WHAT DO YOU CALL THAT NOISE? AN XTC DISCOVERY BOOK
Pages working overtime: busy book of XTC eulogising.
Forty years since Making Plans For Nigel gave XTC arguably their best-known hit, they remain a name permanently affixed to phrases like “did not fit into contemporary trends” and “influential cult outfit”. If their management hadn’t been so debt-inducingly awful the stock narrative might have been very different. Nonetheless the sense of injustice that their inventive work didn’t catch the breadth of acclaim it merited nurtures obsessive devotion from fans. Among their number are the varied likes of Peter Gabriel, The Jam’s Rick Buckler, Squeeze’s Chris Difford, Dr Hook’s Dennis Locorriere and Jellyfish’s Jason Falkner, all of whom contribute to this lively book.
OPENLY AIMED AT THOSE WHO EAT, SLEEP AND BREATHE XTC.
It’s edited by Mark Fisher, who previously put together
The XTC Bumper Book Of Fun For Boys And Girls. Effectively it’s a gathering point where XTC-philes group to gush and expound. Or perhaps more of an XTC weekend conference, because the key players of the story are present in some shape or form. Andy Partridge mulls over mixing, Dave Gregory analyses arrangements and Barry Andrews ponders the piano. Correctly, they are not solely limited to these subjects. Colin Moulding and Terry Chambers are covered tangentially via detailed scrutiny of their recent Swindon Arts Centre residency, while the catalogue of erstwhile XTC drummers, including Pat Mastelotto and Pete Phipps are also interviewed. All this feels odd but acceptable to Partridge: “We’ve become a historical artefact that’s more important than when it was a pot in Cro-Magnon times. It makes me feel valued.” He then adds, “As long as I don’t go into national treasure territory”.
There’s a risk of that as everyone here rhapsodises XTC’s genius. However the book’s bundled together with the exuberant enthusiasm of its Limelight fanzine alma mater, and its grasp that the mundane sights of Swindon and the influence of Betjeman on Moulding are equally valid points of investigation is astute. It’s interesting, too, that a band who can sound so coldly clever-clever to non-partisans spark such boiling emotion in diehards. There are testimonies here which confirm that one person’s “It’s okay, I guess” is another’s “This song saved my life”. This is pop.
The interviews with young kids (and with members of bands nobody’s heard of) are an indulgence too far for the casual reader, but this is openly aimed at those who eat, sleep and breathe XTC, barely washing. Dave Gregory says within, “If it’s something I’m passionate about, I have to be totally immersed in it.” Fans will dive in to this black (and white) sea.