New Wave for the New Week #57

XTC via last.fm

"When we started off our driving energy, our driving force, was to have a lot of beer in the dressing room and be very, very rich and famous. Umm, we've had the beer in the dressing room..."
-Andy Partridge of XTC

There is no real need to go into extensive discography or biography here; most of you who would be reading this are already humming your favorite XTC songs in your head.

For those uninitiated, here is a quick "pocket guide" to XTC: Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding met up in Swindon in the UK in the early 1970's, and began playing New York Dolls-inspired glam rock as The Helium Kidz. By 1976, drummer Terry Chambers and keyboardist Barry Andrews had joined them, they changed the band's name to XTC, and found their own sound within the Punk/New Wave scene.

Playing keyboard-driven, syncopated, chirpy-punky-pop with elements of funk, reggae, and baroque music tossed in, they were hyperactive, skittish, and easily identifiable among the onrush of bands forming in the wake of The Sex Pistols and The Ramones. This lineup lasted through two albums, White Music and Go 2, before Andrews left the band to create what would eventually become the band Shriekback.

Andrews and his keyboards were replaced by Dave Gregory and his ringing guitar, and the band's sound made a noticeable shift toward more Beatlesque rock. In this variation, XTC hit their stride with singles like "Respectable Street," "Living Through Another Cuba," "No Thugs in Our House," and "Sgt. Rock (Is Going To Help Me)." By 1982 they were regularly hitting the UK Top 40 and were developing a huge cult following in the US, where they were the darlings of college radio playlists across the country. They were set to launch on a huge multi-country tour when Partridge had a complete mental breakdown, which manifested itself from that point forward in crippling stage fright. XTC never played in front of a live crowd again.

However, much like the Beatles (to whom they were beginning to be compared at least stylistically), the cessation of touring did not slow their musical output. Chambers left the group around this time, not wanting to be simply a studio musician, and Partridge, Moulding and Gregory forged ahead. The studio version of XTC saw them begin to expand their musical horizons, often finding themselves on more acoustic-ballad turf then they might have expected. This version of the band sold more records in the US than ever before (although they never scored a big breakthrough hit here), especially 1986's Skylarking and its associated single, the controversial "Dear God."

Their recorded output had been with Virgin Records from the very beginning; by 1992 the band and the label were embroiled in bitter dispute over unpaid royalties. Partridge and Moulding asked the label to release them outright, won a settlement over royalties due, and began to record independently as a duo. Shortly thereafter, Moulding decided he was done with the music industry. Partridge didn't want to continue XTC without Moulding, and the band ceased to exist.

The continued popularity of the band was demonstrated in the fact that they won their spot as this week's NW4NW entry in a poll conducted over on That's What I Was Going To Say's Facebook fanpage (if you're not a fan yet, get yourself there lickety-split and fan up!), where XTC took 57% of the vote in a field of five bands! I've chosen two clips: the first, from their Barry Andrews keyboard era, "Radios In Motion," and the second from their Dave Gregory guitar era, the wonderful "Senses Working Overtime." Enjoy!

The Runaways Biopic - Could Be Good, Could Be a Complete (Cherry) Bomb

The trailer is now online:



In theaters March 19. I suppose I'll watch it; I'll try to keep an open mind, but these things so rarely turn out well...

Meanwhile, time to dig that legendary first Runaways album out of the archives for a few spins on the turntable. It's a great, great record - hopefully the movie will at least give it a renewed life and exposure to a new generation of kids. Here's the original clip for their first single, the still-stunning-after-all-these-years "Cherry Bomb":

Blogging Advice for a Friend

My friend Janine has a blog, which she's not sure she wants anyone to read. Last night, she sent me an email asking for advice and seeking support.

Now, I'm no professional blogging coach. I am not to be counted among the innumerable Blogging Gurus, Social Media Mavens, Big Kahunas o' Online Interaction (yes, I actually saw one person refer to himself that way), or other supposed "experts" who have been popping up everywhere like crabgrass over the past few years, promising that by following their sage advice you, too, can become the author of the most widely read and highly monetized blog in the history of Ever!

Two points about these folks:

1. If someone has to tell you repeatedly that they are an "expert" in any field, they aren't, and...

2. Remember P.T. Barnum's famous and wise words: "There's a sucker born every minute."

With every coming technology and every coming fad, the hucksters are there ready to take your money to sell you their "Big Secret to Success" in whatever field it is, and all the secret ever turns out to be is either something anyone with an ounce of common sense and who has ever taken a basic composition course in high school already knows, or tickets to a seminar where they try to get more money out of you by selling you books filled with even more not-so-secret "secrets."

Now, before my inbox becomes inundated with the hue and cry of the converted, let me say that there ARE good folks out there with good ideas and valuable coaching to offer. The folks at Mashable, for example, are filled with good advice and ideas for anyone who wants their voice heard above the Internet throng. Chris Brogan offers great tips, as does Inkling Media. All of these work under the wider umbrella of Social Media Marketing, but their suggestions apply to promoting your own blog as well as promoting your own brand or business. As far as blog-specific advice, ProBlogger is a must-read.

Back to Janine. She's not looking to become the best blogger in the universe, or to become independently wealthy through her blog alone (not yet, anyway!). At this point, she's simply looking for a comfort zone:

"I'm working on my blog as we speak. I'm so confused by it. It's feminism, handy-person advice, product tips for a condo-owner, editorializing...so I don't show it to anyone.
Any advice? I'd love to promote it, but only if I can find my own focus.

I'm so hard on myself..."

Boy do I know that feeling! When I started out with this blog two Decembers ago, I was in the same place. I wanted to write; I wanted to be heard. But the worry over whether anyone would want to listen to what I have to say was, at times, paralyzing.

The great thing about the blogging community is that we all seem to be so willing to help each other out and give each other encouragement along the way, because we've all been there. I had friends who had been blogging far longer than I to offer me advice and coaching then. I am certainly willing to offer whatever words of encouragement I can now to the Janines of the blogging world.

Here, in part, is the response I sent her. It is advice I would offer, based on my personal experiences, to anyone out there who is starting out in this crazy blogosphere:

"The best advice I can give you is the same advice I got from a fellow blogger back when I started out: JUST WRITE. Don't worry about "finding a focus" or whether it's "good enough" or whatever - just throw it out there, warts and all. You'll find your voice. Actually, you've already found it, you just don't realize it yet.

My blog is all over the place. I write mostly about music, but also sometimes about baseball, sometimes about shit that happened to me that I want to rant about, sometimes about politics, sometimes about things happening here in Lancaster, sometimes about free coffee. I used to worry that being unfocused like that was a bad thing. For my 100th post, I put up a poll asking for feedback, and one of the questions I asked had to do with whether people would rather see the various topics I write about split into individual, "focused" blogs or whether they liked the mish-mash I was posting. You know what? Overwhelmingly, they said they liked the mixture.

I have a white board on the wall of my home office, and on the top of it I have one quote that has been there so long I don't think it can be erased anymore: "Write to one person." It was the best lesson I've learned: in your mind, create the person who is a representation of the audience you want to reach. Is this person male or female? Are they older, younger, or your age? Single, in a relationship, or have a family? Every detail - make this imaginary person as real and complete in your mind as you can. Then, write every post as if you are writing to that one person.

Stop worrying about pleasing an audience or pleasing yourself. Just write. Your audience will find you. Trust me, they do show up! I get frustrated because I don't always get the feedback I would like - I wish my readers would comment on every post and get into conversations and such, but they don't. My readers give me feedback in other ways - sometimes on Twitter, sometimes on Facebook, sometimes in an email.

I know what it's like to be a perfectionist - I am one, and I am my own harshest critic. I don't know what you think of my writing, for example, but I generally am not happy with most of it. But I've learned to just put it out there, and you've seen that I promote it like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Develop an ego! Role play as if your blog is already successful and widely-read. Promote it as if people would be crazy not to read it and love it. Be unapologetic about it, be cocky about it, be proud of it.

Most importantly, just be real in what you write. Don't try to force it or it will come off sounding phony, and that will turn people off. Write the way you talk; again, write as if you were writing to that one person. Your voice will change from day to day, and that's fine too - that's real. Go back and read several of my posts, and you'll see sometimes I write more formally and sometimes more conversationally, depending on the topic and on how I am feeling the day I happen to write it.

My last piece of advice goes against everything you've ever been taught about writing: don't keep editing and editing. Don't do a bunch of rewrites. Write your piece, spell check it, do at most ONE rewrite if you feel it necessary, then POST IT. For perfectionists like us, it's the scariest thing to do, but the most necessary. But it forces you to put it out there, and you're writing is by default more raw and more real - more you."

And now, I turn to those of you out there who are bloggers yourselves. What advice would you add? What would you suggest differently from what I have, and why? There's always more than one way to skin a cat, as they say. How did you go about getting over that initial trepidation that we all feel/felt to some extent when it comes to baring our words to the universe?

FREE COFFEE!

Coffee is good. And "free" is good. So click on the linky picture-y thing below and get yerself some free coffee from Dunkin' Donuts!



You're welcome!

New Wave for the New Week #56

February 22 saw the release of "Retro Rockets," the brand new single from The Stranglers, taken from their forthcoming Decades Apart album, which will be their 17th (!) album since their 1977 debut, Rattus Norvegicus. But The Stranglers have actually been going for longer than that...

The band started off in the early 1970s as The Guilford Stranglers, and made their initial mark on the British Pub Rock scene. As early as 1974, the band was shocking audiences with their ragged-edged gutter-level songs focusing on the uglier side of life. Hugh Cornwell's gutteral growl was murky and animalistic, and their misogynistic lyrics and sometimes violent themes set them apart from their contemporaries. When The Ramones made their first highly influential first tour of England in 1976, it was The Stranglers (with their newly cropped name) who opened for them. Resultantly, The Stranglers found themselves shunned by the fading Pub Rock scene and lumped in with the swiftly growing Punk Rock crowd. While that tag may have helped them find their true audience, it was at best an ill-fitting label. Many of the UK kids following The Sex Pistols and The Damned and The Clash around saw The Stranglers as a bunch of old geezers trying to jump on the punk rock bandwagon. They played keyboards like The Doors for heaven sake!

Over 17 albums, The Stranglers' music has evolved from the early gritty, ugly, vulgar world of "Peasant in the Big Shitty," "Bring On the Nubiles," and "Down in the Sewer" to a more refined, in fact beautiful, pop sound (see "Skin Deep," "Always the Sun," etc.) The pop sensibilities were always there, though, audible from the first single, "(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)," whose burbling keyboards and sing-along chorus helped The Stranglers begin a long string of British chart hits.

As their sound evolved, so did their popularity. 1984's Aural Sculpture helped them become a commercial success throughout the rest of Europe, and charted well in Australia; in the US it saw considerable airplay on college stations but could not cross over to mainstream appeal. By 1990, they were clearly aiming for the US charts by covering The Kinks' "All Day and All of the Night," but they remained a cult band here. At that point, founding member and co-lead-singer Cornwell left the band.

The other singer and co-founder of the band, Jean-Jacques Burnel, soldiered on under The Stranglers moniker through some lean years, until the band returned to the British Top 40 in 2004 with "Big Thing Coming." In the ensuing years, the band has enjoyed something of a resurgence. The early records have been discovered by a new generation of fans, and though most of the band is pushing 60, they are still churning out some great music. The new album is highly anticipated; "Retro Rockets" sounds as good as any of the finest Stranglers tunes.

For this week's NW4NW, we look back to one of my favorite Stranglers singles, 1977's "Straighten Out." In many ways, it is the epitome of The Stranglers' sound: harsh yet melodic, ugly yet catchy, with clear ties to punk, pop, new wave...and even those Doors-like keyboards.



Over the course of this week, additional Stranglers clips will be posted on That's What I Was Going Say's Facebook page...become a fan today so you don't miss out!

A "WTF?" Explained

Those of you who are among my Facebook friends and/or Twitter followers know that earlier in the week I posted this wonderfully odd clip, challenging anyone to watch it without finding that same goofy grin as the singer has plastered upon his face plastered upon their own:



Those who found the words with which to comment after seeing this responded with the same mixture of horror, joy, and just general WTF?-ness that I did when I stumbled upon the clip in the first place. I declared that it would henceforth be my personal theme song, played whenever I enter I room, which I would do with glazed grin and mannequin-like wave as our singer does here, if not always clad in a similarly outdated brown suit as his; this declaration prompted at least one friend to state that I would be shot should I walk pass his porch one day singing the song! (No worries - no vocalizations I can muster come anywhere near the realm of what sane people would deem "singing.")

Weirdness experienced and chuckles had by all, we all moved on with our lives, likely never to encounter our fashion-stunted but joy-filled Russian singer again. And then...

Today I came across this in-all-ways-wonderful post written by Justin E. H. Smith, which not only seeks to explain what in blue blazes the clip was all about, but provides remarkable historical and cultural context for it. A brief tidbit:

"The man singing is Edward Hill, also known as Eduard Khil', or, better yet, Эдуард Хиль...The song he is interpreting, "I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home," is an Ostrovskii composition, and it is meant to be sung in the vokaliz style, that is to say sung, but without words...Recent interest in Hill has to do with the perceived strangeness, the uncanniness, the surreal character of this performance. There is indeed something uncanny about a lip-synch to a song with no words, and his waxed face and hair helmet certainly do not carry over well. But once one does a bit of research, one learns that the number was not conceived out of some desire to cater to the so-bad-it's-good tastes of the Western YouTube generation, but in fact was meant to please --to genuinely please-- Soviet audiences who were capable of placing this routine, this man, and this song into a familiar context."

Smith goes on to provide, as counterpoint, a rendition of the same song performed in a 1960 film, and then begins a fascinating dissection/celebration of Hill's performance. It is an informative and entertaining piece, well-written and appreciated by those of us who, while enjoying the clip at face value, still wondered...well...WTF?!?

However explanatory Smith's piece may be, a reading of the comments left for Smith by his readers again brings about the cloak of oddness: an ongoing, scholarly discussion of Hill's performance as symbolic of the wide cultural gaps between peoples of the world?!? When one commenter declared this clip to be a reflection of "the ethos of the Brezhnevian era: hell hidden behind pastel tones," I began wondering whether this wasn't all some big put-on. Heck, why not summon the ghost of William F. Buckley to debate with Gore Vidal the value of Edward Hill's performance as allegory to the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and the perceived elitism of America by the rest of the world while we're at it?

Still, a fascinating read, and the very fact that such a blog post as Smith's and such responses as those of Smith's readers would be inspired by so downright goofy a clip as this amuses me to no end. That I find myself inspired to write this blog post about that blog post is somewhat frightening; if any of you reading this feel compelled to write a post about this post about that post about that video, I recommend seeking professional help.

Or, just scrap the whole thing, put on a bad brown suit and a silly grin and sing along with Edward Hill. "Tra-la-la-la-laaaaaaa......"

Making Use of This Newfangled Internet Thing

Are you an avid follower of this here li'l ol' blog?

Do you enjoy reading my musings, opinions, and occasional rants?

Are you on Facebook and/or Twitter?

That's What I Was Going To Say now has an official Facebook fan page, and an official Twitter account! Fan TWIWGTS on Facebook and follow @TWIWGTS on Twitter, and always be in the know when new posts go up. Also, there are plans in the works for some Facebook-specific and Twitter-specific content, contests, fun and games. Why, it'll be like being in a special club!

Who wants to help build the clubhouse?

Back in My Day, We Liked Our Punk Rockers Vile and Our News Reporters Condescending!

Saw this online this morning and had to share. I remember seeing the news reports as an 11-year-old kid about the "invasion" of those nasty, evil punk rockers from Great Britain. Why, Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious were taking us to hell in a handbasket, they were!

Travel back to January of 1978, when NBC's news reporting was, well, about as balanced and accurate as it is today...

New Wave for the New Week #55

UK Subs via last.fm

As band names go, "The United Kingdom Subversives" was kind of unwieldy. When Charlie Harper and Nicky Garratt shortened that name up a bit to become The U.K. Subs, however, they hit upon a winner. Of course, how good a band name seems is always greatly influenced by how good the music they play actually is, and how well the name and the music match. One might expect the overly-formal sounding United Kingdom Subversives to be playing something like yawn-inducing keyboard-heavy prog-rock in the Emerson, Lake and Palmer vein, but a band called The U.K. Subs just sound like a bunch of guys you'd hear down the pub blasting out three-chord chant-along punk rock for the masses. And damned if that isn't what they turned out to be?

Harper, Garratt, and a revolving line-up of additional band members have been there since the beginning, and unlike so many other first-wave punk bands who disbanded and then reformed in recent years to ride the nostalgia wave, the Subs never stopped.

Formed in 1976 and releasing their debut album, Another Kind of Blues, in 1979, The U.K. Subs sound has changed little in the past three decades. Harper's pre-Subs experience in the British pub-rock scene with a band called The Marauders seasoned the Subs' chant-along punk with just a little bit of straight rock-n-roll/R&B, making them a very British-sounding band indeed - think The Exploited slowed down by half a step or so, or The Sex Pistols had they never replaced Glen Matlock with Sid Vicious. The British fans rewarded them with a number of UK Top Forty hits: "Stranglehold," "Tomorrow's Girls," "Party in Paris," "Keep On Running," and several others were huge hits in their native land, and even though they never achieved similar chart success outside of the UK, they developed a strong worldwide following who continued to fervently support the band long after musical tastes had changed and the UK charts were no longer a regular stop.

After an initial salvo of three albums essential to any punk rock record collection worth its salt (the aforementioned Another Kind of Blues, 1980's Brand New Age, and the live Crash Course), the Subs settled into a regular schedule of releases that have continued up through 2008's World War - and have followed the pattern of each album's title beginning with the next successive letter of the alphabet, making it easy to keep their chronology straight! You can really jump into the Subs discography at any point and find enjoyment, but those first three records - especially the debut, in my opinion - are musts.

This week's NW4NW entry features two of The U.K. Subs' biggest British hits. First up, the wonderful "Stranglehold," a #26 hit in the summer of 1979 that was so beloved, the Subs performed it on Top Of The Pops twice in June of that year. After that, the seldom-seen promo clip for "Party in Paris," which went to #37 in 1980. Enjoy!

New Wave for the New Week #54

The Slits via last.fm

The Slits came together in London in 1976. Singer Ari Up and drummer Palmolive added Viv Albertine (guitar) and Tessa Pollitt (bass) to form the first all-female band on the British Punk scene. That none of these women could play their instruments was hardly a bother to them. That Ari Up's vocals randomly wobbled off-key and off-rhythm caused them no concern. They slashed and bashed and screeched and made music and got noticed - noticed enough to snag the opening band slot on The Clash's White Riot tour in 1977.

By the time they got around to actually recording their first album, Cut, in 1979, they had come a long way. Palmolive had left the band, and the remaining Slits had become involved with producer Dennis Bovell, who pulled their sound out of the slash-n-bang and into spacey reggae-dub, a sound which underscored the other-worldliness of Ari's trippy amateur-hour vocals. Cut is an unusual record, but an excellent one. From their exuberant (if unsteady) cover of "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" to celebrations of "Shoplifting" and "Love Und Romance," there are no clinkers here. The centerpiece, though, is the loping, spiraling "Typical Girls." Here their lyrics still spit the anti-society Punk Rock mantra ("Just another marketing ploy/A typical girl gets a typical boy"), but the laid back reggae beat and half-finished feel of the song make the message far more palatable, and therefore more insidious, than had they snarled it like their safety-pinned contemporaries.

Two years later they released The Return of the Giant Slits, which saw the band exploring African and Asian music while continuing to make use of dub-reggae sensibilities. An OK record for what it is, but nothing near the grandeur of Cut. With that, The Slits went their separate ways until reuniting in 2005. Once again they took their time about recording; their third lp, Trapped Animal, appeared four years later, in 2009.

This week's NW4NW entry is the amazingly wonderful "Typical Girls" from Cut. Enjoy!