XTC : Classic or Dud.

I think I'm slated to run the XTC poll...? I expect the turnout to be small (20 voters tops probably) and the vote spread very wide, with next to no overlap. Dukes and other sundry spinoff stuff will be eligible.

at one point i had at one point every xtc album up to oranges and lemons including dukes stuff, but i've never owned or heard the rest, other than peter pumpkin head (i hated oranges and lemons that much).

listening to wasp star now. this seems pretty good!

the last two are really great capstones to their career

Wasp Star is probably their most immediate album, every song is just so obviously catchy, though it does feature "Wheel and the Maypole" which is such a great way to round out their career. Still, Apple Venus is the one you want - if not for Moulding's songs it would be practically a perfect album.

Haven't listened to Wasp Star in years, but only remember really liking "Church of Women" and "Wheel and the Maypole". In fact, I mostly remember how the version of "My Brown Guitar" paled in comparison to the more Dukes-y demo, and they didn't even include stuff like "Wonder Annual" or "Ship Trapped in Ice" but did include "Standing in for Joe" and "Wounded Horse", which is maybe the least essential XTC song ever. Ugh, and now I'm hopping mad just typing that >:(

Apple Venus has the biggest disparity between the Andy and Colin songs. Two decent songs that sound like they were written just so they could call it an XTC album vs. some of the most ambitious arrangements the band ever made. Not crazy about Colin's songs on Wasp Star either, but Andy's songs aren't a whole lot better. Not surprised Colin called it a day after that, seemed his presence was more obligatory. Kinda sad too, he wrote some of their best songs.

still listening- i did recognize the man who murdered love, don't know where i'd have heard it though.

Ship Trapped in the Ice is so good

Eek. I disagree with a couple of the premises (Partridge "maturing" from the barker or whatever).

Not surprised Colin called it a day after that, seemed his presence was more obligatory. Kinda sad too, he wrote some of their best songs.

My thoughts exactly - seems every album had something brilliant from him, "Generals and Majors", "Wake Up", "English Roundabout", "One of the Millions", "Sacrificial Bonfire", etc. - then on those last two he didn't seem interested at all. I still appreciate Wasp Star as a total crowd-pleaser, "Wounded Horse" or not

i just listened to ship trapped in the ice from wasp star demos, i guess? it's good, was there another version? xp

This is a long XTC thread, so my "Colin's songs" story is probably upthread someplace.

even better, now i'm listening to a version of "ship" purporting to be from a fuzzy warbles vol 2, it really just sounds like a much better rip of the same track. xpost

re: ship, this from a note Partridge had sent to R Stevie Moore.

“After demoing ‘The Wheel and the Maypole’, I turned to recording this recently finished song, with the un-subtle metaphor of feeling trapped in our Virgin contract. Started on 26th June 1995, this song crashed along, with its frosty tones and glacial piano, the only thing missing is the distant howl of huskies. I must have been in a genuine frozen state of mind then, as reading old track sheets to compile these notes, I see the next thing I wrote was also way down on the thermometer, that song for the (Talking) Heads, ‘Papersnow’.”

Which brings up another aspect of XTC and particular Andy Partridge that is frustrating: it seems when songs are deemed too personal, or too "unsubtle", they get dumped in favor of more challenging stuff, or just overproduced to obcure their "naked" emotion. See also Andy's feelings about "Dear God" (which I might even agree is too unsubtle, but still turned out to be the band's biggest hit), "Your Dictionary" (where the band and producer had to convince him to release), etc etc

'The Wheel and the Maypole' is really the only reason to own Wasp Star, but my god what a song to end XTC's final album with.

I never got over how much "Wasp Star" paled compared to "Apple Venus". And then when the Fuzzy Warbles came out, how much better it could've been!

some words on White Music too wherein I attempt to explain my weird affinity towards it:
https://critterjams.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/xtc-white-music-1978/

I pulled out Wasp Star last week at a small gathering. A very non-music-geek friend (but who has ears) said it sounded like a bad ripoff of XTC. When I told him it was, actually, XTC, he was still convinced that the songs weren't written by 'the "Mayor of Simpleton" guy' - said they sounded too boring and one-dimensional. In 2001 I was so happy to have XTC back that I hardly noticed at first what a dud Wasp Star was, and I still like, if not love, most of the songs on it, or at least there are moments and details in each song that give me pleasure - but I thought that was interesting, that someone with no investment in the band would notice and comment on its dudness (when I would almost have expected its simplicity and directness to have been perceived a virtue by casual listeners).

new Skylarking edition

wtf does "corrected polarity" mean?

it's been reversed iirc

what is polarity in this context?

Polarity means phase inversion. Maybe they fixed some phase cancellation issues with the recordings?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P1mhEWezaU

I'm gonna get the SW remix of Nonsuch but I really wish Andy Partridge would spend some time writing new music rather than just endlessly reissue his back catalogue

^fat chance at this point.

The 'corrected polarity edition' is the same edition as the 2010 vinyl remaster. When that was being put together, the person doing the remaster discovered that the original mixes had reversed sound polarity, and had in fact been released this way since 1986. The reason it's took so long for this edition to reach a digital format is originally Virgin only gave Partridge the rights to reissue Skylarking on vinyl through his own imprint.

Chances are that Partridge won't spend any time releasing new songs, because according to what I've read, he has hundreds of pieces of songs lying around, but doesn't feel he can write anything as good as what he's already put out.

I think Virgin were right to dismiss Partridge's original "cover concept", to be honest. It's awful.

I dunno, I think it's rather pretty.

http://chalkhills.org/images/fanart/Mikrob-xtc1.jpg

http://chalkhills.org/images/fanart/Mikrob-xtc3.jpg

http://chalkhills.org/images/fanart/Mikrob-xtc4.jpg

it's like Keith Haring by way of a 6 year old girl on mushrooms

so regular old keith haring then

it was made by this guy

http://www.cincplug.com/mikrob/english.php

he has done covers for some other xtc albums as well, I like them!

I wonder if the polarity issue is just a convenient way of framing a reason for the reissue (other than that icky cover) Unless the polarity of certain separate instruments/tracks within the mix were at odds - and would therefore mean a total remix - I'm not sure the difference in sound would be significant.

Polarity means phase inversion.

Could you elaborate on this? I just read the wiki entry for phase inversion, and not exactly sure what this means in an audio context. How is polarity different than just the L-R panning of channels?

Per the notes from the press release:

"Somewhere, possibly in the transfer from the multi-channel tape to the stereo master, a polarity had been reversed. This is not the same thing as a reversed left/right channel which puts a stereo picture out of phase & makes the sound unlistenable, but a much more difficult to pin down event that can be triggered by something as simple as a badly wired plug in the overall system which, nonetheless, removes some of the punch & presence from a finished recording."

I can make a vague guess as to what this means, but still unsure as to how a) exactly it will be different, or b) someone would have picked up on this error.

also, not sure if it's a joke, but that isn't the original cover art above...?

https://www.burningshed.com/covers/large4309.jpg

iirc accidentally reversed phasing is not good, it can mess with the stereo imaging. but it's been years since my audio tech classes.

I just searched wiki for a better explanation to no avail

The human ear cannot hear phase distortion, except that it may affect the stereo imaging.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortion#Phase_distortion

I too was wondering where the shitty haring-esque thing came from

pubes are always good on an album cover iirc

Was gonna say..

That's no original artwork, "Dear God" was added later

Could you elaborate on this?

I'm a little confused what they mean as well. Polarity is where you take some signal and invert the sound wave, so it's separate from panning, but as far as I knew the only time inverted polarity makes a difference on how sound is perceived is if it creates phase cancellation (like what happens when you put a sine wave in two channels, invert polarity on one side, and collapse to mono). I thought maybe they had a stereo recording of some instrument, and they accidentally inverted one channel, causing some unintended phase cancellation. But based on what you posted from the press release, it might have been the entire recording that was inverted? I didn't think that had any noticeable impact on the sound, but this article seems to think it makes a difference: http://www.audiodirectionltd.com/absolute-polarity.html

Or rather, polarity is just the orientation of the sound wave. Inverting the sound wave means changing the polarity.

not sure if it's a joke, but that isn't the original cover art above...?

Yeah, just so we're clear, it's the muff I was expressing approbation for, not the cod-primitivism.

Just had the sobering realization that the Dukes' approximation of 1967 would be the equivalent of a modern band lovingly recreating, say, 1996.

there's a zing waiting to explode

Can't wait for some band to lovingly recreate "Cumbersome"

never seen this before

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xlH9eyyZ0M

Ace, thanks!

I have a bunch of these fillums, they used to do loads of bits of films for a cable channel based in Swindon, 1975 onwards.

Really wanted to go to this XTC covers night last week in Minneapolis, but was sick. Lots of heavy hitter players and a pretty cool setlist:

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh310/yodelagogo/senses.jpg