The Jesús Papers
The time I have been able to devote to Bungalow since Autumn 1998 has dwindled as a result of a new job and a new baby. It is only thanks to people like the excellent Jesús Quintero, who has kept an eye out for XTC articles such as these on my behalf, that the page has not stagnated entirely. Jesús, you have my gratitude and respect.
XTC Returns With Atypical Apple Venus Vol. 1 (Part One Of A Two-Part Interview )
Following the release of 1992's Nonsuch, XTC found themselves in a bind. Based on the contract they had signed with Virgin Records U.K. in 1977, they were yet to make a penny off any of their records, there were three more albums left in their contract, and the label refused to renegotiate their deal. What's a hard working British band to do?
"We went on strike," explains XTC's Colin Moulding, "[it's] a very English thing to do. We said, 'Look, we're not making any money. Can you make [this deal] any fairer?' Of course they wouldn't. So we said we weren't going to make another album for them. Basically, we withdrew our labor."
After a five- year stalemate, the label finally gave in and XTC received their walking papers. While five years "in the fridge" would have killed most bands, XTC is back in a big way. The close of 1998 saw the publication of their autobiography, Song Stories (Hyperion), and the release of a four- disc box set of early BBC recordings,Transistor Blast (TVT). Now the band -- stripped down to founding members Moulding and Andy Partridge with guitarist Dave Gregory's '97 departure -- has returned with their first new material in seven years, Apple Venus Vol. 1 (released Feb. 23 on TVT).
While the band promises that volume two (expected sometime in the fall) will be a more typical, electric guitar- driven XTC album, this first offering may throw fans a bit. An orchestral/acoustic album, volume one is far more delicate lyrically and ornately arranged than any of the band's past work.
While unable to release records, the normally prolific Partridge became even more of a work horse. "I got more bloody minded about it," he explains with a bit of a fake growl. "It was like 'Ugh! Deny me the right to make records! I'll show you!' I think the acid formed [from] that really topped the battery up for me... gave me loads more juice."
Partridge also had plenty of turbulence in his life to write about. The first two years of the strike also saw the end of his marriage, the entrance of a new love, and an illness that temporarily left him partially tone deaf. Still, don't expect a series of bitter divorce songs.
"I said to myself [that] I'm not going to write divorce songs because I didn't want to get into that horrible 'songs for swingin' divorcees' [thing]," he says. "I allowed myself the luxury of one puss- relieving song, 'Your Dictionary.' I just needed one safety valve."
And he probably wouldn't have recorded it, if not for pressure from friends who lauded it the "Dear God" for the divorced man. More typical to his esoteric nature, the majority of his tracks are as diverse as his exploration of pagan mythology in "Greenman" to "I'd Like That"'s giddy comparisons of him and his current love to history's greatest lovers.
XTC Turns Hard-Luck Story Into Venus Vol. 1 (Part Two Of A Two-Part Interview )
In one word, the making of XTC's latest album, Apple Venus Vol. 1, released Tuesday (Feb. 23), was an "ordeal." It took six months to arrange the orchestra parts, guitarist Dave Gregory split, their producer left, and then Squeeze's Chris Difford allegedly stole their master tapes.
Granted, XTC frontman Andy Partridge is known for putting extra pressure on himself as a pop perfectionist, but XTC also seems to have a knack for bad luck. Having decided to use an orchestra, the band was faced with the time- consuming tasks of both arranging and recording the orchestra -- the arranging being a tedious six-month process, while the recording was done in a frenetic one-day marathon. The pressure worsened as tensions between Gregory and Partridge heightened to the point where Gregory simply walked out one day. And topping things off, delays forced original producer Hayden Bendall to leave the project for his next gig just as the band was running out of money.
Still, most things were painstakingly rectified. The band signed in the U.S. with TVT Records, who provided the funds to finish the album, and Nick Davis, who mixed Nonsuch, stepped in to wrap up production. As for Gregory's departure, Partridge came to look at it as a relief. "In the Legion of Superheroes," Partridge says of Gregory, "he was Negative Boy."
An unexpected twist came next -- the band's master tapes were stolen by Squeeze frontman Chris Difford. As Partridge tells it, the band booked time at Difford's studio near Kent, England in late 1997. After bussing out there, they found the studio's mixing board in pieces on the floor. Despite promises from engineers that it would be fixed "tomorrow," the band left in frustration a few days later.
"We were very depressed," Partridge recalls. "And [then Difford], out of embarrassment, said, 'Look, you're my favorite band and I really feel bad about this... Please come down and use the remaining 10 days that you've got left for free.' So we went down there. It was back together again, but it still didn't seem to be working right. There were lots of buzzes and mechanical problems and so on, and we weren't totally happy.
"Then, near the end of the recording, he came in and demanded money. I was just really fed up, with the whole situation [and] said, 'Let's just go home. He said it was free. We've come all this way down here... and now he's trying to take money off us for this free time.'"
The band then went home and while the gear was being packed up, Partridge says Difford came to the studio and stole the tapes as payment for the money he thinks he's owed.
While the band did, indeed, manage to take up residence in another studio (actually three of them) and finish the album, a slightly befuddled Partridge seems unsure whether to be more angry or amused as he looks back. "He stole our tapes," Partridge repeats, "and he still has them to this day."
XTC To Begin Recording Apple Venus Vol. 2 from Rocktropolis
XTC will waste no time recording the follow-up to the recently- released Apple Venus Vol. 1,
their first studio album in seven years. The band will return from Japan, where they are currently on a press tour, next week and begin recording Apple Venus Vol. 2 in April, which is already written and demo'd.
TVT expects a much quicker recording process this time around, as Vol. 2 is a collection of straightforward, plugged-in rock songs rather than the unplugged, orchestral- heavy tunes of Vol. 1. The album is expected to surface by the end of the year. Tracks on Vol. 2 may include "Playground," "My Brown Guitar," "We're All Light," "Ship Trapped in the Ice" (about the band's five-year feud with Virgin Records), and "The Man Who Murdered Love," among others. The band will commence recording the album as soon as the finishing touches are put on bassist Colin Moulding's home studio on his farm in Swindon, England -- a welcomed change from Vol. 1, which the band recorded parts of in Moulding's living room.
The release of Vol. 2 raises the question of a longstanding touring rumor perpetuated by lead singer Andy Partridge himself in an issue of Modern Drummer last year. Partridge has expressed interest in a flatbed truck tour, which would involve the band pulling up outside radio stations in selected cities and playing a free show on the back of a flatbed truck that would simultaneously be broadcast live on the radio. The reason the rumor is connected to Vol. 2 is because the songs are much more easily rehearsed and played live.
A spokesperson from TVT expressed hope in the tour, although it is nothing more than a rumor at this time.
-- Kevin Raub
XTC's Orchestral Maneuvers Out of the Dark (CNN Interactive By Donna Freydkin, March 26, 1999)
British duo XTC bounces back with first album in seven years
After going through a messy divorce, losing and regaining his hearing, striking against his record label for five years, and overcoming deep depression, XTC frontman Andy Partridge doesn't much care what you think of him. Actually, he'd prefer it if you didn't like him -- or even know of him -- at all, and focus on his band's music instead.
"We do this for the art, not the adulation," says Partridge, in the midst of promoting XTC's first release in seven years. "I'd rather our music get liked and we get ignored. I don't want to be adored for anything other than the music."
"Apple Venus Volume 1," a remarkable release from the ingenious, and acerbic, British band, truly was a labor of love. More labor than love, much of the time, to hear Partridge tell it. And the solidly uphill trek to finish the album, which was released in mid-March, has pretty much banished any anxiety about public opinion and perception, insists the man who once appealed to "Dear God" to banish war and starvation.
"We've hung together through all of the filth that's been flung at us. The most important thing is the music, and we never stopped doing it," he says.
From legal battles to busted eardrums, XTC seemed to be slammed by a hailstorm of problems. Yet for better or worse, the duo managed to wade through the muck. And now, XTC returns with an orchestral album full of the band's characteristically clever songwriting, nestled amid deceptively light music. Critics love it, and Partridge loves being back.
XTC, formed in Swindon in 1975, has always been something of an oddity. From the start, the band has drawn on such disparate influences as Captain Beefheart and Charlie Parker. Among the slew of albums they released through the 1970s and '80s, it was their 1987 single "Dear God" (from the album "Skylarking") that, by challenging the Supreme Being on issues like poverty, ignited quite a bit of controversy for its bluntness.
The band is perhaps best known for the 1989 single "Mayor of Simpleton," which peaked at No. 72 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
After releasing "Nonsuch," which stayed on the U.S. charts for 11 weeks and hit No. 97, in 1992, XTC went on strike against their contract with Virgin Records, which Partridge says wasn't lucrative whatsoever for the band. In legal limbo for more than five years, Partridge, current bandmate Colin Moulding, and now former bandmate Dave Gregory spent years developing what Partridge describes as four albums' worth of material.
After getting their walking papers from the label, the band went to work on their first album of new material in seven years. Originally planning to release a double CD set, XTC ran out of both time and money along the way. As an added blow halfway through recording, longtime guitarist Gregory abruptly quit the band.
But, according to the chatty Partridge, "We cemented all the difficulties."
The now-duo waded through the finished work, picked out the best material, and went shopping for a record deal. According to Partridge, the band met with most of the major labels, many of whom were perplexed about ways to market a band that produces music almost impossible to classify, without any ready hits, and, to boot, refuses to tour.
So to do things his way this time around, Partridge started his own label, Idea Records, and released "Apple Venus Volume 1" in the United States through a deal with TVT Records.
"Apple Venus Volume 1"'s sound leans heavily on orchestral and acoustic arrangements, and it spotlights a quieter, more reserved side of the always versatile British outfit. The album plays like something of a fable, from the odd violins and looping bass of "River of Orchids" to the flutes and strings of "Greenman."
"It sounds like unlike anything else out there at the moment," Partridge comments. "It's pagan, verdant, greasy, idiosyncratic, salacious."
For inspiration, Partridge says he veered away from the music on the charts today, in favor of the musicals he heard on the radio as a child. From "South Pacific" to "My Fair Lady," Partridge points to light music -- free of electric guitars -- as the main inspiration for his work.
"People ask if we made this kind of record with an orchestra because of the classics and I say no, it's made up of the music I had stuffed into my ears as a kid," laughs Partridge.
The album's calm belies its darker themes, most of them stemming from the seven years of pandemonium leading up to it.
Partridge says the band didn't worry about possible critical backlash. They did what they wanted, he insists, public opinion be damned.
"I'm much more artistically selfish now," he laughs. "I'm aware of damn-giving but I don't give one. I was prepared not to give a damn if this album was kicked. You get old and rhinoceros-skinned."
Nevertheless, the overwhelmingly positive critical response -- indeed, adulation -- has astounded even him. Everyone from Rolling Stone and Spin to USA Today has swooned over "Apple Venus Volume 1."
"The response has been so good, a little frightening, I must say," says Partridge. "I'm a little humbled. The album is out of sync with everything that's happening today and people say wow! It's different."
You can hear XTC on your CD player, but you'll never see them on stage. The band hasn't toured since 1982, when Partridge suffered nervous exhaustion onstage in Paris, and later had a nervous breakdown in California as a result of massive stage fright and continuous panic attacks. He sticks to his mantra that touring doesn't go hand in glove with CD sales.
"No, we're not going to tour. We don't see any need to," he says. "The art that we do is writing and making records. We're not performers and we don't enjoy doing it. We do what we're good at, which is make records."
But in lieu of a tour, the band will be making promotional interview appearances at radio stations nationwide, and holding book signings of its autobiography, the Hyperion book "XTC: Song Stories." And truly diehard fans can check out "Transistor Blast," a four-disc box set of early BBC recordings released last year.
XTC is now getting to work on "Apple Venus Volume 2," which will be as loud as the first album was subdued. The album is slated for release early next year.
"The next record will be rather noisy and crashy and with electric guitar," according to Partridge.
XTC's 'River Of Orchids' Goes To The Ballet (All Star, by , June 11, 1999)
Rock bands have seen their songs turned into elevator music via Muzak; they've had them symphonically reworked via full-on orchestras, and even performed to laser light shows. But performed to choreographed dance by a ballet company? That's just what noted dance choreographer Neta Pulvermacher has cooked up with XTC.
Pulvermacher, who studied dance in Israel before attending Julliard School of Dance and has worked with John Zorn and the Jazz Passengers, will debut a dance piece choreographed to XTC's "River of Orchids" from Apple Venus Vol. 1 (released early this year on TVT Records) this weekend in Cleveland.
The piece will be performed on Saturday (June 12) and Sunday (June 13) at Halle Theater, and will return on June 19 at the Paul Daum Theater in Akron, Ohio. According to a spokesperson for TVT, Pulvermacher is also working on creating dance pieces for all 11 songs on the album.
The idea originated in February, when Pulvermacher met XTC mastermind Andy Partridge at a photo shoot in New York. The two got to talking about the idea, Partridge was receptive, and Pulvermacher got to work on it right away, according to the spokesperson.
Meanwhile, TVT is working the second single from Apple Venus titled "Greenman," while Partridge and Co. are hard at work wiring their studio to begin working on Apple Venus Vol. 2. The second installment probably won't surface until early 2000.
All original work is acknowledged as being the copyright of the originator.
