XTC and the Media: An Essay
In Music Media
XTC were formed in Swindon, UK in 1976. They released a total of 39 singles and 14 studio albums (2 of each under the name ‘The Dukes Of Stratosphear’) and split in 2005.
During certain periods of their career XTC were fairly well documented in music media, despite the fact they never aimed to have any particular image and never labelled themselves as purveyors of a particular genre of music. One of the reasons for this may have been the fact that they were the first real pop/rock band to hail from Swindon in Wiltshire, meaning that from their inception they received a lot of coverage on local television and radio, which in turn helped to boost their national following. From the late 1970s (particularly after they achieved their first U.K. hit, ‘Life Begins At The Hop’ in April 1979) they were regularly featured on music programmes such as Top of the Pops and The Old Grey Whistle Test, and in popular music publications of the time including NME, Smash Hits, No.1 and Flexi-Pop, becoming known for the uniquely-observant subject matters of many of their songs, and having a self-deprecating, dry sense of humour when being interviewed. These traits were also reflected in adverts published in such magazines for upcoming single and album releases; whereas other ‘less intellectual’ bands would often just feature a picture of the release artwork as a magazine advert, XTC would always go the extra mile. For example, the Smash Hits advert for ‘Making Plans For Nigel’ featured a detailed description of parts of an actual board game that had been designed around the concept of the song (given away free with the first 20,000 copies sold of the single), and the ‘Melody Maker’ advert for the band’s debut album ‘White Music’ included the quip ‘Brilliant White Music with miracle XTC! Thrills 99% of all household germs.’
Melody Maker adverts for ‘White Music’ and ‘Go2’
An advert for ‘Making Plans For Nigel’ and a feature detailing the game sold with initial copies. Both from Smash Hits magazine.
With an ever-growing fanbase, in 1982 an official XTC fanzine called Limelight was established, which enabled subscribers to keep up with the band’s releases, tour dates, merchandise sales and general activity as musicians. As there was obviously no internet or social media at the time, it was the general practise for artists to set up or actively encourage the creation of fanclubs or fanzines in order to communicate with the people buying their music.
Up until early 1982, due to this frequent coverage in the music press, the high standard of songwriting within the band and a growing reputation as one of the best live acts on the scene, XTC were revered as not only a band popular with the public, but also with critics and other musicians.
However, halfway through a tour of America in April and just three months after the release of their most successful single up until that point, ‘Senses Working Overtime’, the band decided they no longer wanted to play live and cancelled all remaining gigs on the ‘English Settlement’ tour. This was for various reasons, including guitarist/lead singer-songwriter Andy Partridge’s stage fright, other members of the band having young families, and worries that the songwriting quality within the group would begin to decline due to the stress of touring. At this point (after an initial flurry of rumours around the reasons why the band suddenly refused to play live), a lot of the magazines XTC had previously been regularly featured in seemed to lose interest; once apparently able to do no wrong, for the next few years critics started labelling XTC as ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘dated’, or simply ignored their releases. This led to a sharp decline in record sales, with 1983’s ‘Mummer’ spawning no hit singles at all, and 1984’s ‘The Big Express’ selling fewer copies than a faux-psychedelic album released in 1985 by the band under the guise ‘The Dukes of Stratosphear’.
Even during this period, however, the band regularly did radio interviews, particularly for European television programmes and alternative American radio stations in order to promote new releases (although it was generally only Andy Partridge and bassist/secondary lead singer Colin Moulding who would undertake these kinds of media appearances, most likely due to the former’s notoriously zany personality, and the latter’s key involvement with songwriting).
Striking a chord: Rick Buckler and Bruce Foxton of the Jam, and Terry Hall of The Specials were among the musicians of the time who were fans of XTC. (Articles taken from 1980 editions of Smash Hits).
But despite this self-promotion, and large amounts of money being spent on the band by their record label, Virgin Records (including £30,000 on the music video for ‘All You Pretty Girls’, which eventually only reached number 55 in the UK charts), it was not until 1986 and the release of ‘Skylarking’ (produced by Todd Rundgren and widely considered to be the band’s best work) that XTC began to find favour with the music press once again.
Furthermore, in 1994, a dedicated fansite called Chalkhills was established, serving as the chief online resource for everything XTC-related, including exclusive interviews, information about the history of the band, magazine articles, tour programmes, an online fan forum, and even song chords and lyrics.
Coverage Outside the Music Press
On the other hand, due to their purposeful lack of image and their relatively ordinary personal lives, XTC rarely received much attention from the general UK press. In accordance with other artists of the punk and new wave movement such as The Stranglers and OMD, they did not actively use their looks, image, or public interest in their personal lives to sell records (if anything having an ‘anti-image’, dressing and behaving in as low-key a way as possible) and throughout their career always ensured that their primary focus was the music they wrote and released.
However, in terms of television they often appeared on more niche programmes (again in order to promote themselves) such as children’s shows like Swap Shop and Saturday Superstore. Also, when they were first starting out they regularly appeared on local TV, with programmes like Swindon Viewpoint taking advantage of the novelty of a pop band hailing from the town.
Then, in August 1986, the band released a Moulding-penned track as a single, called ‘Grass’ (taken from the album ‘Skylarking’), which had a Partridge-penned non-album b-side entitled ‘Dear God’. The atheist themes and strong lyrical imagery of ‘Dear God’ meant it began to receive heavy airplay on American college radio stations, in turn sparking multiple violent incidents including a bomb threat being issued to a radio station in Florida, and a student forcing the track to be played over a school’s public address system by holding a staff member at knife-point. The press attention (both negative and positive) prompted by the track has been cited as essentially saving XTC’s career; after Geffen Records began to repress ‘Skylarking’, this time including ‘Dear God’, sales of the album soared far above that of the band’s previous two albums. The track was also released as a single in its own right in 1987.
After this, in order to further increase the band’s presence in American media, Andy Partridge appeared on MTV as a guest presenter, and later the band appeared on David Letterman’s show performing Colin Moulding’s track ‘King For A Day’- their first live performance since they stopped touring in 1982.
The sleeve artwork for ‘Dear God’, re-issued as a single in 1987 after it caused controversy in the US
A cartoon by American Matty Boy Anderson, detailing his five years as an XTC fan. Note the reference to ‘Dear God’ as ‘the perfect anthem for the knee-jerk atheist’, and also to ‘Mayor Of Simpleton’, the band’s highest charting single in the US (probably due to the music video receiving heavy airplay on MTV at the time of its release, as well as the significant amount of promo appearances done by the band themselves).
(L-R) Dave Gregory, Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding, putting their usual self-mocking spin on a promo shot for ‘Skylarking’.
A photo from the inner sleeve of ‘Skylarking’. The band’s Puritan-esque dress continues the themes of ‘Dear God’ in terms of mocking religion and supposed religious icons.
The Band’s Own Participation in Media Coverage
Up until 1982, XTC had a fairly average participation in their own media coverage. They appeared on television programmes, made music videos and occasionally took part in interviews. However, once the band stopped touring the number of interviews they did began to increase in an attempt to keep themselves relevant in the minds of the public and their fans.
In terms of the band members themselves it was Andy Partridge who undertook the majority of television appearances and interviews; his eccentric demeanour, approachable nature, sharp sense of humour and love of all things bizarre meant he was often the main focus of the band and generally seen as the ‘leader’. Colin Moulding on the other hand was much quieter and less sure of himself when on television or radio, later saying that interviews often made him feel ‘self-conscious’ and he was ‘never really sure what to say’. Despite this, in the band’s early days, Moulding was initially pushed forward as XTC’s ‘frontman’ as he wrote the band’s first hit singles, and his more conventional good looks were seen by the record company as an attraction to potential female fans. This was until late 1980 when the band released the Partridge-penned ‘Sgt. Rock (Is Going To Help Me)’, which reached number 16 in the U.K. charts, and which Noel Edmonds (Radio 1 DJ and Swap Shop presenter at the time) labelled as so annoying that it ‘was [surely] going to be huge’.
Other key XTC members Barry Andrews (keyboardist until his departure in 1979), Terry Chambers (drummer until he emigrated to Australia in 1982) and Dave Gregory (guitarist from 1979 to 1992) also preferred to not take part in interviews, although the latter two both speak at length about themselves and their involvement in the band in ‘XTC At The Manor’, a mockumentary made for BBC television in 1980.
The Impact of the Media Coverage
The media coverage that XTC received (both in the music press and general press) played a very important part in the band’s career, and had both negative and positive impacts.
The primary example of this is the media’s coverage of the violent incidents in America sparked by ‘Dear God’. As already stated, this coverage and controversy was what allowed the band to continue, as they were told by their label that if their sales did not increase with the next album (‘Skylarking’) they would be dropped, most likely signalling the end of XTC. Therefore American media- in the form of general press and radio- had an enormously positive impact as it allowed their career to continue through on through the late 1980s and beyond (in fact ‘Dear God’ still causes controversy in America to this day, as evidenced in an article from 2011 that reports an elementary school teacher from Hamilton being suspended after introducing his class to the track).
However, much of the fact the band were nearly dropped from their label in the first place can be put down to the way they were treated by the music press- in particular teenage magazines like Smash Hits after they stopped touring. Despite the songs on 1983’s ‘Mummer’ and 1984’s ‘The Big Express’ being of the same high standards as earlier albums, they were generally ignored; though ‘Mummer’ in particular was not in keeping with other genres of music around at the time, this was also the case for much of their output before then, including ‘English Settlement’ which is XTC’s best-selling album in the U.K. to date and which received rave reviews. Naturally, lack of sales also caused frustration amongst the band members. Particularly notable is this quote from Andy Partridge about sales of ‘The Big Express’: “Call me stupid, but these were good records. If you bastards don't want to buy 'em, what can I do? I had faith in my art.”
This Is Pop: Praise for ‘Respectable Street’ (banned from the BBC due to its abortion references) and ‘Senses Working Overtime’, released in 1980 and 1982 respectively.
Essentially, continuous lack of coverage in the music press started to take its toll on XTC. This may have been because, by not playing live, the band were being unconventional and not adhering to the ‘rules’ of the industry during that era (release an album, promote it, tour, release another album etc.), which was not something the music press were used to or could be seen to be supporting. This theory is evidenced in the fact that another band at the time, OMD, faced a similar attitude when trying to break from ‘convention’; after releasing the hugely popular ‘Architecture and Morality’ LP in 1981, they stayed out of the public eye for a year and returned with the fractured, highly experimental LP ‘Dazzle Ships’ (now celebrated as being decades ahead of its time) which at the time was either slated or ignored by the press, and sold very few copies. Again this could have been due to the fact they were not following the ‘rules’ of the industry, and not trying to cash in on the niche they could quite easily have carved out for themselves.
Returning to XTC, we can see that at this time the media’s representation of them (or sudden lack of) as a studio band had a highly negative impact on their career at the time.
It can also be said that the media is partially responsible for XTC’s legacy as a ‘cult’ group, which considering the members’ abilities (as commercial songwriters, musicians or both) should really be seen as a negative thing. Whilst a group who covered so many genres of music- often within one album, or even one song- were never going to have as much mainstream appeal as others like Squeeze or Elvis Costello, the press often only pushed the more eccentric, typically English side of Partridge and Moulding’s writing- despite their output spanning far greater lengths than an ode to the joys of living personified through images of the English landscape, and the sorry tale of a teenager forced to work for British Steel by his pushy parents. As accomplished and celebrated as these musical mini-novellas are, what of the other sides to the band that often went unrepresented?
What about the nervy, paranoid aggression of ‘Science Friction’? The acidic, reggae-tinged jaunt of ‘Wait Til Your Boat Goes Down’? Or the love-note lushness of ‘Ten Feet Tall’? The music press’ primarily one-sided portrayal of XTC is perhaps one of the reasons why today- with the exception of ‘Senses Working Overtime’ and ‘Making Plans For Nigel’- in the U.K. and Europe XTC are often seen as a very niche group, despite the generally commercial- if intellectual- nature of their singles. As a result, songs such as ‘Sgt. Rock’, ‘Ball and Chain’, ‘King For A Day’ and ‘Towers of London’- that really should all be as well known as the band’s two most-recognised tracks- are often overlooked by the general public, despite being more melodic, structurally interesting and conceptually unique than anything that many of XTC’s better-known contemporaries ever released.
Of course, complete blame for the sudden downward spiral of XTC’s record sales cannot be attributed solely to media influence. For example, in 1984- when an artist’s image and demeanour were quickly becoming more important than the music they were making- Colin Moulding’s skittish awkwardness and Andy Partridge’s insatiably eccentric sense of humour were hardly going to stand a chance against the likes of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, as gradually even those that had appreciated XTC’s anti-image began to slip quietly away into more mainstream waters. Even The Stranglers had abandoned their original rawer sound in favour of acoustic guitars and electronic drums, and OMD had left behind the bank clerk/Man At C&A image in favour of bright, flowery shirts and bright, flowery, highly commercial pop songs like ‘Locomotion’ and ‘Tesla Girls’. Meanwhile, XTC singles (such as ‘Love On a Farmboy’s Wages’ and ‘All You Pretty Girls’) whilst as melodic and conceptually unique as ever, were beginning to get left behind, either as a result of fresh-faced competition in the music world, lack of coverage in the music press, or a combination of both. They could continue to saunter along at their own pace, releasing what they wanted- but no longer would the music press, or indeed the musical climate of the era as a whole, allow them to get away with it.
'The Wild Boys'? A promo shot for 1983’s ‘Mummer’
Last Train To Swindon: the back cover of 1984’s ‘The Big Express’
More recently on the other hand, XTC’s representation in the media has had a more positive impact on the band. Later this month, Colin Moulding and Terry Chambers begin a run of four sold out gigs at the arts centre in Swindon (having released an EP, ‘Great Aspirations’, in 2017 under the name TC&I), with two more gigs (also sold out) scheduled for later in November. Whilst much of the interest around the EP release and gigs can be attributed to the fact that XTC have not toured or played live in any form for many years, there is no doubt that media coverage (both in local papers and on the Internet) has boosted awareness and the hype around TC&I. The EP has also yet to receive anything but good reviews in the music press, with Billboard reporting it as ‘one of the more unexpected and pleasant surprises in the music world this year’, and Dancing About Architecture naming it a ‘triumph’.
Earlier this year I also conducted an interview with Colin Moulding for ‘The Sound Of The Crowd’, discussing TC&I, upcoming gigs and his thoughts on the media’s reaction to the project.
- - - - -
This piece was originally written as part of a second year college coursework assignment.
