Chalkhills Digest Volume 1, Issue 245
Date: Wednesday, 14 October 1992
Chalkhills, Number 245
Wednesday, 14 October 1992
Today's Topics:
demo tracks / phone messages etc. tape
The BOOK
XTC Convenion report
Next CD single
"Dear Madam Barnum" Promo CD
rare CD available to trade ...
Ye Olde Mailbagge
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From: Ink Killed Crayons <ukevc@mcl.mcl.ucsb.edu>
Subject: demo tracks / phone messages etc. tape
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 92 18:09:48 PDT
>Does anyone have the Demo Tracks CD yet?
My roommate Joe does.. this is how I have heard Always Winter Never
Christmas and Down a Peg
--
Last year I said my friend John Lydecker had let me dub a copy of a tape
he had dubbed from a guy who was doing an internship somewhere when
Andy stopped by and somehow gave him yet another rare thing of otherwise
unreleased material. It contains XTC's Western and Reggae answering
machine messages, Dukes demos, early jams, Andy's supposed soundtrack
for an English documentary about the circulatory system, dialogue, and
fragments like "nicely nicely Jane" and "Susan revolving up there without
warning."
People sent me requests for a copy of this thing, and the messages
got lost for a while when i changed accounts for the summer, but now that
I'm back I asked John if he thought it would be unethical or if his
friend would mind. So Toby and whoever else it was, if he says it's OK,
you are welcome to it.
I wonder how many decades until disk space is cheap enough for me to
digitize the whole tape and stick it on an FTP site. And everything's
BUZZ BUZZ everythings BEEP BEEP!!
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: 07 Oct 1992 08:58:16 -0500 (CDT) From: "Wile E. Coyote" <BBHULSEY@life.uams.edu> Subject: The BOOK Greetings all! Does anyone know where one might find the XTC bio book in the Boston area? I live in Arkansas, where it's hard enough to find XTC recordings, let alone printed material. If it can be had in Boston, I'm gonna make my brother get me a copy. Thanks for any info! bruce hulsey // university of arkansas for medical sciences bbhulsey@life.uams.edu // bbhulsey@uams
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Sun, 11 Oct 92 15:04:54 BST From: Toby Howard <toby@computer-science.manchester.ac.uk> Subject: XTC Convenion report Yesterday's XTC convention here in Manchester was a great success! There were several hundred people there, and Paul Wilde arranged a great schedule of videos, rare tracks, karaoke (using backing tracks from Oranges & Lemons minus the vocal, suppplied by Dave Gregory) ... read on for a potted summary of highlights of the event, and all the latest news. This is all in a random order, by the way! - there's a new XTC album out on 9 November, on the Windsongs label (CD will be WINCD 26). It's XTC live at Hammersmith Palais in 1980, just before Xmas, and originally taped by the BBC. Windsongs have obtained the tapes, and are releasing the album with Virgin's blessings. Seems this gig is already around in boot form, but according to Dave Gregory (of whom much more later) the quality is excellent, and the tapes have not been fiddled with for overdubs etc. - The plan to officially release an album of demos, to be called Somesuch, is now officially nixed. :-( - Next single MAY be Wrapped in Grey. Virgin have sent advance cassettes round to radio stations, but response has been zero. The single has been pressed, but Virgin have yet to decide on a release date. - Highlight of the event was a 90 min video interview with Dave Gregory, conducted at his Swindon home. The video was nicely edited, interspersed with XTC videos and TV appearances, and Dave comes across as a really nice guy. The TV appearances were particularly interesting. The first UK TV appearance arranged by Vigin to promote The Disappointed was on a show called 'Pebble Mill at One', at long-running lunchtime magazine programme from Birmingham. It's networked, but has a reputation as the sort of show artists like Des O'Connor or Vince Hill are ideal for (sorry I can't think of a transatlantic equivalent here -- maybe Andy Williams or Neil Sedaka, but not as famous!). So we saw XTC miming The Disappointed in front of a rather elderly uninterested audience. WEIRD! Next TV segment was XTC playing Books are Burning live on BBC2's 'Late Show', which is a kind of self-consciously right-on arty program broadcast last 4 nights a week on BBC2. It's actually a good show. They usually have a live musical guest. They had Peter Blegvad a few years ago (he played 'Gold'). Anyway, Books was a good performance, and Andy played a great solo at the end. Dave was on a hired Hammond organ for this gig, and he apologised in the interview for what he said was the appalling sound -- because of a fault the BBC engineers had mixed the organ and bass really low, so the sound was mainly Andy's voice and guitar, and Mattacks' drums. Sounded OK to me! - Dave said Andy was just taking delivery that day (the interview was taped Wednesday 7 October) of a new recording system, an 8-track ADAT studio. - Colin is curently in the USA, playing bass for an album produced by T-Bone Burnett for his wife Sam Phillips. Guess who's on drums for this? RINGO STARR!!! - Dave has been doing some incidental music for TV. The programme is in a documentary series called 'Close up North', for a BBC local station (Manchester, actually), and will be broadcast on 22 December 1992 at 1930. - Dave confirmed that he had indeed played guitar on Jason Donovan's last single. - Andy has just demoed a new track called 'River of orchid', which Dave described as beautiful. They also approached Virgin with the idea of releasing Andy's bubblegum song 'Candy Mine', and some others along the same lines which he'd written, but Virgin were lukewarm. - Dave showed us some of his guitars, and played some parts from Dear God and Mayor of Simpleton. He also played the keyboards from Wrapped in Grey. - Funny story about Frank Zappa: a few years ago Scott Thunes and Mike McNealy (sp?) from Zappa's band -- big XTC fans -- called Dave to invite him and Andy to go up to Birmingam NEC to see the Zappa gig. Free tickets, backstage passes, the lot. [By the way I was at that gig too!] Dave said the gig was great, and he and Andy went backstage, hoping to meet the geat Mr Z. They spotted Zappa about to get into his limo and Scott Thunes shouted 'Hey Frank, this is Dave and Andy from XTC'. Zappa replied: "Mup", climbed into his limo and split. Dave told this story because on the wall of his home studio he has a picture sent to him by a friend of Thunes. It's a portrait of Zappa, with a speech bubble saying 'Mup'. Underneath is written an explanation: 'Mup is a Californian term meaning 'Ah, hello Dave and Andy of XTC. I have long admired XTC and it is a great pleasue to meet you.... etc ...' - I got the general impression that Dave was disillusioned by everything. Virgin clearly aren't looking after the band as they might. Dave used the phrase 'when we used to be a band' quite a few times, and it seemed that he really misses the 'band' feeling of playing together on a stage and touring. He did say that as long as Andy and Colin write songs, there'll be an XTC. Phew. Sorry about the length of this... Thanks to Paul Wilde for a great day. Toby
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Date: 12 Oct 1992 19:36:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: BHOCKING@delphi.com
Subject: Next CD single
Has anyone heard anything new regarding a new single from _Nonsuch_? I
have recently seen promo CD singles for "Dear Madam Barnum", but have yet
to see an official CD single, (UK or domestic), or hear the track on the
radio. I hope that this is not all we've seen or heard from the album.
I recently received many new tapes in the mail. The first was about six
tapes worth of demos from a fellow named Jim Zittel in Southfield, MI.
I saw Jim's advert in the _The_Little_Express_ and thought I'd drop him
a line. As mentioned here previously, he has an amazing collection of
demos, interviews and the like. Anyways, I was never aware that this stuff
was out there for fans to listen to. One thing that has become clearly
evident by listening to all the demos is that over the years Andy's demos
are sounding more like the finished project. Maybe it's time for the band to
produce itself.
Another tape I received was a copy of Chalkhill's own _Acoustic_Radio_Tour_
compilation. Some really funny bits from Andy, ("arf, arf"). It's really
sad that they won't undertake the same type of tour to promote _Nonsuch_.
I also received a copy of the video compilation _Look_Look_. Does anyone
know if a second compilation is in the works? There certainly are enough
out there to warrant one, (especially with all the critical aclaim that
was heaped upon "Dear God"!). I'm looking other videos, so let me know
if anyone out there is interested in doing some trading.
Cheers!
Brooks Hocking
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 05:50:34 PDT From: Wes Wilson @PKO3 - 223-3413 13-Oct-1992 0852 <wilson@pharos.enet.dec.com> Subject: "Dear Madam Barnum" Promo CD Picked up a "Dear Madam Barnum" promo CD a few weeks ago for $6. Dear Madam Barnum (LP Version) 2:53 PRO-CD-4447 Made in USA No other tracks... Wes
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Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 09:00:42 MET
From: "Andy, are you goofing on Elvis?" <drobb@ssmprd.enet.dec.com>
Subject: rare CD available to trade ...
As a result of a strange twist of fate, I have a spare copy
of the _KINGS FOR A DAY_ boot CD available to trade (tho'
not necessarily for other XTC material).
This CD features 18 songs in total, 9 each performed at WBCN
and WFXX during the promotional radio tour for the O&L album
in 1989. It also features some interesting, and amusing,
interview clips, and runs for over an hour in total.
Please mail me direct if interested.
- Dougie
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 12:43:52 PDT From: "John M. Relph" <relph@presto.ig.com> Subject: Ye Olde Mailbagge Dan Weir <dweir@us.oracle.com> asks: > >someone writes... "We also witnessed the infamous French concert nervous >breakdown segment (grim) ..." > >Please satisfy my morbid curiosity and tell me what this looks like in more >detail. It's a French programme documenting the soundcheck before the concert, lots of joking around and levels adjustment. There is a short interview with the band, and then the concert starts. They get about halfway through the first song and then Andy sort of stumbles, puts down his guitar roughly (you can hear it), and stumbles off stage. The rest of the band continue to play, bewildered, for a few moments, but then it's all over. . . . Toby Howard <toby@computer-science.manchester.ac.uk> writes > >"Experimental coupling, as it were, from Blur, wo take tentative steps >in the general direction of a follow-up to their successful debut album >Leisure, with Swindon's own Andy Partridge at the console. Apparently Andy and Blur are also working with Phil Thornalley on this project. . . . "XTC: Chalkhills and Children", the book, is currently available at Tower Records in Campbell, California, for those of us in the San Jose area. . . . The Chalkhills Archives have been moved. The Archives are now available on "net.bio.net" [134.172.2.69]. The Archives are now in the directory "misc/chalkhills". The move has made more disk space available for the Archives, so all of the XTC image files are now available. -- John
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] For all administrative issues, such as change of address, withdrawal from the list, fan club addresses, discography requests (last update 6 October), back issues, FAQ list, etc., send a message to the following address: <chalkhills-request@chalkhills.org> The Chalkhills archives are available at "http://chalkhills.org/". All views expressed in Chalkhills are those of the individual contributors only. They won't drop Fat Boy on your town...
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