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Mummer (1983, 41.30) ***½/TT |
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| Beating of Hearts Wonderland Love on a Farmboy's Wages Great Fire Deliver Us From the Elements Human Alchemy Ladybird In Loving Memory of a Name |
Me and the Wind Funk Pop a Roll |
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The Big Express (1984, 43.57) ***½/TT |
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| Wake Up All You Pretty Girls Shake You Donkey Up Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her This World Over The Everyday Story of Smalltown I Bought Myself a Liarbird Reign of Blows |
You're the Wish You Are I Had I Remember the Sun Train Running Low on Soul Coal |
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Skylarking (1986, 45.50) ***½/T |
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| Summer's Cauldron Grass The Meeting Place That's Really Super, Supergirl Ballet for a Rainy Day 1000 Umbrellas Season Cycle Earn Enough for Us |
Big Day Another Satellite Mermaid Smiled The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul Dying Sacrificial Bonfire |
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Apple Venus Vol. 1 (1999, 50.07) *****/TT½ |
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| River of Orchids I'd Like That Easter Theatre Knights in Shining Karma Frivolous Tonight Green Man Your Dictionary Fruit Nut |
I Can't Own Her Harvest Festival The Last Balloon |
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Coat of Many Cupboards [Disc 3] (2002, recorded 1982-86, 67.37) ***½/TShaving Brush BoogiePunch and Judy Fly on the Wall Yacht Dance (live) Jason and the Argonauts Love on a Farmboy's Wages (demo) Wonderland (demo) Ladybird All You Pretty Girls (demo) Wake Up (demo) The Everyday Story of Smalltown Grass (demo) Let's Make a Den (demo) The Meeting Place (demo) Dear God (demo) |
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Mellotrons/Chamberlin used:
XTC formed in the mid-'70s in Swindon, Wiltshire as failed glamsters The Helium Kidz, mutating into XTC around the time punk hit. They began as a particularly spiky-sounding outfit, scratchy guitar and cheap organ combining to create a fairly unique sound, Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding's songs lending their sound the requisite oddness they needed to stand out from the pack. Over the course of their next few albums, they lost the keyboards, gained another guitar and lost their drummer, becoming a studio-based outfit in the process after Partridge had a nervous breakdown on tour.
XTC bought their M400 (with two tape frames) around 1983. Dave Gregory:
"During the rehearsals for Mummer we were sitting around thinking of something different to use. Mellotron? Yeah! We looked in the Melody Maker and there was actually one for sale in there, we had to go to South Wales for it. I think the bloke had just quit his job in an art-rock group. When we got it back and I took it to pieces to see how it worked I couldn't believe it; the tape's attached to springs that pull it back after eight seconds and there's a wheel propelled by a big fan belt. Plus it takes about ten minutes to warm up after you turn it on. We have to clean it from time to time and the fuses used to go a lot when we first got it. Absolutely obsolete".
Mummer, like all the relevant XTC albums, uses the Mellotron sparingly; two tracks only, mainly choirs. Deliver Us From The Elements is a Colin Moulding song and one of the band's first 'psychedelic' numbers. Human Alchemy slightly less so, but with slightly more Mellotron. The following year's The Big Express uses the Mellotron in a fairly similar way; two tracks, mostly choir. All You Pretty Girls features Mellotron choir 'recorded from a speaker in the base of a tin bucket', apparently, which could explain the 'unusual' sound... Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her is an Andy Partridge song about an imaginary encounter with Erica Wexler, Andy's long-term admirer and, eventually, partner.
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Skylarking, recorded in America, was produced by Todd Rundgren, both things causing considerable problems for the band. During the recording, they found an old Chamberlin at the studio (right) which (allegedly) 'had a family of mice living in it'. Dave Gregory plays it on one song, the terribly cheerful Dying, but it's not particularly audible, although it apparently provides the clarinets at the end. By this time, XTC had got their psych alter-ego project The Dukes of Stratosphear going properly, with a full album in the pipeline, but they didn't use their Mellotron again for many years.
XTC took an enforced seven-year break after 1992's Nonsuch (****), while they went on strike, refusing to offer Virgin any new recordings, as the label refused to release them from their somewhat unethical contract. Eventually, the band won out through sheer determination and released what I personally feel to be the highlight of their career, Apple Venus Vol. 1. This is a marvellous collection of psychedelia-influenced material, written over the course of several years. Sadly, after everything the band had been through, Dave Gregory left during the recording sessions, but not before laying down some excellent Mellotron parts on three of the album's tracks. Easter Theatre has some very 'Strawberry Fields' flutes, Frivolous Tonight features a superb descending string line, while closer The Last Balloon has some background strings on the chorus (thanks, Herman).
2002's four-disc Coat of Many Cupboards is one of the better 'semi-compilation' boxed sets doing the rounds, two-thirds of its contents previously unreleased. So why not make it 100% unheard material? It's only die-hard fans who'll buy it, anyway, so the compilers might as well give real value for money. Saying that, it's on Virgin, so, given the band's severely fractured relationship with the label... The previously-unheard stuff chiefly consists of live recordings and demos, with a smattering of rehearsal tracks, outtakes and several 'unused single recordings', oddly. Highlights include Disc 1's Fireball XL5/Fireball Dub and Sleepyheads and Disc 3's demo of that remarkably elusive XTC classic, Dear God. Well, left off the original domestic issue of Skylarking, not easily available until 1996's Fossil Fuel hits collection... The same disc's ludicrous, twelve-minute studio muckabout Shaving Brush Boogie, however, refuses to pass muster. Two Mellotron tracks on disc three, both demos, with Gregory's (deliberately) wobbly strings on the All You Pretty Girls and phased cello (including a solo!) and chordal strings on Dear God.
XTC are most definitely an acquired taste, but one that I feel more people should make the effort to acquire. It took me many years of thinking 'I know I should like this band' before I finally did, so if I can do it, so can you. All four of these albums are well worth hearing, but (at least to my ears) Apple Venus Vol. 1 is not only the best of the bunch, but the only one with any really unmissable Mellotron.
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25 O'Clock (1985, 26.44) *****/TT½25 O'ClockBike Ride to the Moon My Love Explodes What in the World??... Your Gold Dress The Mole From the Ministry |
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Psonic Psunspot (1987, 40.00) *****/TTT½ |
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| Vanishing Girl Have You Seen Jackie? Little Lighthouse You're a Good Man Albert Brown (Curse You Red Barrel) Collideascope You're My Drug Shiny Cage |
Brainiac's Daughter The Affiliated Pale and Precious |
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Chips From the Chocolate Fireball (1989, 62.44) *****/TTTT |
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| 25 O'Clock Bike Ride to the Moon My Love Explodes What in the World??... Your Gold Dress The Mole From the Ministry Vanishing Girl Have You Seen Jackie? |
Little Lighthouse You're a Good Man Albert Brown (Curse You Red Barrel) Collideascope You're My Drug Shiny Cage Brainiac's Daughter The Affiliated Pale and Precious |
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Ah, the Dukes of Stratosphear, one of Britain's best-loved late-'60s psych outfits, unheralded in their time, only to be exhumed and beatified decades later. Oh all right, it's XTC's cod-psych alter-egos, rejoicing in the monikers Lord Cornelius Plum, Sir John Johns, e-i-e-i Owen and The Red Curtain. Their two albums, compiled onto the Chips From the Chocolate Fireball collection, are the most brilliant psych pastiches ever, with an almost psychotic attention to detail and bucketloads of humour to boot.
Fans tend to prefer the 25 O'Clock mini-album, originally conceived as a one-off project; it's probably fair to say that there's a little more joyous abandon in its six tracks than in the more commercially-inclined Psonic Psunspot. It must have been intensely irritating to XTC to discover that their jokey side project was selling better than they were; I believe that's the reason behind the full-length album. Nonetheless, it's still full of superb material, replete with period detail and great songs, a touch that many bands would've forgotten in their haste. A brilliant touch is the spoken-word interludes by the studio owner's young daughter (I think), who does the best 'Alice' I've heard in a long while. Incidentally, scholars of the period can apparently nail almost every track down to a specific influence, many of them obscure in themselves, but my lesser knowledge can only spot the most obvious; Sgt. Pepper, Ogden's, Village Green etc. A couple of specifics I've noticed, though, are Bike Ride To The Moon (Tomorrow), the excellent pub singalong You're A Good Man Albert Brown (Beatles vs. Kinks), the end of Pale And Precious (Beach Boys, theremin included) and Collideascope (The Move).
Great Mellotron, too, of course, although the band have resisted the doubtless huge temptation to swamp the entire project with it. It's not always easy to tell, but there's definitely a couple of tracks on the mini-album, but it really comes into its own on Psonic Psunspot, particularly on Have You Seen Jackie? and Collideascope. The story goes that for the recording of the full-length album at a studio right out in the sticks (Devon, I think), the equipment had to be transported in a rowing boat (!), M400 included...
It's interesting to note that as XTC's career has progressed, the distance between 'themselves' and the Dukes has gradually lessened until by 1999's excellent Apple Venus Vol. 1, they're almost indistinguishable, other than that the XTC album is technically 'serious'. Anyway, if you have even a remote interest in late-'60s British music, buy these (the compilation suffices) and contribute to XTC's pension fund (stop choking at the back...). Absolutely wonderful albums that stand repeated plays without a murmur of dissent. Sheer brilliance.
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Fuzzy Warbles Volume 2 (2002, recorded 1979-2000, 49.38) ***½/T |
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| Ridgeway Path I Don't Want to Be Here Young Marrieds No One Here Available Obscene Procession Miller Time You're the Wish You Are I Had Ra Ra Rehearsal Ra Ra for Red Rocking Horse |
Everything'll Be Alright 25 O'Clock GOOM Chain of Command All of a Sudden Summer's Cauldron Then She Appeared It's Snowing Angels Ship Trapped in the Ice |
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Fuzzy Warbles Volume 3 (2003, recorded 1983-96, 57.41) ***½/T |
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| My Train is Coming Lightheaded Goodbye Humanosaurus Humble Daisy You Like Me? Great Fire Work Mopti Fake 1 |
Collideascope Mopti Fake 2 When We Get to England Train Running Low on Soul Coal Holly Up on Poppy Strawberry Fields Forever Autumn Comes Around Child's Crusade |
Little Lighthouse This is the End Put it on Again |
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Fuzzy Warbles Volume 4 (2003, recorded 1979-9?, 56.03) ***/T |
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| Tunes Bumpercars The Art Song (Something Good With Your Life) I'm Playing My Fano Zonked Right Out on Life All I Dream of is a Friend Peck the Ground Like a Chicken |
That's Really Super Supergirl Brainiac's Daughter Blue Beret Gangway, Electric Guitar is Coming Through Mechanical Planet Helicopter Ugly Underneath |
OMGO Where is Your Heart? Hey, it's Alan Burston! Season Cycle Countdown to Christmas Partytime |
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Fuzzy Warbles Volume 7 (2006, recorded 1982-2003, 60.36) ***½/T |
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| 2 Rainbeau Melt Thrill Pill Sonic Boom I'm Unbecome Ballet for a Rainy Day 1000 Umbrellas Ejac in a Box (MGOO) C Side |
Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her Ladybird Candymine Visit to the Doctor Cherry in Your Tree Desert Island Scarecrow People |
Hold Me My Daddy Books Are Burning Bobba De Boop De Ba De Boobay Open a Can (of Human Beans) |
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Andy Partridge has been, of course XTC's chief mover and shaker since the late '70s (and, of course, chief Duke of Stratosphear), although the band have been on hiatus for the better part of the last two decades. After the two Apple Venus demo sets (Homespun and Homegrown), Partridge elected to release a slew of demo albums under his own name, the Fuzzy Warbles series (a Clockwork Orange quote, fact fans), starting in 2002. They've been compiled with no regard for continuity, so I'm not sure what criteria Andy used when piecing them together, making every one of the eight regular volumes a bit of a mixed bag of experiments, one-man-and-an-acoustic run-throughs of familiar material, near-full band arrangements obviously used as works-in-progress and demos of never-released stuff. As a result, the boringly consistent ratings basically tell you that one volume's as good (or bad) as another and if you like one you'll almost certainly like all. And the corollary, of course. Partridge's unique voice and phrasing shine through most of the tracks on offer here, while his way with a melody line makes it impossible they could be written by anyone else.
To add complication to complication, it seems quite a few of the tracks from the series have actually been released before, largely on North American fan club cassette releases, including Jules Verne's Sketchbook (1987) and The Bull with the Golden Guts (1992), plus cassette, vinyl and CD EPs scattered across the years, sometimes as XTC, sometimes as Partridge. I'm afraid I've made no real attempt to log all the different original releases, although I've tried to note when the Mellotron tracks have been previously available. After releasing Volumes 7/8 in 2006, Partridge stuck the whole lot into a box set, The Official Fuzzy Warbles Collector's Album, with a ninth disc, Hinges, which must've pissed his devoted fans off big-time, since they'd presumably already bought the previous eight volumes.
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Volume 1 (***½) is Mellotron-free, but Volume 2's 1985 opener Ridgeway Path (originally on The Bull with the Golden Guts) is the most Mellotron-heavy track in the entire series, being an infuriatingly-incomplete just under a minute of full-on multiply-overdubbed string and flute madness, accompanied only by a drum machine. The rest of the disc's the expected hodge-podge, not least the eighteen-second Jamaican answerphone message No One Here Available and the excellent, otherwise-unavailable Ra Ra For Red Rocking Horse (excepting its original release on Jules Verne's Sketchbook). Oddly, there's one other possible Mellotron track, Then She Appeared, although it seems to fall in completely the wrong part of XTC's career (around 1990), being a(nother) '60s psych spoof, this time credited to The Golden, with what could well be a few seconds of a Mellotron flute melody at the end.
Volume 3 is the by-now usual mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar, the fully worked-out and the bare bones, the excellent and the WTF? Possibly the album's oddest track (against stiff competition) is Dave Gregory's note-perfect home-recorded Strawberry Fields Forever, complete with Mellotron flutes and cellos, Partridge singing. It seems Dave's 'kinky thing was reproducing his favourite records in atomic exactitude', according to Andy, to which I can only say: job done. He adds: 'Just don't ask to hear his McArthur Park or Twenty First Century Schizoid Man'. The track has actually been available before, on a 1990 various artists effort, 1967: Through the Looking Glass, listed as Colin's Hermits (ho ho).
Volume 4, for some odd, reason, seems marginally less appealing than its predecessors, although it's still an essential listen for (should be) committed fans. Maybe it's the cumulative effect of Partridge-style melodic twists and turns? Maybe he'd already dug out all the best stuff? Four/five vols to go, folks... One Mellotron track again, with choppy, distorted flutes and in-yer-face cellos on another shorty, 1983's Peck The Ground Like A Chicken, previously unavailable. There's nothing Mellotronic on Volumes 5/6, leaving Volume 7 as the last relevant release for Mellotron fetishists. No fewer than two Mellotron tracks, with what sounds like string section on Partridge's original demo for The Big Express' Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her and distant strings on the one-off 2003 Dukes reformation track, Open A Can (Of Human Beans). The rest of the disc's, well, pretty much like the rest of the set, to be honest, highlights including the three endearingly filthy 'single entendre' tracks Partridge wrote for a quicky-abandoned 'bubblegum' album in the early '90s (Candymine/Visit To The Doctor/Cherry In Your Tree). As he says re. playing them to Virgin, "You should have seen their faces..."
Do you invest? The set isn't cheap, although I've seen it for around £40 sterling, which isn't bad for a nine-disc set, is it? If you're a fan, there's no point buying individual volumes, as you're going to want all of 'em and will just kick yourself for trying to pick 'em up piecemeal. And you'll miss out on Hinges (carrying on the philatelic analogy, clearly), which, although it's the shortest disc in the set (don't tell me Partridge was actually RUNNING OUT of barrels to scrape?), is still essential for anyone interested in the backroom workings of XTC, or anyone who simply wants to hear a bunch of 'as good as the albums' stuff that you're not going to hear anywhere else. The five definite Mellotron tracks are, of course, spread over four volumes, the one absolute essential being Ridgeway Path, despite its brevity. Look, if you like XTC, you can't really go wrong here.
In 2005, both Apple Venus albums plus their demos were made available as a four-disc set, Apple Box, complete with download instructions for two new tracks, Spiral and Say It; slightly naughty, given that most fans would already own all four releases separately. The two new tracks are well worth hearing (if possibly only for total completists), fitting neatly into the sonic landscape already defined by the original albums. The very talented Duncan Maitland (ex-Pugwash) plays Mellotron string samples on Say It (thanks for that, Duncan), with a perfectly acceptable part that's never in any real danger of being mistaken for the real thing. Do you buy the box? Yes for completists, hmmm... for the rest of us. Are these extras even still available, a good few years after the event? Quite possibly not, although they've turned up as not-entirely official (cough) downloads.
See: Peter Blegvad | Duncan Maitland | Erica Wexler
