Chalkhills Digest Volume 13, Issue 16
Date: Tuesday, 10 April 2007
Chalkhills Digest, Volume 13, Number 16
Tuesday, 10 April 2007
Topics:
Gott My Back, Yo!
EggsTC
Mass debate
More posts and fewer insults
"Jason and the Argonauts" is the MySpace song of the week
What's it all about?
Andy Partridge Interview on "The Loft"
My formative years
XTC Strikes Again!
Andy Interviewed on Monstrance
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They had retired me 'fore I left school.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:59:09 -0400 From: Benjamin Gott <bgott@rectoryschool.org> Subject: Gott My Back, Yo! Message-ID: <BDD70DCA-DC97-4685-82BE-D6911478B6F3@rectoryschool.org> Hey ho, You guys are great. You're not going to let "Fred" get in the way of kindness and decency. I appreciate it. I am indeed a teacher. I'm also a musician. If you're interested in downloading, hearing, and loving or hating my music, start here: [ http://loquaciousmusic.blogspot.com/2007/03/chill.html ] Best, Ben
------------------------------ Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2007 19:13:53 EDT From: StarlingV@aol.com Subject: EggsTC Message-ID: <c33.e987212.33404531@aol.com> Here's a small equinox offering that I thought I would share with the rest of the Chalk denizens: http://starlingv.blogspot.com/2007/03/eggstc.html "We'll applaud her new life..." -Janis
------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 01:53:32 +0100 (BST) From: Paul Culnane <paulculnane@yahoo.co.uk> Subject: Mass debate Message-ID: <480721.75242.qm@web86910.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Ha ha Ben You have certainly opened a can of human worms! What fun. Have you read Chalkhills 13/15 yet? Some good shit there. But as you suggested he would, the estimable Dom Lawson came through with the ultimate pearler: "Sorry folks. I love a smart-arse as much as the next smart-arse, but it only works when the smart-arse is smart. And not just an arse." Touche mon ami. NP: Silverchair "Young Modern" - album of 2007, lay down misere. The *other* Dom on this list may beg to disagree. But I say - do yerselves a favour and check it out. Ah, all this french talk is doin' me head in. Sans la comedie. PAUL "What???" - Ludwig Van Beethoven Paul Culnane ICE Productions Australia http://myspace.com/realmcpugg
------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 11:33:13 -0700 (PDT) From: Ryan Anthony <hamsterranch@yahoo.com> Subject: More posts and fewer insults Message-ID: <392524.24981.qm@web51105.mail.re2.yahoo.com> I suppose it's time to delurk -- Chalkhills is in need of more posts and fewer insults aimed at fellow posters. Here's an idea: Let's talk about music. Can we observe one and only one rule?: There is no "right" or "wrong" to questions of musical taste. Dunno about the rest of you, but in the U.S., lots of us get caught up in the 64 (okay, 65) -team single-elimination college basketball tournament that takes place every year in late March and early April. As some wise fellow once said, sports is the perfect opportunity to indulge in total passion without consequence. It feels good to follow a winner, and even if your team of choice disappoints, you can pretend to analyze the debacle with erudite solemnity, which also feels good. The team I follow from a "townie" point of view, the University of Arizona, lost in the first round of this year's tournament to Purdue University, which was seeded at a similarly middling level: 9 to Arizona's 8. The game was a matchup of equals -- a "toss-up." Which brings me to XTC's loss to the Dead Kennedys in the first round of the "Band Madness" fantasy tournament. We all love Andy/Colin/Dave/Terry/Barry, and we would have loved to see our boys crush, say, Bow Wow Wow or Soft Cell in the first round, but the DKs compel our respect. It's tough to see your favorite lose, even in a meaningless Internet circle-jerkoff (hey, I like that band too), but nobody can say Jello & Co. are unworthy to advance. I've got to use the f-word here. Not "faggot" or "fascist," but the original f-word. Before some of you were born, I bought the DKs' "Too Drunk To Fuck" on 7" vinyl. I still don't have the song in digital form, although out of sheer curiosity, I paid iTunes for a different, inferior, song of the same name by an act called King Con. I've got little use for Jello's politics and not much more for Andy's, but I respected them and their bands more than a quarter of a century ago, and I still do. I've accumulated DK and XTC releases on vinyl and CD, I've bought their 7" singles, and I've invested in side projects: Jello with Mojo Nixon; Andy with his pink thing (and also Harold Budd). Tough seed this year. If "Band Madness" resumes in '08, maybe we'll be treated to a first-round laugher with a tomato can like A Flock Of Seagulls. Ryan Anthony An independent Internet content provider P.S.: Least favorite XTC song? "Leisure."
------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 18:05:24 -0700 (PDT) From: Todd Bernhardt <beat_town@yahoo.com> Subject: "Jason and the Argonauts" is the MySpace song of the week Message-ID: <853038.29940.qm@web32010.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi: Over at the XTCfans MySpace site (http://www.myspace.com/xtcfans), the song of the week is "Jason and the Argonauts." If you want to know who Jason and Chintzi are, and why Andy was thinking of Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis while he was writing the melody for the chorus, check out the XTCfans blog site at http://blog.myspace.com/xtcfans. -Todd There may be no golden fleece But human riches I'll release...
------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 15:04:02 +0100 From: "David Smith" <smudgeboy99@btinternet.com> Subject: What's it all about? Message-ID: <000f01c7752f$c4f85430$4001a8c0@Dave1> My goodness - you wait a year, then two Smudge posts cme along at once! Just reading #13-15 and saw Ben Gott saying: > Buy the album and see for yourself. To paraphrase a wise man named > Culnane, isn't that what it's all about? Heh! Wrong again. I think we all know that putting your left leg in, pulling it out, putting it in again and then shaking it all about, doing the hokey-cockey and turning around . . . THAT, my friends, is what it's all about. Jeez, do you guys know NOTHING? Don Device sayeth'd: > Also, for those of you who haven't heard the french 'Nouvelle Vague' > retro disc, with '80s songs redone as sort of lounge-music, it's no > chance that they cover both 'NIgel' and the forementioned four-letter > word song. Both are minor classics... He's not wrong folks. Until you've heard "Teenage Kicks" sung by a sutlry French chanteuse in a smoky jazz-lounge style, you haven't really lived. Oh, and Dom managed to say all I was thinking about Fred Weaver's friendly little post - but better. Dom rools - as ever. (Dontcha hate him?) Smudge out.
------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 19:53:38 -0400 From: "James White" <jameswhite@gsinet.net> Subject: Andy Partridge Interview on "The Loft" Message-ID: <002c01c77582$2b045150$2201a8c0@DJTY0Y11> Hi All, Not sure if this has been mentioned here already or not but apparently there is an interview with Andy discussing Fuzzy Warbles on a satellite radio station called "The Loft". Where I am, (New Hampshire, US) this is on Direct TV service channel 863 (I think...). The show already aired this evening (April 2) but I believe is scheduled to repeat sometime this Saturday. Unfortunately I missed most of the show tonight so I can't comment on how it was. Sorry for such sketchy information, I will try to find out more specifics and share them on the list. Also, there was a video of a song from Monstrance called "Winterwerk" posted at Amazon.com for free download. Not sure I cared for the song but was great to see Andy and Barry playing "live" again. I'm having a difficult time accepting the reported "demise of XTC" but watching this video helped raise my hopes that perhaps there will be some sort of second career looming for Andy. Now if they could just convince Dave to join this Monstrance thing and head out on tour..... Peace, ~~Jim White
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 22:10:23 -0400
From: Christopher Coolidge <cauldron@together.net>
Subject: My formative years
Message-ID: <B5A5DC6E-187E-44F1-9B42-2A9E11BB97F3@together.net>
On Mar 31, 2007, at 11:41 AM, Chalkhills wrote:
> I ofetn wonder with all the prog-rock talk on this site, how ma y of
> your chalkers came from which backgrounds. I grew up playing punk in
> little bands before moving into Power-Pop later by way of Bowie and
> Iggy and Eno and Reed, but for me, XTC was a rhythmically interesting
> 'punky' band and "GO2" (not everyone's fave, but I love it) fits in
> quite nicely with 'Plastic Surgery disasters' or even Minor
> Threat.... Dom seems to spring from the eternal hell-mouth of
> metal...What about you others?
I came out of classic rock in my preteen and early teen years(Elton
John, Supertramp, Queen, Styx, the stuff of Canadian teenage rec
rooms), that's still my roots, like any kid my age in Alabama grew up
on Lynyrd Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet. Then at fifteen I heard the Sex
Pistols on the rock and roll news program on the local FM rock
station, and my life changed forever. I was too scared to be a punk,
though- I was like the kids who shyly approached Lester Bangs on the
street in London and confessed "Well, we'd like to be punks, but
we're...scared." My first punk/new wave album was Talking Heads 77,
still a formative album after all these years, it means more to me
than any other of their subseqent more accomplished albums. I got
Never Mind The Bollocks about nine months later. My younger brother
was brave though, the first record he ever bought at the age of
thirteen was The Stranglers IV Rattus Norvegicus. Anyway, I never
looked back, though my taste leaned more towards melodic stuff like
The Jam, the Tom Robinson Band, and my favorite Canadian group, the
Battered Wives, who were a bit more at the pop end of the punk
spectrum but reminded me of The Kinks if they'd started out as punk
rockers in 1977. Then I went to college in Western Mass. and a friend
who went to a neighboring womens college fully indoctinated me in the
ways of XTC. I'd previously heard parts of Drums And Wires in passing
and thought they were sort of like Devo but not as good. I'd also
heard "Meccanik Dancing" a fair amount as a radio airplay track in
the summer of '78 and liked it but never knew who it was. "Meccanik
Dancing" still gives me a rush every time I hear it. My friend Nina
played me Black Sea in its entirety and I got for the first time the
breadth and diversity of XTC's sound. When English Settlement came
out Nina and I devoured it and dissected it like no other album since
The Who's Tommy, which I memorised at the age of ten and used to sing
to myself in its entirety on the way to and from school, stopping at
the door and picking where I left off when I left for home. (along
with Jesus Christ Superstar, You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, and
Gilbert And Sullivan's The Gondoliers)
So, today XTC is still one of the most important bands in my
musical development, I have Apple Venus, Wasp Star, Rag and Bone
Buffet and a 1980 live show in my ITunes library(the rest of my XTC
catalog is on LP, except for Nonsuch on cassette; I also have Coat Of
Many Cupboards on CD, but I have yet to put it on ITunes, I've
exceeded 9000 songs and I already had to install a bigger hard
drive). I have several songs I've written that pay direct tribute to
XTC(God's answer to Andy, "Dear Andy," an unrecorded rewrite of
"Respectable Street" about my wife's hometown, Essex Junction) as
well as indirect tribute, such as one of my more recent efforts, "I
Did It All For You," which you can find on Garageband under the name
Welcome Home(a band I was in in the 80's I tried to reunite a few
years ago, we're making another attempt, see below); it's like "Ball
And Chain" sort of sideways. I'm stealing from Colin this time.
My former band Welcome Home is celebrating its 20th anniversary this
year! For further information and updates on the upcoming reunion
show, see www.isound.com/welcome_home
------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 11:08:13 -0400 From: "Neal H. Buck" <nealhbuck@mac.com> Subject: XTC Strikes Again! Message-ID: <7E8803F3-23A1-475A-85E3-972ADC5D5B43@mac.com> Dear Chalkers, De-lurking long enough to report on another XTC influence - this time in software. While perusing a copy of Macworld magazine, I came across a review of a "Mac Gem" called ProfCast (it's a podcasting application). It was created by Humble Daisy Design. Hmm... I've heard that name before! Sure enough, if you go to this link: http:// www.humbledaisy.com/html/About/index.html, you will find the answer we all love to hear. Disclaimer: I don't think I've ever seen this info on Chalkhills before, or remember if any of our members announced that they had anything to do with this company. If I missed it, and am just reporting old news that everyone knew about already - Sorry. Since I'm here, I'd like to say a public thanks to Todd for the great interviews with Andy. I'm just glad he (Andy) doesn't mind talking about XTC songs given the current state of the group. I'd also like to say that it's proof of the talent of the group in general, and Andy in particular, that people with as diverse tastes as ours are drawn to their/his music. Some get into the spacey, experimental pieces, and some like the pop, or whatever. I've grown as a listener by being exposed to all the different music the members of XTC have made. Going back to my lurking hole now - the Easter Theatre's about to begin, and I don't want to miss it! New Town Animal
------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2007 14:30:20 -0400 From: Harrison Sherwood <hbsherwood@aol.com> Subject: Andy Interviewed on Monstrance Message-ID: <A1946D32-4160-4ED6-AB3C-629751D88673@aol.com> Andy Partridge very kindly agreed to sit with the Hapless Goober for a rather lengthy interview about Monstrance. You can see it at http://byneddiejingo.blogspot.com/2007/04/tinny-little-sputnik.html Hope you enjoy it as much as I did... Harrison "I'm typing as fast as I can!" Sherwood
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