XTC fans (or non-): possible explanations of their appeal???

For me, it was just a case of knowing their two most well known tracks well ('Making Plans For Nigel' and 'Senses Working Overtime') and then checking out the albums to see if the rest of the stuff was any good. It was.

my memory of seeing that performance always made me doubt my sanity -- did it even happen? did i dream it up? i'm glad to realize i wasn't imagining it. such a great album all the way through.

at the time i was into INXS, REM, etc (lol) but also had one Cure album -- as a littler kid I loved The Beatles and XTC was the most appealing combo of modern humor and topical subject matter + well-crafted Beatley songs. i also hated Reagan and nuclear bombs so the political songs resonated a lot. i feel fortunate to have had nothing better to do that evening than watch tv by myself.

eventually i found Skylarking at the library.

Was 15, had seen them on Urgh! and then noticed cheap cassette of English Settlement at rockheads in downtown St. Paul (the version without Africa, cockpit, leisure etc on it-- I still don't like those songs being there). Loved it right away. The year after, Skylarking came out and became the huge album of my circle of high school friends.

I doubt I'm the only one that discovered them this way, but They Might Be Giants have a song called "XTC vs Adam Ant" and I was at the age where I was just starting to learn about music not on the radio and would check out literally any band I heard about. Also got into Adam Ant that way, but he is not as much a fave

about a year and a half ago a good friend of mine made a very passionate and long post on FB explaining why, "after 20 years of near constant music consumption," he'd concluded XTC was his favorite band ever, for all the reasons we know... i was in new york and about to go to Other Music so i picked up Mummer and The Big Express there. ended up being my last visit there before it closed.

the O&L radio tour is sweet. the way their guitars blend on Love on a Farmboy's Wages - oh man

https://youtu.be/cTtFTHI7Or0?t=20m13s

I doubt I'm sure I'm the only one that discovered them this way, but it was on the 1982 WOMAD benefit double album Music and Rhythm, which had a bunch of artists who played the first WOMAD festival and which I bought for the unreleased Peter Gabriel, Pete Townshend and Jon Hassell tracks. It also had "It's Nearly Africa," which I completely flipped out over.

Bought English Settlement a few weeks later and flipped out 14 more times (see, 'cause there's a total of 15 tracks). By the time Mummer came out a year later, I had bought every album and most of the singles, EPs and side projects (with a big thank you to the late lamented Venus Records on 8th St. in NYC).