Chalkhills Digest Volume 1, Issue 179
Date: Thursday, 26 September 1991
Chalkhills, Number 179
Thursday, 26 September 1991
Today's Topics:
Two Respectable Streets
One more LP for the discography (perhaps!)
KITS' top 105 Modern Rock artists
XTC Music and Friends Convention '91
French paper Part 2 of 4
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Subject: Two Respectable Streets (Re: XTC Goodies (Chalkhills #170)) Organization: Department of Chemistry, Tokyo Institute of Technology, JAPAN Date: Sat, 21 Sep 91 04:52:02 +0900 From: Yuji `RUSHER' Chikahiro <rusher@tansei.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp> On Mon, 5 Aug 91 16:03:03 -0400, A.J. Fuller <fuller@andy.bgsu.edu> wrote: > Andy Partridge talks about the tracks on _Rag_&_Bone_Buffet_:" Last week I got the GEFFIN CD _Rag_&_Bone_Buffet_ at Tower Records Shibuya branch. > Respectable Street: The BBC felt the lyrics on the song on _Black_Sea_ > would upset people. They asked if I could rewrite it and, being a > good boy, I did. While copying its bass-guitar part, I also noticed that Colin played the pattern (B-D#-F#-B) differently from the version of _Black_Sea_. Have you noticed it yet? # I prefer the version on _Black_Sea_ for the straightforward lyrics. # Oh, Of course, I've ever been to UK :-) - RUSHER <rusher@tansei.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Sun, 22 Sep 91 22:04:48 EDT From: Emmanuel Marin <MARINP92@frecp12.bitnet> Subject: One more LP for the discography (perhaps!) Well I have not been reading Chalkhills during this Summer so you may already know it : At least in France, and surely in other countries, a new "Guitar Hits" LP called "Rockline" has been released this Summer. It contains very various artists, about 40 if I remember well, from INXS Need You Tonight to Peter Frampton Show me The Way, from Can The Can to The Knack, from Johnny Winter Johnny B. Goode to... XTC Making Plans for Nigel.... If I do not take into account "Urgh! A Music War" that I saw not in a shop but in a convention, and "Un Printemps 89" (Scarecrow PPl) which is not a "big-selling" LP (one LP per year with songs of various artists not known here) this is then the first time that I see here XTC featuring on a "compilation-for-the-mass" album. There has been a lot of ads in the paper and at the TV for it, but I do not know if it had been indeed the success they wanted... Emmanuel. No signature.
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Mon, 23 Sep 91 11:28:52 PDT From: "John M. Relph" <relph@presto.ig.com> Subject: KITS' top 105 Modern Rock artists I just noticed this posting in the USENET newsgroup rec.music.misc, and present to you thus. I have edited it (just a little). -- John ---- begin forwarded article ---- From: ed@wente.llnl.gov (Ed Suranyi) Newsgroups: rec.music.misc Subject: KITS' top 105 Modern Rock artists Date: 21 Sep 91 23:34:35 GMT Here is the list from KITS San Francisco's countdown of the 105 top Modern Rock artists, as voted on by the listeners. Several songs were played for each artist on the list. The countdown was played on Labor Day weekend. 1. THE CURE 2. DEPECHE MODE 3. THE SMITHS 4. NEW ORDER 5. R.E.M. ... 74. TEARS FOR FEARS 75. BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE 76. XTC 77. BOB MARLEY 78. CROWDED HOUSE ...
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Tue, 24 Sep 91 11:57:54 PDT From: "John M. Relph" <relph@presto.ig.com> Subject: XTC Music and Friends Convention '91 Hello friends! Here's my report on the 1991 North American XTC Music and Friends Convention, held in Barrie, Ontario, Canada on 8 September 1991. I arrived in Toronto on Saturday afternoon and met with Mark LaForge, a fellow Chalkhills subscriber, and he showed me part of Toronto. Warm and muggy. We walked around one of the trendier neighborhoods, checked out the record shoppes, and later we went and had dinner. After dinner I took the subway out to where John Pinto, another Chalkhills subscriber, picked me up and took me to his parents' house in the suburbs. Sunday morning after breakfast John drove us out to Barrie, after picking up Cindy, another XTC fan and longtime friend of John. During the 80 km drive we decided it was to be Ethiopian food for dinner. When we arrived in Barrie, we found that the hand-drawn map that was provided to Conventioneers was amazingly accurate, and we had no problems finding the hotel. We have arrived! XTC. Yes. My impressions upon entering Churchill Room South (we joked it was the Chalkhill Room): all the fellow fans, loads of pictures and posters on the walls, merchandise, That Guitar (from the reverse of the _Oranges and Lemons_ cover), two each of Andy's lyric books and games. We watched videos, including the entire "Mole from the Ministry" and "Albert Brown" videos, shot by the band themselves. We watched a video of XTC performing acoustic versions of three songs written for the new album. That video was followed by an interview filmed in Andy's kitchen. Paul Wilde interviewed Andy, Colin, and Dave as Andy's children and dog ran around them, and the rain fell down onto the roof over their heads. The discussion came 'round to the subject of _Oranges and Lemons_, and Andy said that someone had given him printouts of issues of Chalkhills! He went on to attempt to describe what Chalkhills is, and then talked about how some of the longtime fans on Chalkhills didn't like _Oranges and Lemons_ because it was over-produced and tended to be a bit cluttered and noisy, whereas many of these same fans found themselves returning more and more to _The Big Express_, even though that album was also very "produced". Then Dave and Andy started debating production values, and talked about how difficult it is to leave things out of recordings, especially when one has 48 tracks to work with, as they did with _Oranges and Lemons_. Andy also said he felt like he was eavesdropping (Adam and eavesdropping. Adam and Eve's droppings!) on a conversation when he read the Chalkhills discussions. But I'll say, it's great to know that Andy, Colin, and Dave know that Chalkhills is out here! Shigemasa Fujimoto has really put together a whopper of an XTC discography, called _Wonderland_. (And you thought the Chalkhills discography was detailed!) If you are interested in obtaining a copy of _Wonderland_, I can send you Shigemasa's address in Japan. I met many nice fellow XTC fans: Heidi, Scott, Steve, Tom, Shigemasa from Tokyo, Mike and Steve, and of course Peter and June, who did their best to keep things running smoothly. There was trading, as people tried to find those things they wanted and didn't have. Offers were made, merchandise changed hands. The Chalkhills _Rag & Bone Buffet_ booklets were a big hit. Later, the band warmed up so they could play their versions of some XTC songs. Their lead singer decided to call themselves The Simpletones. They ended up doing great versions of "Statue of Liberty", "Funk Pop a Roll", "No Language in Our Lungs", "Outside World", "Mayor of Simpleton", "Respectable Street", "Earn Enough for Us", and "Meccanik Dancing" (if my memory serves me). We cheered and danced and they came back to play a hastily thrown together yet still wonderful version of "Battery Brides", and finished with "Statue of Liberty" again. The crowd goes wild! It was during their set when I remembered why we were all gathered together that day: The Music of XTC! We can talk and analyse and trade and touch the "product", but when all is said and done, the magic and the power is in the music. Even with the mistakes and the inherent problems of live performances, the music had the magic that day. Two more fans got up after the band left the stage and led us in a singalong. We sang along with "Desert Island" and "Love on a Farmboy's Wages", among others, and I played That Guitar during the latter song. Then we watched part of a videotape shot by Gus Dudgeon in the studio as XTC with Dave Mattacks recorded a drum track and started work on building up the recording. Hard work! It was starting to get late, so John, Cindy, and I made our rounds, said our goodbyes, and made our way back to Toronto. What a day! Peace, -- John
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Date: Tue, 24 Sep 91 20:32:17 EDT
From: Emmanuel Marin <MARINP92@frecp12.bitnet>
Subject: French paper Part 2 of 4
MOTORBIKING IN THE SWIMMING-POOLS
Q: At the beginning of its career, XTC was labelled as one of the bands
in has been called the New Wave movement. Your titles, "Science
Friction", "White Music", "Drums and Wires", sounded like
declarations... May people have taken you too seriously?
AP: Maybe. Some people, surely. To some extent, we too have taken
ourselves seriously. Because we were new and because you make a lot of
mistakes when you begin. We also made a lot of noise, to impress
people. It is like somebody turning up at a party for the very first
time: he makes a lot of noise so that the others notice his entrance, to
hide his tension, his lack of self-confidence, so that the others know
quite well he is there. At the age we were at that time, we would
display some aggressiveness, bother people, more than established
musicians can do. All these factors had been what mattered. We were
new, we did not know how to write... We thought you just had to put
some evocative sentences end-to-end, full of atmosphere, like "Radios in
Motion": it is meaningless, it is just a pleasant expression that leaves
a kind of electronic and contemporary feeling. It relates to nothing,
it is just a handful of syllables that creates an effect. It was this
way during the first two albums. After that came the time when we had a
feeling of waste. Then we have decided to write songs about what we
were feeling rather than beautiful sentences that were interesting but
without any relationships between themselves. We have decided to make
ourselves clear, to communicate with people, and, once we had their
attention, we wanted to say things with a meaning, which were not just
rubbish. But people remember, above all, our entrance and forget what
followed.
Q: You have got to admit it was a punk party, or should I say, an
after-punk party. The sleeve of your record "Go 2", black with a
typewritten text explaining its concept, has been considered as a
manifesto of the contemporary state of mind. Did you see it in this
way?
AP: I have been very much attracted by the punk energy. Some young men,
18-20 years old, had thought they were reinventing Rock'n'Roll, though
many elements of their music and many sensations had come from previous
periods... What they did was not more then what Dadaists, Futurists or
50's rockers did, with louder amps. But they had thought they had
reinvented all that. We have thought it too, of course, but we have not
invented anything. We have rearranged in a new way what had come from
the previous years. But at this age, you have the feeling of doing
everything for the first time... There was a lot of that in punk. I
like this energy, this desperate need to be noticed. I think that we
all thought it was so hard to draw peoples' attention, that we needed to
make an incredible din, musically, to be recognized.
Q: Had you a craving for public recognition?
AP: Precisely. For example, my voice: you know that I simply cannot
listen to our first two albums?! The voices are so mannered!... But I
believed in it. I wanted it to be that by listening to our records,
people could say "I know who is singing in it, he has a style which has
no equivalent". I sang in a very complicated way, with a sort of
hiccough, a kind of dub, a bit as if I were pushing the buttons of the
console in the same time, except that I was doing it with my voice... I
wanted people to recognize me, I thought it might have been the only
record I would ever make, I wanted to leave something with nothing to do
with the others. Therefore, there had been quite a lot of things which
were not totally sincere, but we believed in it. We believed in this
desperate talk, necessary to express ourselves and to be immediately
recognized. I could not foresee that our success would last. When
suddenly we realized that, our personality changed, we did not want to
waste this mass-media any longer.
Q: How did you consider the band at its beginning? As just a hobby,
writing some songs, recording them and seeing what was happening, or did
you felt you had to succeed at all costs?
AP: Of course. When we made our first record, we thought we would be
Number One everywhere, that we could buy castles and Rolls, that we
would throw motorbikes in the swimming-pools...
Q: Did you think it really?
AP: Absolutely. We were young and naive, instead of old and naive...
We were still thinking that our castle would be like that, with four
separate entrances with a single big room inside, in which we would all
live together... We just would have to plug our guitars straight in the
wall, it would be terrific, it would be real life... You play this game
seriously, and then you realize that no, this is not like that... the
awakening is not easy... and you discover it is just a dream, this old
pop dream.
Q: Has music been for you a lifeline? The chance of your life?
AP: At the beginning, we were rather anxious. Each of us had a job and
music had arrived as a marvellous adventure, a travel, a discovery, but
it was definitely not a job. It was as if the Hand of Fate had pulled
us out of everyday life, to bring us in a cruise around the world. And,
when you stay at sea long enough, you realize that there is nobody but
you on the boat, no guide, and that you will have to learn how to sail
if you want to arrive somewhere... We had the impression of having been
invited to participate to the discovery of a brand new world, but we did
not worry about leaving our jobs, without really knowing where our
incomes would come from... Basic concerns, in fact...
Q: What have you done before?
AP: I was painting "special offer" billboards, you know: "This week,
exceptional discount". Not too bad, by the way... I spent my days in
an office, surrounded by vrey surrealist things, heads of dummies,
Grecian columns, a lot of green plastic plants... A very "Dali" decor,
and I was painting the bill-boards, drinking, trying to spend most of my
time somewhere else, using various excuses... But I had reached the
point where I was so often away, because of the concerts, where I could
not find any good excuses to explain my delays, and where finally it was
simpler to stop.
Q: What have the others done before?
AP: Colin was a gardener in a school. More precisely, he was driving
the engine which traces the white lines on the fields. He was in prison
in a small wood cabin, at the far end of the fields, with a... let's
say, backward guy, that kids called "Ten Foot". Not that he was ten
feet tall, but because he had a disproportionately long sex... He was a
mental defective, but his sex was enormous, and the schoolgirls would
come and knock at the window of the cabin, singing "Ten Foot, Ten Foot".
Often, this deranged and hefty guy would come near Colin and ask him
"You know why they call me like that, eh?!" Then, Colin would pretend
not to know, and the guy would insist to show him...
COMING SOON: YOUR CARPET IS FANTASTIC.
I hope it interests you and sorry for my poor english.
Emmanuel.
No signature.
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Thanks to Robey Pointer for telling us his name, and welcome to new and returning subscribers Mark R Zbikowski, Robert Dagnall, Mark Hessman, James C Eliassen, and L Jones! For all administrative issues, such as change of address, withdrawal from the list, fan club addresses, discography requests (last update 23 September), back issues, etc., send a message to the following address: <chalkhills-request@chalkhills.org> All views expressed in Chalkhills are those of the individual contributors only. Ten feet tall all.
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