This morning I saw someone I respect in social media had posted a glowing review of (and a link to) the 90 minute documentary on XTC, This is Pop, alongside a glowing reminisce about what the band had meant to him as a teenager.
XTC intrigue me because they are a group I once had a lot of time for which I now find grotesque. But I am really unsure of why. I think about them quite a bit (I listened to Drums and Wires, for instance, a lot in the early 1980s and it kind of seared into my brain, but whereas I could listen to Pretenders or Soldier Talk or Freedom of Choice and still enjoy them immensely,* I now find Drums and Wires irritating to even listen to in my head!).
So I started watching this This is Pop and I really did feel like, I don't know, someone's dad trying to understand what they saw in this rubbish. And I used to really love it myself. I bought so many XTC records in around 1982-3, probably ending with English Settlement which I never really took to, but I think it took me a while to realise that I had gone off them. That fucking 'Senses Working Overtime' probably or perhaps just the whole schtick of 'english settlement', ugh.
You would not believe how much I have tried to explain to nobody-gives-a-loose-root how they make me feel. I can't put my finger on it, I think is the reason. The englishness rubs me up the wrong way, that's for sure. But whatever else, I just don't know.
I mean honestly, I know they're not white supremecists, and I know the difference between celebrating (a very rarified, quirky version of) your own culture and seeking to diminish other cultures, but fuck it, everything about them just seems so squalidly inward-looking and exclusive. Also, and this is different but seems slightly related, the way Andy Partridge sing-shouts just gets right up my nose. I remember once being on a train between Sydney and Melbourne and some kids with a boom box were playing AC/DC tapes and one of them stuck his head up behind the seat and looked the old person in the next row in the eye and pointed his finger at them and mouthed the lyrics. Yes, Andy Partridge triggers me.
The end, I suppose!
*In fact, the other night I had a huge hankering for Freedom of Choice and played the whole of side one, except 'Girl U Want', but of course, including 'Whip It', which I must have heard about one billion times in my sad life, usually unwillingly.
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