6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
He Remembers His Time in the Navy, October 13, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: XTC : Song Stories (The Exclusive Authorized Story Behind the Music) (Paperback)
"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 chroniclers.
Here's my suggestion. Buy the book. Kick off your shoes, forget the day's humiliations and the hurtful comments from the boss. Pour yourself a tall glass of whatever will do the trick. Glide your fingers down to the "X" section of your music collection, pull out the old ones you haven't listened to in a while, give 'em a spin, nice and loud, and let Neville Farmer and XTC be your guides. If these boys don't move you, nothing will.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A long-awaited bite for starving fans., October 30, 1998
This review is from: XTC : Song Stories (The Exclusive Authorized Story Behind the Music) (Paperback)
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 gives the overall comfort of a drawing room chat as opposed to a study hall lecture. The final chapter sees Dave Gregory's departure from the band after two decades of putting the musical icing on Andy and Colin's well-confected compositional cakes. His inimitable style will be sorely missed and one gets the feeling XTC are about to enter a third phase. It is strange that Neville Farmer's final chapter of the book coincides with Dave Gregory's final chapter in the band's history, giving it an odd sense of closure not often found in non-fiction. Most importantly, it gives us fans something to do while we wait for the new record to be released. Knuckle down boys, it's going to be a long two months.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Complete, but not, April 24, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: XTC : Song Stories (The Exclusive Authorized Story Behind the Music) (Paperback)
XTC has a large catalogue, and all of it is documented here pretty thoroughly;however, since it's an "authorized" biography, it of course downplays bad business moves, and almost ignores personal political interworkings, in favor of accentuating musical sophistication and "good clean fun." It has song stories, and Andy's subconscious execution of a simple refusal to tour anymore. It also has a controlled feel, which makes you want to read all the parts edited out more than the page in front of you!This is the quality that made me prefer Chalkhills and Children.
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