Chalkhills Digest Volume 1, Issue 363
Date: Wednesday, 20 July 1994

                  Chalkhills, Number 363

                 Wednesday, 20 July 1994
Today's Topics:
                      Re: Questions
                  real Dukes influences
                   Re: Chalkhills #362
                   Re: Chalkhills #362
                      3 x CD.3 = O&L
                New Blur LP/Thanks to Dan
                        The Grays
                    I want my "Mummy"
                       anDy cHaT...
                Re: let me have it (splat)
                      RINGO SERVICE
                    AP ten years gone

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Date: Sat, 16 Jul 94 15:40:09 PDT
From: John Relph <relph@presto.ig.com>
Subject: Re: Questions

mallard@uclink.berkeley.edu (Chong Hyun Byun) had a couple of questions:

>  Are
>there any (CD) editions of English Settlement and Go 2 which have the lyrics
>printed in the CD booklet?

_English Settlement_, yes, on Geffen US.  _Go 2_, no.  Sorry.  But you
can attempt to print out the PostScript ADDITIONAL BOOKLET with lyrics
and credits (courtesy of our own Andre' de Koning), which you can find
in the Chalkhills Archives.  (There is also an additional booklet for
_Rag & Bone Buffet_.)

>Was the "Dear Madam Barnum" demo released on
>anything other than the Gribouillage EP?

No.

>And can anyone tell me what's on these two albums:  This is
>Live (from the Hammersmith Odeon 1981) and Making Plans for Andy (Live
>'78 and '82)?

 92. This is Live!

     Live Begins At The Hop; Burning With Optimism's Flame; Love At First
     Sight; Respectable Street; No Language In Our Lungs; This Is Pop; Scissor
     Man; Towers Of London; Battery Brides; Living Through Another Cuba;
     Generals And Majors; I'll Set Myself On Fire.  pirate, possibly same as
     Black Sea Tour '81, from BBC College Concert, except for I'll Set Myself
     on Fire from Towers of London single
     a. CD, MUSICHIEN Luxembourg, 91CD-0202, 1991.

 88. Making Plans for Andy

     bootleg, taken from a BBC concert, 1978, and an Amsterdam Paradiso
     concert, 1982.

     Radios in Motion; Statue of Liberty; Set My Self on Fire; New Town Animal;
     All Along the Watch Tower; This is Pop; Dance Band; Neon Shuffle; Traffic
     Light Rock; Looking for Footprints; No Thugs in Our House; Senses Working
     Over Time; Making Plans for Nigel; Sgt Rock; Life Begins at the Hop.
     Looking for Footprints from Flexipop!  flexi-disk, and Traffic Light Rock
     from Record Mirror single.  also contains two tracks by The Spys.
     a. CD, Wax Work Records Sweden/UK?, 3DCD1, 1989.

     Radios in Motion (3'10); Statue of Liberty (3'00); Set Myself on Fire
     (3'30); New Town Animal (1'45); All Along the Watchtower (6'12); This is
     Pop (3'00); Dance Band (2'21); Neon Shuffle (4'45); No Thugs in Our House
     (5'08); Senses Working Over Me [sic] (4'42); Making Plans for Nigel
     (4'40); Sgt Rock (3'50); Life Begins at the Top [sic] (3'07).
     b. CD, Living Legend Italy (Multi Coloured Music), LLRCD 076, 1990.
        inferior sound quality.

Make sure you are going to get the Wax Work version of _Making Plans
for Andy_, because the other version (Living Legend) is inferior and
has fewer tracks.

        -- John

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Date: 17 Jul 94 21:04:47 EDT
From: Steve Levenstein <70750.1117@compuserve.com>
Subject: real Dukes influences

   Hi again all, now continuing with that XTC interview. This part
answers that most frequent of FAQs, the "What is that Woody Allen
voice at the end of 'My Love Explodes'?" Let's listen to the
answer from the chalk horses' mouth:

ANDY: Right! The last track on side one is "My Love Explodes",
and this is an attempt at a cross between the Yardbirds' "Over,
Under, Sideways, Down" and there's still a bit more Floyd-ery
in there. But we had to get as many maraccas as possible on this
track to give it the right Bo Diddley shug, so we ended up with
plastic washing-up bottles full of rice, boxes with grit in them,
anything that would "shhh", we even used real maraccas! We
cellotaped the whole lot together till we had this enormous ball
of things that went "shhh", the size of a beachball, and Ian had
to go in and shug away to this track. Actually, they sound like
good maraccas, even the ones that aren't real maraccas, and I've
still got them now, and they've never needed repair!
The little voice at the end after all the fireworks go off,
courtesy of the same BBC sound effects record, is a tape that
John Leckie had. He was in New York a little while ago and had
his radio/cassette player going and he was tuned into this
ludicrous New York radio station where this chap was singing
this rather... how would you describe this song he was singing?

DAVE & COLIN: Rude!

DAVE: It was actually a protest song.

ANDY: Called "Hey, go f... yourself with your atom bomb", this chap
was singing this song over the air, and John Leckie couldn't
believe the banality of this song so he turned on his cassette
to capture it for posterity, and he left the cassette running.
At the end of the thing there's a phone-in where they invite
people to phone in and comment on the song, and there's this
marvelous guy who phones in, with this Woody Allen voice, and
he is really outraged... "That's the most obscene abomination
of a song!" So we thought this was marvellous and we nailed him
on the end of "My Love Explodes". So the strange "Woody Allen"
voice is a very irate New Yorker who's commenting on the song
"Hey, go f... yourself with your atom bomb".

DAVE: In fact, if you want to hear more of the original version,
at the end of side 2 on the run-out grooves, if you've got a
record player capable of playing it, you'll hear spinning backwards
at twice the speed, a snatch of this gentleman's song in it's
original form.

...next time, "Your Gold Dress"...     ---> Steve

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Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 01:16:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: TODDGROVE@delphi.com
Subject: Re: Chalkhills #362

No drums on the next album?

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Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 01:26:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: TODDGROVE@delphi.com
Subject: Re: Chalkhills #362

I need a copy of the Minneapolis KTCZ acoustic tape. I will be in Minneapolis
August 4 and 5 and would love to acquire a copy from a local. Please E-mail
any info.

Todd

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From: Hans.Malm@eua.ericsson.se (Hans Malm)
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 94 10:04:11 +0200
Subject: 3 x CD.3 = O&L

How unique is this one...?      (From the discography)

  9. Oranges and Lemons
     k. CD-3 (3), Virgin UK, CDVT 2581, 27 February 1989.  three discs, box.

I saw it in a second hand record store this weekend.
Shall I sell all my belongings and go and get it ?

/Hans

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Date: 18 Jul 1994 09:04:05 U
From: "Wesley Wilson" <Wesley_Wilson@iegate.mitre.org>
Subject: New Blur LP/Thanks to Dan

Wow!

"Chalkhills" has been good reading lately, what with all of the reports of a
new album being started, interviews, stories of fans having seen the band
live.

As chance would have it, I was in Newbury Comics last weekend, looking for
the new Silver Surfer comic, when I heard a catchy, very obviously British
band playing on their speakers.

The band was "Blur," and the store was playing "Parklife," the new album.
The song I heard was very catchy; alas, I remember but one line, "I walk
around naked," or something like that.  :-)

Does anyone have this CD?  Is it any good?  This is the album Andy was
supposed to have a hand in producing (but he was nixed by the band :-(); can
anyone tell what Andy could possibly have contributed, if anything?
Andy mentioned that the band took "some of his ideas."  I'm dying to get
"Parklife" to see if I can see anything!

The music I heard was in the flower-power 60's style.  I kind of like Blur,
but I'm mad that they dumped Andy as producer.

Oh, and HI and a BIG THANKS to Dan Smith; #004#Dan, I'm not sure if you're
still on the net, but I just thought I'd let you know that I'm finally able
to read that diskette you sent me ages ago.

Hmm...It's been awfully quiet regarding the Budd/Partridge CD (which I still
don't have).  How would the folks who have it rate it, from 1 to 10?
(10 being stupendously great).

Wes  (who's favorite film these days is "In the Pink" by Stimpson J. Cat)

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Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 09:44:18 CDT
From: Kim Ericksen <erickke@wkuvx1.wku.edu>
Subject: The Grays

Got to see the Grays this Friday.  The show was awesome!  They were the
opening band for Toad the Wet Sprocket.

i got Jason Faulkner's autograph, and had some short conversation with
him.  They are working on their new album that will probably come out
after the tour is over.  The sad thing is, the only played for about
40 minutes.

They made reference to the Horta and Spock episode of Star
Trek...pretty cool

This was the set list:  (in no specific order)

Not Ready Yet (new song, it had no title)
Friend of Mine
Very Best Years
Everybody's World
Nothing Between Us (Horta reference)
Both Belong
No One Can Hurt Me
Same Thing

i think that about gets it.

Kim
---
Currently playing:  The Posies---Failure
        Song:  Like me Too

                            \ ### /
                            /(o o)\
 ________________________oOO__(_)__OOo__________________________________
 | Kimberly Ericksen-VOPER, CNA (almost), and an all around good gal;) |
 |---------------------------------------------------------------------|
 |   ERICKKE@WKUVX1.WKU.EDU      --or--    BURLY@WKUNIX.WKU.EDU        |
 |I never let my schooling interfere with my education      -Mark Twain|

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Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 11:59:29 -0600
From: keeks@maroon.tc.umn.edu (Tom Keekley)
Subject: I want my "Mummy"

John: Thanks for your reply concerning the BBC disc. I figured it WAS well
known with you all, and rightly so - it IS excellent.

As one of the few Chalkhillians who LOVES _Mummer_, I'm wondering if anyone
knows what the title is referring to and what the image on the cover is?
(It looks like marching toy soldiers to me.)

It was interesting to read the Andyview from the Mummer/BE days. How record
companies evaluate music is beyond me. No 'hits' on _Mummer_??? Andy having
to go write 'Great Fire'? Did they not hear the same disc as I? (hmmmm . .
.'Farmboys', 'Desert Island' (I know, but why not on album?), 'Loving
Memory', 'Funk Pop'!!!) I hope every record company who fails to appreciate
and MARKET thier excellent albums looses thier hide!! Nonsvch had about
eight radio-huggers and all I hear is an occasional 'My Bird Performs' (!).

Powered on by the beating of hearts . . .

Tom Keekley (Keeks)
Minneapolis, USA

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Subject: anDy cHaT...
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 94 16:10:19 -0400
From: silva@mond1.ccrc.uga.edu

FoLks:

   ThanX for all the questions. I got most of them answered in one
fashion or another. I will post the transcript in the near future (if
that's okay with everyone...it'll be mammoth) as well as some
highlights that might interest most people here soon.

JoE Silva
Editor, QRM Online

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Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 20:48:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: Derek Miner <ind00163@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu>
Subject: Re: let me have it (splat)

On Sat, 16 Jul 1994 Jeff Rosedale wrote:

> Re. the posting from the last issue about the cassette of unreleased XTC,
> containing: four instrumentals, demos of songs from "25 O'clock," the
> drunken XTC doing "Community Worker Breakdown" (which I have thanks to you,
> John), a couple answering machine messages and a couple other random
> inclusions...
>
> How can I get this thing?  Sale, trade, pound of flesh?  Help!

        The original writer responds:

        Well, I myself would like to get it. One track from the tape in
question is in my posession (the cover of "Community Worker Breakdown"),
but it seems NOBODY has found the other tracks anywhere.
        The good news for you is that I'm looking for these pieces of
tunage for a collection that I'm hoping to get out for the XTC fans who
can't find some of the obscure records and tapes. I've been amassing
tapes from some people and trading (BTW, to all of you who have traded
with me, esp. the two Johns, THANKS!) so the collection is slowly moving
out of the nebulous state. I will assemble some liner notes soon. So take
heart and be patient and someday you may hear these songs... that is if I
can find them.

        Derek Miner
        ind00163@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu

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From: mark.watkins@oubbs.telecom.uoknor.edu
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 94 20:03:36
Subject: RINGO SERVICE

   Fellow Pink Things -

   Found this crossposted to the Neil Young mailing list and thought
   you might be interested. It's a "music recommendation service",
   still in its larval stages. Following the ad is a list of the Top
   30 artists recommended by the first 590 participants. Our boys
   made it but they're hanging on by their fingernails. Perhaps with
   our help they'll make it to a more favorable position.

  =======================================================================

   From: shard@media.mit.edu (Upendra Shardanand)
   Subject: INFO: A Music Recommendation Service
   Originator: dallin@CS.ColoState.EDU
   Date: Sat Jul 02 17:52:59 EDT 1994
   Organization: MIT Media Lab (Music & Cognition)

     Introducing.. RINGO, a personal music recommendation service,
   being created at the MIT Media Lab. You tell Ringo what kinds of
   music groups you like. Then, you can query Ringo and ask for
   recommendations for artists you should check out, or should avoid.
   Or you can find out how mainstream your tastes are. Or retrieve
   other information, like reviews and top 20 charts.

     HOW RINGO WORKS: How does it work? Well, how do you do it
   ordinarily?  You listen to songs that some D.J. plays, or you hear
   about stuff from your friends who have tastes similar to your own.

     That's how Ringo does it. People all over the internet tell
   Ringo about their listening tastes. It then finds people who are
   similar in their tastes to you. If they really like some artists
   that you haven't heard yet, Ringo will recommend them to you.

     HOW TO USE RINGO: Send an e-mail to ringo@media.mit.edu, with
   only the word 'join' in the body. It will then send you a list of
   125 artists.  You rate the artists that you are familiar with.
   Send it back. You will then receive a 'help' file describing how
   to use all the features of Ringo.

     The more users that use Ringo, the better Ringo's predictions.
   As time goes on and more people use it, you will find that the
   predictions become more accurate. So tell a friend.

      Thanks,

      Upendra

  =======================================================================
                              THE TOP 30
                              ----------

Rnk Score  Artist (Number of ratings)

 1. 5.32  "Mclachlan, Sarah" (37)
 2. 5.30  "Parker, Charlie" (30)
 3. 5.09  "King Crimson" (33)
 4. 5.06  "Roxy Music" (43)
 5. 5.04  "Gabriel, Peter" (416)
 6. 4.99  "R.E.M." (413)
 7. 4.98  "Dead Can Dance" (41)
 8. 4.92  "Talking Heads" (389)
 9. 4.92  "Bjork" (67)
10. 4.88  "New Order" (54)
11. 4.88  "Cocteau Twins" (34)
12. 4.87  "Amos, Tori" (116)
13. 4.87  "Eno, Brian" (45)
14. 4.86  "Violent Femmes" (43)
15. 4.85  "Police, The" (419)
16. 4.84  "Monk, Thelonious" (31)
17. 4.83  "Beatles, The" (437)
18. 4.83  "Breeders" (40)
19. 4.82  "Velvet Underground, The" (43)
20. 4.81  "Einsturzende Neubauten" (31)
21. 4.80  "Davis, Miles" (71)
22. 4.79  "Pink Floyd" (99)
23. 4.75  "Vega, Suzanne" (103)
24. 4.75  "Holiday, Billie" (32)
25. 4.72  "OMD" (25)
26. 4.72  "Bush, Kate" (96)
27. 4.71  "They Might Be Giants" (189)
28. 4.70  "Clannad" (46)
29. 4.69  "Morrison, Van" (41)
30. 4.68  "XTC" (37)
---
 ~ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12 ~

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Date: Wed, 20 Jul 94 08:41:07 EST
From: stacy@trc.com (Robert Stacy)
Subject: AP ten years gone

   This is the second part of a phone interview conducted with Andy
Partridge by Brett Milano, as published in the November 7, 1984 issue
of the _Fairfield County Advocate_.

 --RSt

                        == Part 2 of 3 ==

                            *   *   *

XTC: Rockers in a Dangerous Time
An exclusive and revealing discussion with the band's eloquent frontman

By Brett Milano

   Advocate: Some of the old XTC songs were revelling in pop culture,
like "Radios in Motion"--and on _Mummer_, "Funk Pop a Roll" is a
complete turnaround.  Have you gotten disillusioned with rock and roll?

   Partridge: It'll sound like a loser if I say yes--but if I say no,
it'll sound like a loser trying to lie.  Sure, it's frustrating, but
then again, I can see why we're not huge.  We hide away, we don't play
by the same rules most bands play.  We don't wear the right clothes, we
don't go out to nightclubs to be seen.
   I think the last time I had hope for music to be saved--the last
time I was stupid enough to think it would be--was with the punk thing.
And it got leapt on by the media, and turned into their way to sell
things to the kids.  I felt so let down and so cheated.  At the time, I
felt like, 'look, music shouldn't be so precious--let's all do it, and
revel in it.'  Then the media took over.

   A: Whether you're huge or not, it seems that XTC's fans tend to be
really strong admirers.

   P: And they usually find us in some obscure way, like hearing an old
B-side on college radio.  And people write the most amazing letters to
us--I mean, we read these letters and we're almost in tears, because
they're so fond of us.  We get most of our mail from the States, about
90 percent of it--and we can see peoples' frustration in trying to
impress us on their friends!

   A: Why do you think people respond so strongly?

   P: I suppose it's for the same reasons I used to discover bands--I'd
hear a track on the radio or something, and that little piece of
elastic in my head would snap.  I'd think, 'waah!  That was marvelous!
I must have dreamt that track up, because it's just everything I ever
wanted to hear!'  I'd feel that I owned the band, and start championing
them to my friends.  So I suppose we must touch that off in some people
too.

   A: Do you ever miss performing?

   P: No.  Not at all.  I'm kind of a small entertainer--if people come
around for the evening, it's always me that winds up entertaining,
telling long tales.  I'd be great if I had kids.  But I'm just not
interested in being onstage a half-mile away, under a spotlight shaking
my fat around, running on pure nervous breakdown.

   A: And yet, when I've seen the band live, you seemed very much at
home.

   P: Not at all--I was scared into performing.  You're up on the stage
and there's this threat of torture, making you tell all.  I suppose the
hour onstage could be just about bearable, but so much around it was
unbearable--like the travelling, being thrown from one van to another.

   A: Was it always that way?

   P: No, I liked it initially . . . it's a different thing, you enjoy
playing small clubs.  You set your gear up, play to 50 or 100 people in
a club the size of somebody's living room.  You're all shaking hands
with them, they're shaking hands with you, and there's a sort of
communication.  But you never have that in those astrodomes where we
ended up playing.

   A: Which brings us to what happened to the band a couple of years
ago if it's not too hard to talk about . . .

   P: No, really--you name it, I'll answer it.

   A: Okay.  First of all, there were some wild rumors going
around . . .

   P: Oh, there were some great ones--like that I'm dead!  Peter
Blegvad told me that one, he's the chap I produced an album for (_The
Naked Shakespeare_) several months back.  I had a meeting with him, and
he said, 'part of the reason I wanted to use you, is that my friends
thought you were all dead.'  Well Pete, explain!  He said there'd been
obituary shows in the States, where they'd play a load of XTC tracks
back-to-back, very solemnly with no talking.  There was a general rumor
that we'd stopped our tour because I'd died off, but there were all
sorts going around--the band split, Andy's fired everyone, Colin's
terminally ill--all sorts.

   A: What really happened?

   P: I literally couldn't take it anymore.  We'd finished _English
Settlement_, and I'd sort of resigned myself in my head, that I really
enjoyed touring and didn't like playing live.  We went out on tour
around Europe, and I wasn't eating any good, I wasn't sleeping any
good, it was becoming the last straw.  We did a gig in Paris, where I
just ran out--and through not looking after myself, and through getting
phobic about audiences--I just passed out, in front of the entire
audience.  Which really scared me.  The audience started going round at
78 rpm.  I just had to leave the stage.  It made me feel like I was
trying to tell me something.
   We decided we'd still do our tour of the States, but I needed a
while to recover.  So I went to see doctors, and hypnotists even, who
told me that I was fantastic, I was king of the world--that I should
just run out on stage and say 'hi, it's me, king of the world.'  So we
got to the States, and I did one gig, and the same thing happened--I
was just getting so phobic about audiences, and making myself do
something I didn't enjoy.  The next gig, we'd sold out the Hollywood
Palladium, and before the show I said 'I can't do it.  Get me on a
plane, I'm not going anywhere near a stage.'  And I literally cracked
up, went to pieces, I had a real attack of the Brian Wilsons, I guess.

   A: How did the rest of the band react?

   P: Terry Chambers, the drummer, literally refused to speak to me.
He borrowed some money from somebody straightaway, and went to live
with his girlfriend in Australia.  When he came back to work on
_Mummer_, he said, 'look, I'm sick of struggling, I think your music's
gone really weird, I don't like your songs these days.'  He gave 1,001
reasons, but he'd just had a kid, so he went back to Australia.
   Colin, I think, was secretly glad that we stopped touring.  He's a
family man, got a couple of kids, even though he's the youngest in the
band.  He had problems on tour, he used to get involved with women, so
I think he was glad when we didn't have to do it anymore.  As for Dave,
I think he missed it purely from the tourist's point of view--he used
to go off with his camera while I was doing interviews.  But generally,
I think the overall feeling in the band is 'phew.'

   A: Is it harder now to survive as a band?

   P: Not financially, because we used to lose such large sums of money
on tour--we've never made any money from music, so there's not much to
lose.  The only hard thing is the visual aspect--people must think 'oh,
XTC, do they still exist?'  But musically, we're even more together
than before.

                            *   *   *

                     == End Part 2 of 3 ==

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I've had the breadth of liars blowing me off course in my sails.

Go back to Volume 1.

20 July 1994 / Feedback