I'm not a music critic, and I have a shitty memory, but there were some really interesting bands coming out of the late 70's and 80's. One of them was a little group called XTC. You likely know them for this...
It's just the audio version, so feel free to keep reading. When I was sort of growing up in Pasadena (long story) I spent many years listening to the then influential KROQ 106.7 FM. Back then KROQ was probably the single most powerful New Wave/Alternative station, driving much of what was getting heard back in the 80's. I was certainly tired of the pop and junk and had gotten into Progressive Rock with albums like Yes' Fragile, Jethro Tull's Aqualung, and Rush in general.
From the New Wave perspective, there were certainly a lot of very interesting acts, but most were trying to exploit the new, cheaper synths of the time, and while I liked some electronic, it wasn't something I liked to deep dive into. Instead I was into the Pet Shop Boys, The Cure, Echo and The Bunnymen, REM, The Smiths, early U2, Tears for Fears, Midnight Oil, Talking Heads, X, The B-52's, Madness, Oingo Boingo, The English Beat, The Specials (yeah, I was into Ska) and others.
One band that I liked but never seemed to get into, however, was XTC. How disappointing.
In the last few years, I've been revisiting my foundations in 70's and 80's music and have started to re-collect some of the better stuff I was listening to back then. It's easy to get new copies of most of the stuff I used to listen to, though. It's not so easy to start digging into bands without knowing their albums, so I started poking around YouTube to refresh my memory. I've discovered an amazingly rich, eclectic, and forward-thinking band that could be easily placed in the same category as Talking Heads and other influential groups that started in the late 70's. Take this track from 1979 as an example...
1979? Really?! This is some tight alternative that sounds more at home in the late 80's, not early on in the 2nd British Invasion. Radio was really everything back then. I felt I was an adventurous musical soul. I was into progressive, new wave/alt, hard rock, heavy metal, jazz, jazz rock, funk, some punk (I loved X), some pop, and even some movie soundtracks. I bought albums, tapes and later CDs. Radio and friends, however, were the only real sources of what was coming out. Back then, kids didn't think about Rolling Stone magazine and the Internet wasn't even a dream.
So, now I'm a couple of years away from turning 50, and I find out about XTC.
Lucky me. Really :) Check out one more...
1980. Yeah. Amazing.