonies, god
    forbid.  We had to be able to do it live.  It was sort
    of putting the blinkers on the music.  And as soon as
    the idea came to my 1K brain that, "Hey, we don't have
    to tour if we don't want to," suddenly the music
    seemed to get a lot better, technicolour, even.

    [from one of the stops on the U.S. "Radio Tour"]

Since Andy had implied that the decision to stop touring happened
BEFORE _English Settlement_ was recorded, I had got confused when I
said that _English Settlement_ was the first album recorded after they
stopped touring.  My mistake.

But maybe Andy was thinking about getting off the road even before
they started touring with _English Settlement_...

	-- John

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30 November 1989.

The views expressed in Chalkhills are those
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---

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