Xtc: Song Story: The Exclusive Authorized Story Behind the Music

There's nothing lurid or scandalous about the band XTC, or its members Andy Partridge, Colin Moulding and Dave Gregory, who unspool a 25-year and counting history together in this long-overdue "musical biography". Author Neville Farmer places interviews with his subjects into a chronological order from the band's formation at the dawn of punk, then letting them "take over" as co-authors, telling jokes, anecdotes and personal musings on the writing and recording of each and every song in their catalog. As it progresses and more is revealed of the band through its music, it's a good idea to have some of the records handy as a tour guide of sorts. And though it's not loaded with your typical "Behind The Music" style exposes of a "band who had it all and lost it all", it does have its share of backstage drama as the band is cheated by record companies and double-dealing managers, the lead singer suffers a bout with nervous exhaustion that changes the course of the band's history forever and an unprecedented artist vs. commerce showdown results in a strike where XTC refused to record ANY music for a solid decade! It's also a bittersweet farewell to longtime guitarist Dave Gregory, who split with the band after surviving all this and more over artistic differences. So, if you're already a fan of this incredibly underrated band, or you've never heard of them, but are interested in a great "David and Goliath" story (similiar to the Wilco film, "I am trying to break your heart") I could not recommend this more wholeheartedly.

One has no choice but to roll out the five-star carpet to Mr. Farmer's book if but for only one reason: If you have taken the time to read this book you are an insufferable XTC fan, and the information contained therein has a value that is immeasurable. Conversely, anyone who doesn't give a toss about the Wiltshire four..erm..three...uh..two probably won't make it past page three. Each of XTC's albums gets a chapter of its own which takes the tidy form of Mr. Farmer's prose, followed by an often times side-splittingly funny, yet revealing interview, and then a song-by-song disection of the tracks. It's a good formula and rather than taking the form of, " this song is about a man who blah, blah, blah," delves into the emotion and inspiration behind the work. Answering many fan's questions without destroying their individual interpretations - the hallmark of good music journalism. All of this is the meat sandwiched between the bread of the well thought-out and allegorical introduction and epilogue. All of the elements are there. Andy's dry, eccentric wit. Colin's dry, eccentric wit and of course Dave, who when not exercising his dry, eccentric wit, proves himself to be one of the easiest men to work with in pop music. As we suspected all along, they are quintessentially and hopelessly English. The book exposes the"kid in the candy store" exhuberance these fellows have towards time spent creating music, their absolute love of melody, instruments, and a good hook. Pair this with their complete honesty and one can see why the music business has continuously let them down. They are simply too idealistic for the evil machine. Please refer to Jimmy Stewart's character in the movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" for more on this subject. But fans wouldn't have it any other way. Many of us have watched over the years as legions of our music heros have become less part of the solution and more part of the problem. XTC has insisted on doing things as close to their own terms as the industry would let them. They have suffered from the ramifications of their bull-headedness and the heartbreak and disappointment that has ensued has inspired even more great music. It's a beautifully cyclical process which I'm sure Andy can appreciate. What can a Mick Jagger tell us about real emotion and longing? The guy has been a multi-millionaire since the early Seventies. Neville Farmer shows there is an approachable middle-class dignity in the work of XTC. The nuances and sometimes flaws imbedded in the work of the blacksmith being preferable to the uniform, sterile product of the factory. Personally, I feel Chris Twomey's "Chalkhills and Children" is a better written book. It's a beautiful history of a legendary and misunderstood band. What makes Neville Farmer's book more precious is that rather than being written about XTC, it is written with XTC. It's made possible only by the fact that he is a personal friend of the band and it

"Clever and crude, funny and fatuous, serious and silly, deep and daft," XTC have over the course of twenty-odd years offered the world a feast of ever-unfolding wonder. Their exquisitely conceived and passionately expressed music never fails to reveal something new with every listen, and their brave declarations of allegiance to their Sixties influences in the history-is-bunk Punk era was a bellwether for the psychedelic revivals of the Eighties and Nineties. Longtime XTC friend and confidant Neville Farmer has given us a valuable and insightful book-length fireside chat about pop craft with master pop craftsmen, a Beatown Baedecker."Song Stories" is simultaneously a band biography, an exhaustive interview, and a song-by-song discussion of the band's recorded output from "White Music" through "Nonsuch," with side trips to the alter-ego Dukes of Stratosphear, one-off solo projects, dub experiments, b-sides, and an excruciatingly tantalizing glimpse of the as-yet-unnamed album in progress, the first in seven years. One particular delight of the book (one, that is, out of many) is its reproduction of notes for discarded lyrics, and sketches and storyboards for sleeve art and videos; these last reveal Andy Partridge, already an incomparable songsmith and performer, to be a graphic illustrator and designer of extraordinary talent to boot. One might wish that these had been reproduced larger, but larger illustrations would necessarily mean less of the lucid and controlled Farmer prose (far, far removed from the usual by-the-numbers rock-journo hackwork) and the group interviews.These interviews play up what admirers of the band already know: Whatever else may be said of him--that he can be petulant, that he is pigheaded during the creative process, that he steamrollers the band's democratic structure--Andy Partridge is also insanely, originally, compulsively, and bladder-control-endangeringly *funny*:Colin: Still, I suppose we'll remember the camaraderie, like our dads in the navy.Neville: Was your dad in the navy?Colin: No.Andy: But he remembers his time in the navy with some confusion.Farmer's best and most impassioned writing is in his Introduction and Epilogue, where he respectively declares and validates his theme of the inseparability of XTC and the town that nurtured them, Swindon, Wilts. He evokes the town and the land using imagery that XTC themselves call upon obsessively throughout their career: The Uffington Chalk Horse, the Great Western Railway, the barely suppressed racial memory of the ancient Celtic religion, the cruel class warfare of the Industrial Revolution that destroyed forever the immemorial rural character of "...Swindon, a town which epitomizes British history and Britons' contempt for it...a pretty, historical little hill town massacred for the sake of commerce." Without Swindon, there would be no XTC, and without XTC, Dear Dirty Swindon would be without its most sympathetic chronicl

Long-suffering and impatient XTC devotees who've been waiting for the follow-up album to 1992's "Nonsuch" can while away the remaining months with this well-written book by Neville Farmer. Just about every song is covered, in one way or another, and discussed with insight. A couple of curiousities, though: . The interview sections seem almost composite at time, as though the three members' comments were recorded and then played back to them individually so that each fellow could comment on the other fellow's comment. It is a bit misleading at times, and one wishes that all three gents were interviewed either separately or at once to smooth out some of the odd shifts. This is not a big problem, but more of a dome-scratcher. Second, there are some noticeable repetitions in some of the chapters. The summaries, which begin each chapter, often contain information and quotations that appear only a few paragraphs into each chapter proper. Again, this is not so much a bad thing as it is an overlooked editing gaffe.Chris Twomey's "Chalkhills and Children" has all the biographical info, at least up to "Nonsuch," and Farmer's book wisely avoids rehashing too many of the salad days of the group, instead concentrating almost exclusively on the albums, songs, and productions. Now all we fans need is a book that documents the band's recording sessions a la Mark Lewisohn's exhaustive but brilliant account of the Beatles recording career in "The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions."