Andy Partridge

Yeah, it, it'll be pretty good.

Just really quickly, you know, what we do know, Andy Partridge is... got some credits, including co-production and narration text.

Speaking of the narration, apparently it's done by David Tennant.

Yes.

Bye.

the wonderful Andy Partridge there with his song Another Satellite from the album Fuzzy Warbles Volume 8.

And this has been a whole series of individual albums by Andy Partridge that's been released since XTC stopped recording some 20-odd years ago.

So I've played lots of XTC on this album.

So on this show, that track was originally on the XTC album Skylarking from about 1989.

Really? So I think once I got it, I thought, oh, this needs to be heard, so I'll release that then.

But as I say, I'm more of a jobbing musician these days than I am... an artist if you like so but if i get a song i think that's really good that deserves to be heard then i'll put it out so it's not like the old days you know where you know you you you release a single then the album comes no i'm not going there you know this is this is something that comes out Willy nilly, I suppose, you know.

Yes, very nice, casual, free-flowing

vibe.

And I thought it was a really excellent song and look forward to hearing how it comes out, you know.

Well, yeah.

But yeah, whatever, whatever comes up, you know, when you're a jobbing musician and you don't tour, you have to, you know, try and expand your palette as much as you can.

For a day when you just wake up and it's a lovely sunny morning, do you often go and just get the guitar or bass or go into the studio and just work on a few bits? How does your day

In it, he has a refrain, Oh heaven, heaven is a place where nothing, nothing ever happens.

In 1986, Andy Partridge released a song called Dear God.

It's his open letter to God where he writes, as he sings, I won't believe in heaven and hell, no saints, no sinners, no devil as well, no pearly gates, no thorny crown.

Just a few years ago, Aldous Harding released a song called Heaven is Empty.

Enough ranting.

This is XTC, one of my favourite bands featuring the genius of Andy Partridge.

They were a pop band, but this is their most jazzier song from their 1986 album Skylarking.

It's The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul.

Other people that you've got working include some original poems this time, which have been included in the album book, as I understand.

So Andy Partridge, the amazing Andy Partridge, Barney Ashton Bullock, who provided the poems for, as I say, my favourite album, The Yeltsin Hymns, and Dion Johnson.

What was the idea behind putting poems in there as well?

So trauma went through a few stages and there was a version with Barney narrating it, but I had chats with Barney about this and he understood that actually the album was quite personal to me because lots of things happened during the process of recording this album.

But it reminds me of, you probably remember the British band XTC, which was one of my favorites.

And the lead singer, I can't remember if I brought this up before or not, sorry.

But the lead singer, Andy Partridge, is a renowned atheist.

and he's been vocal about that.

I could never be an atheist, but that's his belief.

Everything's all right.

That was XTC with the lovely 10 Feet Tall, which demonstrated the continuing emergence of bass player Colin Moulding as a fine songwriter in his own right, but with a distinctly different and more melodic style compared to the much spikier compositions of guitarist Andy Partridge.

It's quite an outlier in the XTC discography also as a rare acoustic-led song.

Now and again, said Moulding later, one should be able to throw a spanner in the works for a bit of devilment.

I suppose it was my reaction to the quirk-jerk-spiky-crikey start-stop of our previous form.

Typically, XTC's record label Virgin had their own ideas about how the song should be played.

Virgin said they really liked the song and they thought it was going to be a great single, recalled Andy Partridge.

Except they wanted us to record it electric and faster and we also had to change the structure of it.

But you get to work with a producer who, in general, is going to be somebody with years of experience and work in the studio and knowing how to kind of play that instrument.

And we did actually, Andy Partridge, we did work with him At some point along the way, he produced a few tracks of ours and he was a really interesting guy to work with.

Incredibly funny.

I mean, he had a million stories.

Amazing.

Yeah, but obviously when he got into XDC mode, his modus operandi changed, you know.

He went back to being Andy Partridge, the producer, and wanting to do it seven or eight times, you know, just for the pound of flesh, you know.

Happy

It's a little bit like XTC.

If you want to compare him to anyone as a songwriter, it would be Andy Partridge of XTC as that one song.

You are part of the problem.

It's got kind of songs like that.