By Keith Walsh
When I first heard the band that changed my understanding of how passion could be transformed into songs, it was on AM radio, in 1979. I was a junior in high school, and the song “Making Plans For Nigel” was so uniquely crafted that it tickled new places in my eardrums and my imagination.
‘Making Plans For Nigel’ is from the album Drums and Wires by XTC. I went to the mall and got the album right away, to play on the inexpensive turntable and speakers that my mom had brought me downtown to purchase. Even the album cover sparked my imagination, with its proud design. The songs “When You’re Near Me I Have Difficulty” and “Ten Feet Tall” were completely sincere love songs wrapped in excited passion or tranquil inspiration, with similar sentiment to songs by Elton John and Barry Manilow that had impacted me when I was younger, though these new songs featured lyrics that pushed idiosyncrasies to a new level.
The arrangements and compositions were a level above common pop and punk songs of the time. The songs “Millions,” “Roads Girdle The Globe” and “Complicated Game” carried a seriousness that impressed me but caused me to confront my limited understanding of the world. “Life Begins At The Hop” had a unique guitar solo with a sound that I thought might be a synthesizer but I finally figured out that it was just a bright, muted and plucked guitar, played with precision.
Guitarist/keyboardist Dave Gregory joined the band on this, their third album, with singer/songwriters Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding contributing guitars, bass and vocals, and Terry Chambers on drums. Production by Steve Lillywhite brought it all together. This was the best of the new wave, bright and energetic, plenty of guitars, rhythm and beats. The vocals were confident and strong. In these days before the internet, I didn’t know anything about the two vocalists and it was at least 10 years until I knew who contributed what. That the album was uniquely British was undeniable, and it might be written off as mad if it wasn’t executed so skillfully and intelligently. It was mania but strictly controlled.
A year later, in my senior year of high school, I met some musicians in my hometown. The drummer of Berlin told me that the drum and white noise intro for “Talk Talk Video” (featured on the Up Another Octave Compilation) was patterned after the intro to “Making Plans For Nigel.” Speaking of the record store Up Another Octave, it was there that I asked Berlin’s bassist if he liked the band XTC. I think that was on the night The Suburban Lawns played there, but I could be wrong. It might have been The Brat, from East Los Angeles. He said he liked the album with the hidden track. That would be “Are You Receiving Me?” from Go 2. I knew of it, because not long after getting Drums And Wires, I picked up the first two albums by the band, when Barry Andrews was the keyboard player and their sound was more aggro pub rock, but still unique and edgy.
Strange recollection: When I got my copy of Go 2, there was a manufacturing defect on the track “Meccanik Dancing” that caused the disc to skip. I brought my copy back to Tower Records and the replacement copy did the same thing. The first album, White Music, I noticed their capacity for writing catchy potential singles, notably “Radios In Motion,” “This Is Pop,” and “Statue Of Liberty.” Just after high school, I tried to copy the energy of these songs when writing my own, but I think I avoided the lame self-consciously weird stylings that distinguished some imitators who tried to exploit emotional illness to make a splash. At one point I had every XTC album on vinyl and in the early 80s made cassettes to play in my car. In spring of 1981 I saw the band at The Hollywood Palladium for the Black Sea tour, with three friends from high school. I was at the foot of the stage, dancing.
Black Sea was an even more impactful album, the one that propelled me through my senior year of high school. It was relatively more normal than Drums And Wires, and the songs “Language In Our Lungs” and “Towers Of London” showed an incredible depth and classicism. “Rocket From A Bottle” matched perfectly my excitement over romance. Steve Lillywhite produced again, this time joined by Hugh Padgham who would produce English Settlement. A little while later I noticed he produced a Phil Collins album and that was a signal of the new level that XTC had reached. Nearly coinciding with Drums and Wires, Lillywhite produced Peter Gabriel III, the melting face polaroid cover) and it didn’t really occur to me for a while that somehow XTC had grown from the relative crudeness of their first two albums to a higher plane somewhat quickly.
The Big Express was brittle and slick at a time when I was full of anxiety, and it didn’t connect. Then XTC got into more pastoral and folky styles. Skylarking, from 1986 came out and I enjoyed it however, as it was a more reflective album with Todd Rundgren’s production. It didn’t feel rushed or pressured. I had the original pressing with Mermaid Smiled instead of Dear God. I remember KROQ DJ Richard Blade commenting negatively about that song on the air. Then in 1989 Orange And Lemons came out, I fell in love again, and then again with Nonsuch, released in 1992 but it didn’t strike me initially. I bought a CD single of “The Disappointed” and it took a few years to get used to the new sound, produced by Gus Dudgeon.
Even before I got my first CD player, I picked up a copy of White Music in the small disc format. Later I got a copy of the others on CD. The CD for Drums And Wires had bonus tracks, that I thought were good but interrupted the flow of the original vinyl. Same with Black Sea. The illustrated sheet I created reflects the track listing of the original vinyl I purchased in 1979.
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