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Shivers Inside	PART 41 XTC – White Music – LP
Once upon a time I was accused of disappearing into my world of books and films where darkness came too soon. Total nonsense of course. There was music too. But the suggestion was that I was missing out. Total nonsense too. Products have so much to teach us. So many stories to tell …

Oh it was just that someone was making sneaky snarky comments about how the first single bore more than a passing resemblance to the one of the old ‘60s punk tracks off the Pebbles series. The Plague, The Haunted, or The Banshees or something. Nothing to do with Siouxsie of course. And it really bugged me because so what? A lot of us have been influenced by ‘60s garage punk stuff. The Jesus and Mary Chain do Barracuda. The Jasmine Minks themselves do We The People’s In The Past. Even the Pastels have been doing the Red Crayola’s Hurricane Fighter Plane.

Actually that makes me wonder if Stephen Pastel also would have heard that song for the first time on a flexidisc that came free with Zigzag way back. When? It must have been late ’78? Sad that I remember it so vividly half a dozen years on. But I know it had the Ramones on the cover. This would have been around the time Road To Ruin came out. And it was a little bit controversial. You know, have the Ramones slowed down and lost their way? As if a record with songs like Don’t Come Close and Questioningly was the mark of a group that had lost its touch. And I know the same issue had Blondie in, and one of those pictures of Debbie to die for, and XTC. I was very big on XTC at the time.

So, yeah, the flexi itself was amazing. The Red Crayola doing Hurricane Fighter Plane and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators with Reverberation. It was like these songs were beamed in from a different planet. I reckon this would have been my first exposure to ‘60s punk. I knew a lot of the current punk groups seemed to go on about Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets collection, but it wasn’t exactly freely available on the high street. So this was all new.

And what with the inevitably rough sound of the flexi, and the strange energy and insistency of the music, with its strange fizzing and hiccupping, like Ambition by Subway Sect times one hundred, well I was totally in love. And this was the start of a reissue programme on Radar if I remember rightly. Texas punk or psychedelia. Which kind of got confusing when a new incarnation of the Red Crayola started putting out some very arty, abstract music, and head Crayola Mayo Thompson began getting involved with Rough Trade, producing people and popping up with Pere Ubu, whose own futures and pasts were jumbled enough for me.

Radar put out some cracking stuff around that time. Richard Hell’s Kid With The Replaceable Head. One of the greatest singles ever. The Pop Group’s She’s Beyond Good and Evil. One of the greatest singles ever. And the whole Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Bette Bright and the Yachts thing. And Andrew Lauder’s the person I associate with giving us the opportunities to hear the magic and madness of the Parable of the Arable Land and especially the Psychedelic Sounds of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators with that weird electric jug sound.

Nevertheless it was XTC that I bought that edition of Zigzag for. Jane Suck on the run from the circus that was Sounds was with somewhat mixed feelings writing up something on XTC ahead of the release of their second LP. And while I was sort of embarrassed about it for a number of years I can boldly say XTC were pretty much my favourite group for a brief but important time.

Not a lot of people know this, but XTC were the first group I ever saw play live. It’s something that’s pretty cool actually, as it was an under-16s show at The Marquee no less. My very own A-Bomb in Wardour Street. It must have been May ’78? About that. White Music had definitely been out for a while, and both Statue of Liberty and This Is Pop had spectacularly and criminally failed to set the charts alight. The show itself fitted in perfectly with the school holidays, and something like a 6 o’clock start. Me and my mate Sniffer decided to make a day of it, and we went off with our sandwiches and Red Bus Rovers, as innocent as hell, wandering around Soho, looking for the market and everything. If you know what I mean.

Bizarrely, looking back, there wasn’t that many people at the show. I remember, I think it was in the Record Mirror, there was a mention of the show saying it was expected the crowd would be pampered offspring of the chattering classes, but that the kids who turned up were a bit rough and wild. We were. It was just such a fantastic experience though. Andy Partridge was like a possessed dervish, speaking in tongues, while Colin coolly stood sucking his cheeks, then of course Barry Andrews with his battered Yamaha organ or Farfisa or whichever clapped out keyboard he played. It was great because all the innards were exposed and there was graffiti plastered all over it, and he was all over it like a Bond villain or mad scientist at the controls.

We were all going mad, pogoing away, like we thought we should, and it was like a religious experience. The best bit was that when it was over, and this was a condition of us being allowed to go, because don’t forget we were what 13 or 14, off to our first punk rock, new wave, power pop concert, well my not-so-dear departed dad was detailed to pick us up outside The Marquee, and give us a lift home. Absolutely classic. Now I saw my dad once in a blue moon, and Sniffer’s family didn’t have a car, so we convinced my dad with some none too subtle emotional blackmail, to meet us, and he couldn’t really refuse when you consider the damage he’d done.

Looking back now that I’m about to leave my teens, I can see the funny side of the old man waiting around late evening in the heart of Soho, trying to look nonchalant and inconspicuous, probably worried sick about being challenged. I mean he could hardly say he was waiting to pick up a couple of young boys could he? Fantastic. He must have hated it. And we were totally oblivious to it all. Just starry-eyed after our first punk show. Serves ‘im right?

I sort of lost interest in XTC by the time they were making plans for Nigel. The Pop Group, Scars, Purple Hearts, and so on were all a lot more exciting. But that early stuff. White Music, in particular. I’ve rediscovered all of that. And I can now appreciate the way it mixes up the bubblegum with the avant garde. But then thinking back I seem to recall Andy Partridge before he became legit liked to talk up everything odd from Can and Beefheart to Sergio Mendes and Kasenatz Katz. Or am I making that up? Anyway Sugar Sugar, Simon Says. Quick Joey Small. All that stuff. It was an important part of the punk thing. My development. My education.

The other thing that’s only just struck me, where I’ve been listening to White Music and the early singles, is how close, surely coincidentally, they were to the early Fall. Listen to Rebellious Jukebox and all that. The trashy keyboards. The electric piano. The guitar. The clatter. “Still one step ahead of you. I still believe in the r’n’r dream. R’n’r as primal scream …”. It all tracks back to the Seeds, ? And The Mysterians. That ‘60s punk thing. The wheezing organ. And then it begins again. The organ on Think! The same one that’s on Blue Boy by all accounts.