Driving home from Maine in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago, with my boys asleep in the back, my wife half out of it, and the iPod plugged into my car stereo and set to SHUFFLE, The Jam‘s “That’s Entertainment” came on. I had the volume down on the stereo so I wouldn’t wake anyone, but I started to get annoyed that I couldn’t follow the lyrics to this old favorite. I’m not married to lyrics – and I’m definitely not one of those people who search for a lyric sheet as soon as I buy a new album – but I’ve always like Paul Weller’s lyrics and will eventually pore over his latest set of words. I’ve always liked the lyrics to “That’s Entertainment,” but on this night, with the volume turned down, I couldn’t make out what he was singing. I had to stir my wife. Continue reading »
I’m a huge fan of XTC. I consider their run of albums from Go2 through The Big Express one of the most impressive runs of albums in rock. I even think Skylarking is a pretty great album, although I don’t wholly embrace its constricted production. However, I was never a fan of Nonsuch. I tried to like it for a few months and finally decided to cast that devil out of the house!
Click here for a fascinating look at a band in the studio at a time when they forgot to change the batteries in their bullshit detector. (Unfortunately, this is one of those YouTube videos that the owner will not allow other sites to embed, so you’ve got to go to his specific URL.)
Does anyone in this studio look uncomfortable with the mess that’s being put down? All that’s missing is a nodding Derek Smalls, stroking his beard nnd pulling on his pipe.
When people tell me they don’t “get” XTC – or think they stink, I figure this must be what they’re hearing. I ask Townspeople who don’t get XTC, Is this what you’re hearing?
This is a simple one. What fantasy show would you make every effort to go see no matter the cost and location? The only rule is that it has to be feasible. So a Beatles reunion is out. But you can get creative like a Syd Barrett tribute featuring Robyn Hitchcock, Gilmour and The Soft Machine guys that played on Madcap. I’d consider that but probably wouldn’t go to the end of the Earth for it.
When the Velvet Underground reunited in London in ’93, I went so far as to look in to acquiring tickets and airfares and such. Didn’t pull the trigger but that was close. I only had to drive down to Long Beach to see The Stooges reunion. I went by myself which I think might be the only time that I’ve gone to a show by myself. So I’ll never know how far I would’ve gone for that.
The only show that I can think of that I would go to the end of the Earth for is The Dukes of Stratosphear, if and only if, they did it in full character and with a full blown psychedelic extravaganza.
What say you? Is it a reunion show? A super group? A reunion show of a super group?
After a year and a half of research, analysis, and discussion, Rock Town Hall has arrived at what might be its most important Glossary entry to date, Proctomusicology and its related terms, Proctomusicologist and Prock. We have identified a unifying principle in modern music that cuts across genres. A simple, concise definition follows:
Proctomusicology: Music up its own ass about its musicological means of creating music, inching forward the aesthetic principles of whatever style/s is/are being mined.
See also: Proctomusicologist, Prock
The research and development that went into the validation of this term is detailed in the links below. It was a true team effort, with Townsman Saturnismine responsible for the exact phrasing of our definition. Meanwhile, the author of our Glossary entry Kentonite, Townsman Hrrundivbakshi, noted the difference between a Kentonite and a Proctomusicologist:
A Kentonite is obssessed with the technical componentry of music, and cares not whether the music is looking forward or backward; the Prock-ist is obsessed with the subject matter’s musicological componentry, and always defines it in terms of its antecedents.
Of course, there’s a Rock Venn Diagram thing going on here, as well. Some artists are both Prockists and Kentonites. Donald Fagen springs to mind. I’d add that — slicing even more finely — there are Prock bands (eg, XTC) that contain Kentonite members (eg, Dave Gregory), and so forth.
Read back through the term’s Working Definition period of development, in the following links, and I think you’ll agree that no group of music lovers was better equipped to define this term. For more reading on this subject see here, here, and where it all began, here.
Hey everyone, it’s been a while since we’ve discussed a hilariously dorky, minutia-obsessed, Beatles-related issue. Let’s do this!
This is something I used to think about a lot more, for lack of better things to do with my life. But I still think it’s an interesting idea. So much Beatlesque music lazily relies on the same old chord changes, guitar and vocal licks, etc. to elicit a Pavlovian reaction from the fanboys. But who best took the music to new places, to try and express new things? Who was most fearless in their ability to fuck with the form that the Fab Four gave us? I say XTC, specifically Andy Partridge. While I’ve moved on from this band in some ways, I’ll defend their whole catalog to my dying day. I remember an old website, SonicNet.com, where artists programmed streaming radio “stations.” Partridge’s was by far my favorite: Plenty of ’60s psych and pop, yes, but also Charlie Parker, Phillip Glass, and Captain Beefheart. And it all made sense, you could hear how all the artists had informed his sensibilities.
Yes, the band has a slightly scary fanbase, but if you doth protest too much you may need to look in a mirror sometime. Plus, you can’t spend your life following bands who only attract young, good-looking crowds. That way lies madness, and some other maladies I can think of.
In second place for pushing the Beatles’ sound forward, I put Big Star, who upped the anty for bad vibes and emotional intensity.
It’s too bad that XTC is best known for, among other things, being that once-promising New Wave band with a leader whose severe stage fright caused them to stop performing live, ultimately killing the band’s commercial chances and artistic growth more than any series of Malevolent and Incompetent Managers. From the band’s second album, Go 2, through Mummer (and even the intent of The Big Express) released one of my favorite strings of albums of any band. Those albums still mean a lot to me on many levels, and at their core I’ve always loved their ability to cram super-pop ideas into heavy, sometimes fractured rhythms. The Beatles met Beefheart or Steve Reich or any number of avant musicians.
Just as I was first getting into the band, after seeing the videos for songs like “Making Plans for Nigel” and “Life Begins at the Hop” on the syndicated New Wave video show Rockworld I saw an ad for the band’s upcoming appearance at Emerald City, in Cherry Hill, NJ. The ad featured that Drums and Wires logo, which was reason enough to dig deeper on this band. I briefly considered what it would be like to get into that show, but I was an innocent 16 years old, too young and too naive to attempt getting into this club illegally (you had to be 18 to get into a bar in New Jersey at this time). I probably spent that night staying up late in hopes of catching an XTC video on Rockworld.
Emerald City was primarily a disco
About 3 days later, I won tickets on Philadelphia’s WMMR to see some blues-rock band called The Nighthawks…the next night at Emerald City. I knew these guys weren’t XTC, but I wasn’t going to miss my chance to get into a club and see a rock band up close while I was still under age. I thought fast, and my very cool, prematurely gray high school English teacher agreed to escort me to the show. This was all cool with my Mom. I got in without problem. The Nighthawks were pretty bad – and they definitely weren’t XTC. Damn, you mean to tell me I could have gone to see XTC with my teacher a few nights earlier? Here’s the live sound of XTC that was cooking around that time, a taste of what I missed.
Yes! YouTube comes through with the next best thing to my #1 behind-the-scenes peek, which would be the making of XTC‘s English Settlement. Here’s the band in the first of a 10-part series of YouTubes on the making of “Towers of London”, or as I’ve read, the re-making of “Towers of London”, the released version of which had already been recorded. Nevertheless, I invite XTC and studio nerds to unite!
