Touring Bands

XTC

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XTC at The Pound Belfast - Review Alternative Ulster fanzine No.8.
£2 Admission?
Cor, bit stiff ennit guv?
These Limeys do have a bloody cheek. There’s no support band : “I suppose we have to pay for the privilege on not seeing (the cretinous) Raine”’ deadpans a mate.
Inside it’s a predictably large, uh, cross-over audience befitting for a band who combine clever punky rhythmics with dire intellectualising in the form of terribly “hip” and “humorous” lyrics. The lack of support means that for nigh on an hour the only thing to do is gaze in strict molten awe at the startling coiffure transformation undergone by Gordon Blair of RUDI in darkest Clapham……
Then they’re on! X-T-C ; don’t like them, never did. Recently my mates have persuaded me of the “commercial worth” and “danceability” of some of the songs on ‘White Music’, and those facets do exist in an insidious sort of way. But it’s always there - this latent longing to be the smartest ass in the whole Art-School-rock-reject-stakes, you find it in those songs, those silly bits of electronic wizardry and that post-gig banter.
It’s all too bloody FACILE and they’re obviously more than content to pursue their less pleasant traits which is evident when they begin to serve up a plethora of nauseating tracks off their new LP, probably called “We were just another bunch of hopeless cunts with a few silly ideas until we met Al Clarke”. Judging by the numbers they played this evening, the LP isn’t even worth hearing, let alone doing something as stupid as buying the damn thing.
The staccato vocals and keyboard fancy footwork, makes for some shrieks and bleeps which, matched by hissing white noise and electronic gobbledygook, sounds like fun time at the BBC Electronic Workshop. They treat music like a schoolboy treats a chemistry set. Like bloody scientists. Like 10cc. Their songs are filled with puns, oxymorons, ambiguities and plain old jokes (masquerading as smart ass remarks), and fuck it all, half way through the set I just find myself punctuating the gaps in the songs with “You suck” “Your shit” etc. Ah yes, good ole audience participation.
Look, if being imaginative means churning out crap like this XTC should seriously think of seeing their local imagination castrator coz snappy, tasty pop songs like ‘Statue Of Liberty” & “Radios In Motion’ can usually make my teeth dance and my legs smile but at the end of this performance (not so much regrettable as forgettable) it was a task too big for anyones.

Above - Andy Partridge at the Pound, Belfast 1978 Photograph © Sean Hennessy

XTC - HOT PRESS - OCTOBER 1978 by Karl Tisgdinos.
(A good Northern accent) “I swear to Christ Gordon, Andy Partridge is standing right there........”
It was a moment plenty of teenagers dream of, the awe of meeting a hero surpassed only by the unmitigated joy of one-upping the little snob who dominates your life. The expressions of delight that lit those young Northern faces when they realised XTC were stopping at their hotel was a joy to behold, especially as they rushed to phone Gordon, who evidently deigned not to travel to Portrush, assuring the two youngsters that they’d never get near XTC, so Andy chortled something into the phone to the effect that he was missing a great party and it was a pity he couldn’t be there. As icing on the cake, I promised, at Andy’s urging, to mention the incident in The Hot Press. Yes Gordon, your pals had a great time drinking with XTC...
To HANG OUT with XTC at anytime, never mind in the middle of their first Irish tour, is to cut yourself into a heady and steady stream of humour - crude, clean, quick or subtle but always hilarious. Situations seem to arise around the band, to act as foils for their humour, from the roadside gesticulations of a Dublin bum to the multi coloured hair of Portrush disc-jock Al Uminium. My voyage North with the band took on aspects of a verbal version of the Keystone Cops, a boggling series of vignettes that found me laughing harder and more often than I have in ages.
Take One : A stop at a deservedly obscure Chinese restaurant en route to Belfast and Portrush gave vent to a string of jokes about the food, the buffoon waiter (who after nearly poisoning us, was worried that we weren’t eating properly), and Barry Andrews’ attempted consumption of a plate of Sweet and Sour Prawns (he having just jokingly chided us with the ‘guilt trip’ vegetarians like inflicting on meat-eaters). I say ‘attempted’ as the keyboards player was unable to penetrate the duvet-like wrapping on the sea-urchins, and with my own plate of chow-me in a sight to strike terror into the hearts of more steadfast eaters than myself, the jokes eased the loss of both two quid and our one opportunity for a solid meal that day. Later on Andrews plotted with guitarist Andy Partridge to market a special crisp, and the conversation went something like this : “Imagine the ads for cannabis flavoured crisps....”, ...”Smokey Valium...”, “...Cheese ‘n’ Opium..” Made me forget that chow mien altogether.
The five hour journey from Dublin to Portrush went understandably quickly, our arrival in the beautifully situated seaside resort town sufficiently early to allow several drinks with the young fans of XTC, as well as a spate of television viewing (disturbed only by the presence of four large lunks who asked in a ‘meaningful’ way if we were interested in the football on another channel).
The Arcadia Ballroom in Portrush must be one of the best-run gigs I’ve seen, from the bountiful provisions laid on for the bands’ replenishment to the Undertones’ crisp warm up set. But unfortunately poor attendance and even worse sound prevented the gig from attaining the heights of the previous night at McGonagles. But backstage found the band in conflict over the question of an encore. The audience’s response was undoubtedly mixed (inexplicable considering their physical reactions to XTX during the set), and Andy refused to encore because of the evident lack of audience enthusiasm, despite the efforts of the rest of the band to convince him otherwise.
It was the first sign, other than reading the compositional credits on either of XTC’s albums, ‘White Music’ or ‘Go2’, that the band is a conglomeration of single-minded individuals who have somehow discovered magic by juxtaposing their very individuality. Barry observed later, “Just the basic, ordinary things that groups do, take longer with us, as you may have noticed. Just the idea of where a song should be in a set can take two hours of your life rowing about it, because everyone has a different idea of how things should be”.
Musically the coup was reserved for Belfast’s minute sweatbox, The Pound, where XTC had embarked on their Irish tour six days previously. A late start and a leisurely drive from the hospitable Portrush ( and the impressive Giant’s Causeway) found us in Belfast with enough time to penetrate the barricaded inner-city and grab another nondescript meal. Fortunately for their palettes, the group’s attention was focused on the English rock weeklies, who had simultaneously published their reviews of XTC’s second album that morning. The reviews were unabashed five star raves, barring some misplaced criticisms of Barry’s contributions to ‘Go2’, which condemned him as a misogynist. So for the rest of the trip women joined shrimps on Barry’s ‘hate list’, a mention of either unleashing torrents of exaggerated rankings.
The Pound itself is an amusing place, with a balcony that overhangs the stage at forehead level with performers. The cramped venue exploded when XTC bounded onto stage, the audience familiar with the set (which was weighed heavily with songs from the new album and, oddly enough, with the songs from their first release, the 3D E.P.) due to last week’s visit, and thus doubly appreciative. As XTC roared through future classics like ‘Meccanik Dancing’, ‘Red’, ‘Crowed Room’, ‘Super Tuff’, and the next single ‘Are You Receiving Me’, their individuality became even more apparent through their novel and varied utilisation of their instruments. Terry Chambers, whose primary rock ‘n’ roll inspiration was the legendary Pink Fairies, is one of the most driving, thunderous drummers I’ve ever seen, and the gusto with which he thrashes is a marked contrast to Barry’s self-described ‘thin, weedy keyboards’, which always choose a clever line to punctuate the song in question. Andy’s guitar work is unique in its unpredictability and would in itself provide a nearly endlessly fascinating collage of sound; when harnessed to Colin Moulding’s similarly inventive bass lines and to Andrews and Chambers, it allows TC to hold their heads up beside anyone in performance.

The Pound gig was mutually rewarding for crowd and band alike, and the backstage victory dance found countless Belfast kids basking in the reflective glory of that shared triumph. Fortunately I corralled XTC before The Pound and the ensuing night’s celebrations for a tape-rolling interview. Collectively and individually, on record, in performance, and in person, XTC are one of the most witty, interesting and exciting bands to blaze a path off their local High St into rock ‘n’ roll’s centre ring. That fact is doubly impressive considering the contrasting personalities that compose XTC.
The obvious fact that the group’s songwriter’s, Andrews, Partridge and Moulding, each work alone, was the first topic under discussion. They usually present their songs “as complete as you can make them” to the rest of the band, as Barry explains “You can usually tell if a musical idea is going to be strong enough to just throw at the group, for them to get off on it enough to improvise ‘round it’. Which “Super Tuff” was in a way, and which none of my other songs were. You just know that certain people get off on certain things. I nearly collaborated on some ideas I had with Colin, but then, just because of the geography of where he lives and where I live, and the fact that he hasn’t got a demo piano, and that neither of us have any transport to speak of, it all just fell apart. And anyway, when you get off tour you don’t want to see any of ‘em for at least two weeks, so it tends to be like three corners of a triangle going off in different directions”.
Terry re-enforces that comment “The others tend to lead more secluded lives. Moulding’s married with two kids and a mortgage hanging ‘round his neck, and Andy chooses to be more of a hermit these days. Me and Barry still live at home and tend to go out with our mates more. And Swindon being Swindon, as will all towns that size, there’s only 3 or 4 pubs you can go to, so inevitably we tend to bump into each other”. With a keyboard sound redolent of Del Shannon or Johnny And The Hurricanes, surprisingly Barry Andrews is a pronounced late starter in Rock ‘n’ Roll, ‘Pin Ups’ being the first album he ever bought. His previous energies were denoted to classical music, in particular using the clarinet. Barry spent a good deal of his Dublin free-time perusing Ulyssesian landmarks and Joyce’s Martello tower in Sandycove. He also includes Flanagan O’Brien in his list of favourite authors, while a criticism of Joyce was his reading matter for this tour. Although ‘Super Tuff’ and ‘My Weapon’ are his first recorded contributions to XTC’s output, Barry’s written quite a bit and is a rapidly maturing songwriter. “The idea for a song has to fester for a long time, and a few other ideas kick around the back of your head and naturally merge before it actually comes down to the physical act of sitting down and trying to work out a song. Little riffs and little bits of paper that you tie in, and then cobble together”. I wondered if Barry found himself influenced as a songwriter by the Irish men of letters he reads? “I think the only similarity between that sort of thing and what I write is that there’s a sort of feel for words, a basic delight in sound of one syllable rattling against another one, and that they deal with happenings in real life”. At this point bass player Colin Moulding offers one of his rare remarks “It’s the one thing we share as writers, the three of us, the love of words. Words must sound good, whether they mean anything or not, they must sound good”. Moving right along, it’s obvious that what unites the tri-corner XTC songwriting machine is a total devotion to the use of words, each composition an exuberant employment of delightful language and images. They always come out sounding good.
Which brings us to guitarist Andy Partridge, who writes the bulk of XTC’s material. Andy’s songs mix verbal and musical humour into a combination of immediate accessibility and endless listenability, and are now garnering the majority of media attention devoted to the band. For Andy, songs are written as a whole : “Titles usually come first, they make me think of things. Like a door and you open it and what’s in the cupboard all falls out. Like the shower attachment door and whatever you think of comes out. I quite like to order myself, like a school master orders you to write an essay on ‘The Old Station’”.
I wondered if their next would be ‘What I Did I’m My Summer Holiday’?
‘The things I found at the Quarry’
‘The School Trip To Stonehenge’
‘The Museum’
‘The Museum and Caravan Site’
‘The Shower Attachment’
And returns to the topic of his songwriting : “Comics are a big thing in my life, and I used to write about comics and films, escapist entertainment. But I don’t read comics much anymore and I don’t see films too much anymore, so I write about things of more general interest”. He cites ‘Life is Good in the Greenhouse’ and ‘Battery Bides’ ( both from Go2) as being about, respectively, the colour of his living room walls, and Woolworths. It is perhaps self evident that Andy’s initial introduction to Rock ‘n’ Roll was through novelty songs, with Tommy Steele’s ‘Little White Bull’ making a particular impression : for him, Rock ‘n’ Roll always possessed a humorous slant.
Andy’s own tour reading material included Robert Heinlien’s best and ‘Asterix and the Gladiator’. Draw your own conclusions. A point which arose in Bill Graham’s recent interview with XTC was that they consciously avoid established musical patterns, working from what is left after the cliches ( especially solos) are eliminated. Andy concurs : “That’s a pretty arbitrary discipline that we impose on ourselves, and it works pretty well for us. I mean, when you first write songs it’s basically a guitar solo with chirping at either end”. Barry continues : “If you’re going to have a solo, if the structure of the song seems to demand a solo, or a place there is no singing, then I think you’ve got to make it justify itself, make it work for its fucking living.....”.
“...a scrounging solo...”
“...lying around...”
“...on National Assistance...”
“...getting up late and just doing the odd note now and again...”
The relative isolation with which each of the songwriters works presents a particular threat to unity of the band, especially if the press isolates one member of XTC above the others. Andy is unperturbed by such a possibility, quipping “The great writers never write together. I mean, Lennon and McCartney, the last thing they wrote together was ‘She Loves You”! Barry agrees : “Obviously there’s a danger there. It remains to be seen if the things that we have in common are gonna outweigh the things that divide us, and I still don’t know”. Bass-player Colin Moulding is the married one (and the quiet one). In an interview once Andy described Colin’s songs as being “Pop Slush”, but he may have been facetious, as Moulding’s compositions tend toward the disjointed and jarring, especially ‘X Wire’, ‘Crowed Room’, and ‘Set Myself On Fire’. His reticence precluded any insight beyond his love of the use of words, which extends into the use of sounds in his songs as well, but he shares his working process with Andy : “I usually come up with the title first, and things rapidly follow. And if they don’t rapidly follow, I rapidly forget the title”.
Lastly, there’s the man who sits at the centre of the ‘triangle’, drummer Terry Chambers. With his sole vocal contribution to XTC’s recordings being the whispered ‘Good Night Sucker’ at the close of the 3D E.P., Terry is also experimenting, albeit tentatively, with songwriting : “I’ve done some lyrics, but I think it’s going to be really difficult to get something over from the drum kit to a lead instrument. I’m at a definite disadvantage because I don’t play any other instrument, and watching the problems Colin or Andy or Barry had teaching their songs to the others, I know how hard it’ll be for me, who can’t play a lead instrument”. For the moment Terry’s content to bash away at his kit; despite not having yet achieved a satisfactory drum sound in the studio (aspiring stickmen should coo an earful of his at times inspired playing on ‘Go2’, he’s redefining the descriptive words ‘power’ and ‘intelligence’.
In the lobby of our Portrush hostelry, Andy grabbed a stale, cellophane wrapped sandwich, and with the appropriate motions bemoaned the dropping of ‘All Along The Watchtower’ from their set, as it was his only opportunity to indulge in his peculiarly staccato mouth-harp playing. Andy hopefully see the day when he could “not play the guitar, and just sing”, but the thought of introducing another musician to the group’s line-up squelches that train of thought. But not before he pursues it to an absurd end : “I can see as the years go by that all the instruments will drop off one by one and we’ll become a vocal harmony quartet. Perhaps we’ll take hormones and go Black in the process...”. I redirect the energy to Barry, whose saxophone playing is becoming more visible as he becomes more competent with that woodwind instrument. Momentarily forgetting his grounding with the clarinet, I ask how long he’s been playing the sax :
“He doesn’t yet”
“I look forward to it”
“He’s taking lessons at night”
“He’s playing sax! I wondered what this brass thing was that leapt out of his throat midway through the set and he fights off for two numbers!” (Fortunately this degenerates quickly into derisive comments on Bob Geldof’s recent Top of the Pops appearance, when he mimed the sax parts on Rat Trap). So that’s XTC, whose recently completed seven night Irish tour was a ground-breaking success. They plan on returning soon, perhaps even before this year is out. The orders are out already - make sure you see ‘em, ya hear? With their first two albums certs for the year’s ‘top ten’ lists, and an unrivalled combination of talent and humour in their armoury, XTC are poised to capture the big gold Rock ‘n’ Roll has to offer. I wondered if plans were being made for the third album yet, to which Andy responded, “It could be a bit Oriental for me, that’s a fad for me now, with lots of different cymbal sounds crashes”.
Terry : “I’ll be out of a job...”
“No, you’ll have to run around with bits of concrete in your hands...”
“...hiring hundreds of Oriental guys to go ‘Ding’”.
“...yeah, all these little Chinese guys in jockstraps rushing around your kit...”