10. ‘Omnibus’ ( ‘Nonsuch’)
Andy says- ‘This sounds like it should come from a musical like Stop My Trousers My Wife Wants To Get Off or Yes We Have No Clippies or No Leyland Routemasters Please…We’re British! I just think we feel connected to where we’ve come from, you know, historically where we’re from, geographically where we’re from, where we’re from in terms of all the media we absorb and too many people deny that, they think they have to talk about ‘up to the second’ things and really they’re denying a huge facet of themselves. I think it’s important to acknowledge all the routes and all the growth that’s put you there at that point in time- that’s put you at that particular ‘now’ and I think to deny all that is to uneccessarily hollow yourself out and to make yourself empty. Oh no, we’re ( XTC and all of us ) crammed fat with all the past that’s put us here and I have no trouble acknowledging that’.

9. ‘Making Plans For Nigel’ ( ‘Drums and Wires’ )
Andy says- ‘I’m going to be generous to our Col here! This was very good for us because it literally opened up England for us. It just seemed to hit the spot. I guess all the Nigel’s went out and bought it. It made people listen to XTC for the first time and that’s all it tales…one listen and you’re hooked ( laughs manically )! When Colin first brought this in he just strummed it on a cheap nylon string guitar- which I think his missus later put across his head for some misdemeanour! In fact I know she did cos I was there when she did it! I was a bit jealous that this was our breakthrough track because I thought of XTC as ‘my’ band and the young upstart comes up with two or three tunes- one of which becomes a big hit and…oohhh…I could have scratched his eyes out! But it was for my benefit too of course because you’re all part of the same gang.’

8. ‘Funk Pop A Roll’ ( ‘Mummer’ )
Andy says- ‘Most of this album was written in my garden on a summer’s day- or what passes for a summer’s day in England- I was feeling a bit messed up from five years of touring and also coming down, unfortunately, from thirteen years of valium addiction- which was not a good thing…to put a young kid on valium! I was sitting in the back garden tying to write an album and all the songs are coming out gentle and summery and personal and then, just before we were about to go in and start recording I came up with this hard slab of ( adopts comedy voice ) hot rockin music! I guess the valium had suppressed a lot of the anger and I started to feel really angry at the music industry. I became angry at the spoonfed, ghettoized nature of the music industry. Music is music and shouldn’t be ghettoized into Ambient, Rockabilly or opera…it’s just music. The pre-chewed old-people’s-food blandness of it all offends me ( adopts comedy voice ) oh, nothing too spiky please we might upset people’s delicate buying sensibilities! I guess I was re-discovering the angry me and this is a good slice of it’.

7. ‘Chalkhills and Children’ ( ‘Oranges and Lemons’ )
Andy says- ‘I like normality and I was craving normality. I came from a very unstable upbringing as a child and then I was pitched into a rock and roll lifestyle and I just craved normality- as a kid I didn’t want my dad to be away at sea and I didn’t want my mum having the problems that she had- I wanted a normal life and to have a family around me. And this song is saying ‘I want kids, I’ve got kids, I live in a house that’s mine, I live in a quiet little town, I lie what I do, I don’t want to be involved in the rock and roll world’. This song was a gentle cry for normality I think. There’s probably more than a pinch of Brian Wilson in there…I think that’s evident but hey, you can only be the sum total of all your influences garbled and mashed-up and brought out in the way that you’ve personally broken them’.

6. ‘Season’s Cycle’ ( ‘Skylarking’ )
Andy says- ‘This was a desperate time for us because we were selling a modicum of albums in England and a modicum of albums in other countries- I think the only country we were ever number one in was New Zealand but, hey, you’ve only got to think of making an album in New Zealand and you’re straight in at number one! This album was very good for us because it did open up America. It was a time for us when nothing we did seemed to be disturbing that huge vat of porridge that is America- you poke it and all you get is a faint ripple! Off the back of the ‘Dear God’ single this album did very well for us in America and helped mop up some of the huge debt we owed Virgin Records. This is one of my favourute songs from the album and it discusses one of my recurring themes- the death of the old and the birth of the new. I can still see the huge frame of Todd Rundgren- six foot five of him in his socks- bent over double laughing at what he called my ‘Mel Torme, lungy take on the vocals and also rhyming ‘umbilical’ with ‘cycle’!’

5. ‘The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul’ ( ‘Skylarking’ )
Andy says- ‘I think I’m more proud of the lyrics to this song than any other XTC tune. This sounds a bit pretentious but I think they touch on something greater than what I thought they were going to be about. After I wrote them I though…where did that come from?? I intended to write a song about someone who was lost and who was looking for himself and what he finds is not necessarily comforting- journeying around his soul and all he finds is a bag of bones and organs and some blood and there’s nothing more to it. Todd Rundgren did the great arrangement virtually overnight and we all had to audition for the best finger-clicks and, of course, Colin won. But it may have been just a ploy by Todd to humiliate me further! But he did a great job producing and arranging this album- he was just a bit tricky to get along with personality-wise…there was a lot of verbal fisticuffs but the album wouldn’t be as interesting if he hadn’t been involved. He was very tall…you’d certainly hand him a basketball before giving him a guitar.’

4. ‘Bungalow’ ( ‘Nonsuch’ )
Andy says- ‘I think the best song Colin ever wrote actually…damn his eyes! His parents always dreamt of retiring and livng at the seaside in a bungalow on a clifftop somewhere and my paretns dreamt about the same thing but they lived in a council house all their lives and were never going to be able to afford a bunglaow so when Colin came up with this song it really resonated with me and I went ‘damn…I wish I’d written that’ and I think that’s the sign of a good song- in my world that’s a way of praising him and saying ‘that’s a goody’’.

3. ‘River of Orchids’ ( ‘Apple Venus’ )
Andy says- ‘The song came about because I knew in my head that I wanted to record a song using an orchestra- naïve really because I had no idea how much an orchestra costs! I love orchestral textures but I couldn’t get an orchestra into my garden shed…I tried dammit but the Guinness Book Of World Records wouldn’t recognize the challenge…and so I bought this thing called a Proteus which used samples of real orchestral players and that’s how I sketched out what I intended to do. I came up with a simple little phrase and the more I let the computer loop this phrase around I got into the hypnotic elelemnt of it and I found that it made me want to dance! I let this cascading roundel pile up and pile up and the more I let it play the more attractive it became. I scrabbled around in my notebook s and found this phrase ‘I heard the dandelions roar in Trafalgar Square’ and so I repeated this line over and over again and this idea came to me how great it would be if we could get rid of all the cars so we could really hear things again. Wouldn’t it be great if the roads became flower beds? We actually used real water drops in the recording which we made round Colin’s house and his missus went ‘don’t you get any of that stuff over my carpet’!’ We eventually did the real orchestral stuff in Abbey Road..so it was recorded in the iconic Studio Two…and in Colin’s house!’

2. ‘Rook’ ( ‘Nonsuch’ )
Andy says- ‘This song frightened the pants off me when I arrived…I’ve no idea where it came from! When it first appeared I put it together on acoustic guitar and I loved the morbid folk feel and I wondered if it would have more weight if I transferred it to the piano and it really came alive then…it seemed to fly up! It seemed to be above the houses looking down. The lyrics are scary because, I think they’re about death- I’m thinking about what happens afterwards? Is there a soul and where does it go? There’s no conscious Edgar Allan Poe-try in it at all…I quite like the idea of catching a rook and saying’ you know what happens…tell me what goes on and when we die what really happens? I’m the anti-Johnny Morris..I’m catching all this wildlife and threatneing it!’

1. ‘Easter Theatre’ ( ‘Apple Venus’ )
Andy says- ‘It’s impossible to pick my favourite XTC song…but here it is! ‘Easter Theatre;’ is about new life..about lovely new buds popping out of trees and hares doing what hares do…harily…you see, I found out that easter was a woman and not a dull weekend with nothing good on the telly- and a personification of new life and I liked the idea of her coming on to the stage in all her new finery. This is much older than Christianity- I tried to express this and, dammit, I think I did! I found these very dark chords and the earthiness and the darkness of those chords almost sounded as if they were trying to push their way up from the darkness into the light. The reason it’s number one is because it’s the pinnacle of intending to do something and hearing it come out as intended…and it’s rare’.

So there you have it. It was recorded in Andy’s house on October 19, 2005. Off the record he also had some nice anecdotes about avoiding an impromptu meeting with Paul McCartney ( and hearing him having a ‘whispered’ argument with George Martin in a canteen at Air Studios ), about the time he almost joined the New York Dolls…and about a Japan live album where he reckons the band ditched everything from the live recordings except the hi-hat and the crowd noise! He also played some of ‘Easter Theatre’ on his Fender Stratocastrol guitar ( made out of a real oil can ). It was quite something being an audience of one in his front room.

..now that would have been some list - though I don't think the car-bashing River of Orchids would have featured.

Thanks for this - I know some of these but I'll be spotifying the rest (three from Nonsuch! - does that make it his favourite album?)

Not strictly a compilation tape so burn this tracklist onto a CD.

Less than 40 minutes - the perfect album? Maybe not, but not far off.

.. you're a star. I love a list, a musical list best of all.

Bah, humbug.

..I bet it would be really good (for one, I'm pretty sure he's not too keen on Dear God, which is one of their best IMHO)

And quite right too. XTC are an acquired taste for many in the Massive, to be sure. Bloody genius. This list makes me want to discover their later recordings and expand my musical knowledge.

My favourite bit of Andy has to be his interview for the cassette-based magazine SFX where he imitates several of the characters from Space Patrol. If i find it I will attempt to digitise it for posterity.

Are you able, willing and/or allowed to share/torrent the interview?

Really interesting my favourite The Wheel And The Maypole is missing but XTC have done so many great songs it's hard to boil down to just 10

Whaaaat?!

Mine, today, would be

01 Respectable Street
02 Mayor Of Simpleton
03 Science Friction
04 We're All Light
05 Grass
06 Burning with Optimism's Flames
07 Love On A Farmboys Wages
08 The Man Who Murdered Love
09 Harvest Festival
10 This Is Pop

but tomorrow would probably be much different

I still think Cross Wires was a work of genius. I still have the 3D cover 12 inch.

marvellous, and glad to see that some of my favourite XTC numbers are featured. I adore River of Orchids and whether you agree with sentiment or not (I do as it happens favour the Big Express over the Motor Car anyday) you can't fault the imagery and the giddy otherness of it "I heard the Dandelions Roar..." etc.

In no particular order:

Wrapped In Grey
Green Man
River of Orchids
The Meeting Place
Sense Working Overtime
Love on a farmboys wages
Chalkhills and Children
The Mayor of Simpleton
1000 Umbrellas
This is pop
Wait til your boat goes down
Dear God

- I tried to get it down to 10 but it couldn't be done

(a great xtc interview in t'nme, the whole piece was in brackets followed by .... ed.
made me chortle aloud anyway)...ed

is my all-time favourite XTC song. Stunning. It's also from my favourite XTC album ("Nonsuch").

Heres todays 10

Say It
The Wheel And The Maypole
Easter Theatre
Didn't Hurt A Bit
Wrapped In Grey
The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul
Humble Daisy
Beating Of Hearts
Melt The Guns
Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her

It was a lot more difficult than I expected when it came down to it. I managed to narrow it down to TEN:

1. Senses working overtime (it was this that got me into XTC)
2. Cynical days
3. In loving memory of a name
4. The wheel and the maypole
5. You're the wish you are I had
6. Standing in for Joe
7. King for a day
8. The meeting place
9. Heaven is made with broken glass
10. Crocodile