XTC
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Review by Paul Rambali, New Musical Express, 13 September 1980
XTC'S FOURTH outing, called, for no apparent reason, Black Sea, greets the reviewer like nothing so much as a bowl of Frosties on a wet ...
XTC: A Chat with Andy Partridge
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, CDNOW.com, 2000
HAILING FROM unglamorous Swindon, 70 miles west of London, XTC were clever-clever new-wavers who quickly outgrew the late 70s punk scene and matured into purveyors ...
Audio interviews
Interview by Johnny Black, Rock's Backpages audio, March 1994
Childhood fears, being bullied at school, his first tentative steps as a musician up to the extended trauma of XTC, culminating in his stage fright-induced withdrawal from live playing.
File format: mp3; file size: 120.4mb, interview length: 2h 05' 26" sound quality: ****
List of articles in the library
Live Review by Tony Stewart, New Musical Express, 16 July 1977
ONLY A FEW NIGHTS EARLIER there'd been a brawl in the Music Machine involving the Boom Town [sic] Rats, but in the cold atmosphere while ...
XTC: Hope and Anchor, London; New Hearts, The Models: Speakeasy, London
Live Review by Barry Cain, Record Mirror, 3 September 1977
Is this what was intended? ...
XTC: An Everyday Story Of Country Punks
Report and Interview by Tim Lott, Record Mirror, 29 October 1977
TIM LOTT visits them at The Manor ...
Interview by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, 12 November 1977
I TELL YOU no word of a lie. This table was at least the length of my sitting room at home, if it wasn't actually ...
Live Review by Colin Irwin, Melody Maker, 28 January 1978
"HELLO, WE'RE XTC. You're the audience, and this is 'Radios In Motion'." A violent blast of noise collides with your brain, a few pints of ...
XTC: Sheffield Polytechnic, Sheffield
Live Review by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 11 February 1978
IT WAS pointed out, some while ago, that a large number of punk outfits preface their name with the definite article, as compared with the ...
XTC, Wire, the Secret: Lyceum, London
Live Review by Geoff Barton, Sounds, 4 March 1978
Shock as Soundsman writes non-metallic rave ...
XTC: White Music (Virgin V 2095)
Review by Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, May 1978
GALLOPING OUT of the remains of the new wave, as we tried to explain last issue, is Britain's new answer to tedium, Power Pop. ...
Report and Interview by Jim Green, Trouser Press, August 1978
TELL A LONDONER you're going to Swindon on the weekend and you get the same reaction as if you told a New Yorker you were ...
XTC: Electric Ballroom, London
Live Review by Giovanni Dadomo, Sounds, 25 November 1978
HAVING BEEN, so to speak, mis-directed in a choronological sense leads to a somewhat briefer exposure to XTC radiation than intended — meaning exposure to ...
Review by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, February 1979
XTC'S FIRST ALBUM, White Music, released earlier this year, was a stunning debut from a band that defies easy labeling. ...
Interview by Toby Goldstein, Creem, April 1979
NEW YORK — "I wish I hadn't come up with this name," sighed mastermind Andy Partridge. "Thinking about it now, it's perfect. But it's a ...
Review by Paul Morley, New Musical Express, 18 August 1979
Something Like The Best ...
XTC: Drums And Wires (Virgin)****
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Sounds, 18 August 1979
I'M WELL qualified to write about XTC. I don't understand them at all. I prove that publicly last autumn when a couple of days in ...
Live Review by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 22 September 1979
THIS IS POP? THIS IS POP?? ...
XTC: Apollo Theatre, Manchester
Live Review by Mick Middles, Sounds, 22 September 1979
STUDYING THE development and, um, progression of XTC is one of my favourite past-times. ...
XTC: Making Plans for Andy Colin Terry and Dave
Report and Interview by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 20 October 1979
"I FEEL GREAT antagonism towards the press we've all too often received. They always seem to end up never actually talking to you, they just ...
XTC: The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindon
Interview by David Hepworth, Smash Hits, 1 November 1979
The only notes that count are the ones that come from Wilts. David Hepworth meets XTC. ...
Live Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Sounds, 5 January 1980
Love is like oxygen ...
Live Review by Mark Williams, Melody Maker, 26 January 1980
Gunboat diplomacy ...
XTC: Old Waldorf, San Francisco
Live Review by Mark Cooper, Record Mirror, 15 March 1980
XTC HAVE toured the East Coast a few times now, but this is their San Francisco debut. Incredibly, Drums and Wires is their first release ...
XTC: Optimism Is Next Week’s Thing
Interview by Mike Stand, Smash Hits, 18 September 1980
TERRY CHAMBERS said, "I want to talk to you". I said, "Fine". Fine. Then the drummer walked away and I didn't see him again until ...
Report and Interview by Paul Morley, New Musical Express, 20 September 1980
XTC ARE BITING their nails backstage of an open air gig at a soccer ground in the Madrid suburbs – the equivalent of an English ...
XTC: Slaving For The Yankee Dollar
Report and Interview by Betty Page, Sounds, 20 December 1980
FUNNY HOW life is. Guess who Elvis Presley, Bonzo and Ian Curtis are expecting for Christmas? You know the answer. Yet he and the other ...
XTC and Gary Numan: The New English Art Rock
Report and Interview by Roy Trakin, Musician, February 1981
BOTH XTC and Gary Numan express a sense of the new English isolation. Americans seem to like the car-crazy Numan, while the pure British pop ...
The Ecstatic Aesthetics Of XTC
Interview by John Mendelsohn, Creem, July 1981
EVERYBODY DOESN'T like something, but nobody doesn't like XTC. Nobody, that is, except the countless hundreds of thousands who find the British beat foursome's relentless ...
Review by Richard Cook, New Musical Express, 3 September 1983
I DON'T THINK "England" means very much to me any more, although I do have some sympathy with Andy Partridge's particular affection for a country, ...
Review by Betty Page, Record Mirror, 3 September 1983
ANDY PARTRIDGE predicted a return to acoustic neo-folk at least two years ago, well before our new pop explosion. Thus, only the few will be ...
Review by Steven X Rea, High Fidelity, May 1984
XTC MAKES music that is deceptively complicated. The lyrics are literate and occasionally obscure, the rhythms jerk around, dissonant strains loop in and out of ...
Review by Richard Riegel, Creem, May 1984
MUMMER MARKS XTC's psychic retreat to the band's native village of Swindon, where folk are rough and still near to the earth. The women wear ...
XTC: Love and Disguise on a Farmboy's Wages
Interview by Karen Schlosberg, Musician, June 1984
IF THERE WERE A TRUE NORM for British pop bands, it would be XTC, who reflect where they're from and what they see so accurately ...
Interview by Mick Sinclair, ZigZag, January 1985
Contemporary Note: This interview took place at Virgin Records' London HQ during the height of the year-long miner's strike (led by the National Union of ...
Interview by Bruce Pollock, Guitar, January 1986
"WE CALL IT BILLY Bolts or Billy Bolt Upright. I just sort of sit up and become this person Billy Bolt. You lust get into ...
XTC: Andy Partridge, Pop's Dan Archer
Interview by Roy Wilkinson, Sounds, 11 October 1986
An everyday story of pop music folk. Nine years on and XTC are still waiting to break it big in the USA. Their noise used ...
Review by Rob Tannenbaum, Rolling Stone, 26 March 1987
NOT THAT long ago, XTC was a nearly perfect band. It corrupted its bountiful hooks with unsettling harmonies and rhythms and rocked hard enough to ...
Interview by Karen Schlosberg, Creem, July 1987
AN UPDATE on the attempted Americanization of XTC. For an eighth full album the trio is told, as reported by stalwart singer/songwriter/guitarist Andy Partridge, to ...
XTC: Oranges and Lemons (Geffen)****
Review by Michael Azerrad, Rolling Stone, 23 March 1989
XTC's Paternal Power Pop ...
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, April 1989
XTC’s Andy Partridge is from that eccentric, uniquely English school of songwriters that brought you Ray Davies and Vivian Stanshall. His problem has been his ...
Review by Michael Azerrad, Rolling Stone, 19 March 1992
A CHARTER MEMBER of England's class of '77, XTC is one of the few bands from that era to remain virtually intact. ...
XTC: Times They Are A Changin'
Interview by David Quantick, Vox, June 1992
Most XTC-ellent! After a three-year Bill and Ted-styled sojourn in history, pop's eccentric gurus have returned with a new LP, Nonsuch. Singer Andy Partridge waxes ...
Interview by Jim Sullivan, The Boston Globe, 12 June 1992
IT'S FAIR TO assume that some people hate their names. But what about rock bands? You can practically hear XTC's Andy Partridge groan over the ...
Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Musician, October 1992
PRODUCER PAUL Fox came up as a keyboard player in the skinny-tie era. "When I first moved to L.A., there was a big banner on ...
Andy Partridge Confronts His Lifelong Enemy - Stagefright!
Interview by Johnny Black, MOJO, June 1994
This is an interview with Andy Partridge. ...
Interview by Tom Doyle, Melody Maker, 3 June 1995
Fifteen years of experience has carried producer JOHN LECKIE from a-song-a-day sessions with John Lennon, to hours spent pouring over the endless noodlings of The ...
Review and Interview by Johnny Black, MOJO, September 1996
ARGUABLY the most intense and most intensely English musical experience to have arisen from the brief heyday of the new wave that succeeded punk, XTC ...
XTC: Transistor Blast: The Best Of The BBC Sessions
Review by Kit Aiken, Uncut, December 1998
FOUR-CD set of BBC sessions 1977-89 and In Concert 1978/9 ...
Andy Partridge: Lemons And Lemonade
Interview by Bill DeMain, unpublished, 1999
"I'M A LUDICROUS optimist," says Andy Partridge. "I'm in front of the firing squad and I've got the clown's makeup on and I'm telling gags ...
English Settlement: The Rise and Fall and Rise of XTC
Profile and Interview by JoE Silva, Ray Gun, January 1999
After surviving legal entanglement, personnel losses and numerous bouts of bad luck, XTC return with their first new album in seven years. Joe Silva ventures ...
Retrospective and Interview by Chris Ingham, MOJO, March 1999
Like the set of a James Bond finale, the cavernous, converted power station of Metropolis Studios is all walkways, bridges and industrial lifts. At the ...
XTC: Wasp Star: Apple Venus Volume 2
Review by Kit Aiken, Uncut, June 2000
Magnificent guitar-centric follow-on set to the orch-pop of Volume 1 ...
Review by Kit Aiken, Uncut, June 2001
Their Virgin albums 1978-1991, digitally remastered and available either as limited edition Japanese-import miniatures or full-artwork, extra-tracks British releases ...
XTC: A Coat Of Many Cupboards (Virgin) ****
Review by Adam Sweeting, Uncut, April 2002
FOUR-CD box set offers alternative history of quintessentially English pop group. ...
Andy Partridge: Fuzzy Warbles 1/Fuzzy Warbles 2
Review and Interview by Kit Aiken, Uncut, February 2003
Frontman of much-loved — and much-bootlegged — eccentric English pop band clears out his compositional closet on the first two CDs of a 10-disc series. ...
Andy Partridge: English Settlement
Report and Interview by Pete Paphides, MOJO, February 2003
BEARING IN MIND his back catalogue, it may not be too surprising to learn that Andy Partridge is an assiduous recycler. ...
Retrospective and Interview by Pete Paphides, The Word, April 2004
When the police found him howling at the moon in a mud-stained Santa suit after calling his mother the worst word imaginable, it was another ...
Report by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, June 2004
GETTING DITCHED by a major label is not always the end of the line for the big stars of yesteryear, as Terry Staunton reports ...
Essay by Craig W. Thomas, Rock's Backpages, 2006
Back at the start of 2002 I wrote this essay for XTC and their management, partly because I wanted to do a book on the ...
Interview by Dave Thompson, Goldmine, May 2007
OF ALL THE bands thrown up by the Punk insurgency of 1977 (30 years ago today, folks! Get your Sergeant Leper facemasks here!), XTC were ...
Interview by Ian Fortnam, Classic Rock, 19 February 2016
XTC mainman Andy Partridge on loving the Monkees, coming from Swindon and finally being defined as prog. ...
Andy Partridge: Mid-Morning Matters
Interview by Jamie Atkins, Record Collector, July 2016
"Empires and whole XTC albums have been built on Tunnock's wafers. Their packaging! It's like the glam version of traditional." XTC's main songwriter and musical ...
XTC: How we made 'Making Plans for Nigel'
Interview by Dave Simpson, The Guardian, 27 April 2020
"British Steel responded by rounding up a lot of workers called Nigel and getting them to say their jobs were actually great." ...
see also Shriekback
see also Dukes of Stratosphear, The
see also Andy Partridge
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