Dave Gregory

You're listening to a podcast from The Word.

Good morning, Dave.

I have, as is always traditional, how many years have we been doing this? It's amazing.

How many years is it? It's worth just, before we go any further, reminding people who may not be aware that this is actually the 20th year that we've been doing this in one form or another.

There should be a band called Buckshot La Funk.

But

anyway, here are eight alter egos, Dave, invented by rock stars to record and perform.

Seven of them are real, and one of them is cooked up by me.

I feel like XTC, thankfully, as the years go on, more and more people come to the realization that they are one of the greatest bands of all time, which, which they absolutely are.

Now, when you think of XTC, uh, I- personally, they would not be what they were without the contributions of everybody involved: Andy Partridge, Dave Gregory, Terry Chambers, and Colin Moulding.

Having said that, most of what ended up on the albums was a lot of Andy's songs, but there would be peppered in some Colin songs, and it was often the case that songs like, uh, Making Plans for Nigel, Generals and Major, King for a Day, those were the songs, those were Colin's, and those were the songs that would sometimes almost make more sense on the radio.

He had more of, like, a streamlined pop classicist perspective on music, I feel like.

I'm, I'm curious why you never play live.

I mean, uh, I, you know, much has been ballyhooed about, uh, XTC, you know, Andy, stage fright, not being able to play live, not wanting to play live maybe even.

When Dave was on here, we were talking about this, because he ...

I was, I was saying, you know, you've never had that proper rock and roll life, you know, where you put out an album-

What do you call that noise? As far as I know, it has been more than quarter of a century since Colin Moulding and Dave Gregory appeared on the same record.

But all that has changed with the release of Come Home to Me, the latest of many albums by today's guest, Anton Barbeau, who has brought both Colin and Dave together, virtually at least.

Hello again, my name is Mark Fisher and in today's packed edition of What You Call That Noise, the XTC podcast, I'll be joined by Ashley LeCron as we talk to Anton Barbeau about Come Home To Me and about what it's like to hear Colin's bass and Dave's guitar and Mellotron fleshing out his songs.

Good that you can join us.

And the reason for joining us is Come Home to Me, which is Anton's latest album, which is released on the 9th of October, 2026.

And it features Colin Moulding and Dave Gregory on certain tracks.

In fact...

Two tracks with both contributing together, presumably not in the same room, but they do contribute in the same manner, which I don't think has happened.

Um, this one has, basically this was a solo album he did, I think it's 1997.

Um, and he got all these different people toge- Dave Gregory from XTC-

Oh, okay

... is on it.

Oh, no. They've all fallen asleep.

Anyway, musicians you might have heard of on that, uh, studio album, Dave Gregory, Richard Barbieri, and Clint Berk of all people on drums.

He's a blondie fella, isn't he? So yes.

Oh, we've got a jingle.