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What are you listening to now?


Chronixal
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So, I've been fucking obsessed with XTC lately (they are kind of like the Beatles who never got their due) and received a book going "behind the songs" for Christmas, which is actually some old interviews with Andy Partridge that went up on the XTC MySpace page (when that was a thing about 9-10 years ago).

 

It's a really interesting read with a lot of cool songwriting insight and also does a decent job of getting across a sort of band biography in the process. One of my favourite observations is about the opener to Black Sea: Respectable Street (a sort of mockery of the middle class). Virgin made them rerecord it for a single because the BBC wouldn't play it since it contained words like "abortion" and "contraception" (this was 1980)... only to have the BBC reject it still because it says a brand name with "Sony Entertainment Centres" (same reason the Kinks had to change Coca Cola to "cherry cola" many years before).

 

Anyway, there's a fun little addition in the single version that appears in the very last verse at around 2:15 with the "Sunday church and they look fetching" line. Here:

 

That "aaaaaaahhhhh" vocal bit. That's actually the drummer thinking he'd fucked up and yelling in frustration. They noticed his yell came out very close to the song's key and adjusted it slightly, keeping it in there. :lol:

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teoth2.jpg

 

I'm otherwise currently listening to a collection of the UK Number Ones from 1952 to 2011.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_UK_Singles_Chart_number_ones

 

The above being 12th March 1983.

 

Here's my birth number one

 

Oh god in CaH we had to explain to one of the guys what the Hillsborough Disaster was :/

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Such a beautiful composition. The way it builds, the layers in both the music, lyrics and even the phrases like "I heard that dandelions roar in Piccadilly Circus". The percussive horns with the sharp "stabs" of sound is just peculiar but it works. Definitely one for headphones as so much care and attention was put into not only the songwriting but the production also.

 

Amazing to see how far they came as a group from their "sort of punk" new wave days. Sad then that it was also tracks like this that saw the beginning of the breakdown of the core trio as one felt hiring an orchestra was too expensive when they could use samples. Tragic that money would be the wedge since the band had been outrageously underpaid and taken advantage of by their manager and record company prior to this.

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