Your thoughts?

This is QUiRky New Wave XTC.

The lack of songwriting abilities (especially Colin's) is compensated for with tons of energy.

Favorite track: Statue of Liberty

I love the energy of this album, and yes, even Colin's songs! And I would imagine that Vampire Weekend has spun this album more than a few times.

...i think critically the first two XTC albums get dismissed as a dress rehearsal for the highly regarded stuff to come on subsequent albums, but i bleeding love 'White Music'- the cover's a classic, the back cover with Andy's brilliantly rubbish jumper (i want one!) but importantly, some firm foundations of tight, honed virtuosity, odd song construction & hooks aplenty! It continues to get a regular outing in my abode cos it makes me smile (the call & response of piano & fiddly guitar in the middle of 'Do What You Do' still gives me little goose bumps- love it!) & the genius of 'Crosswires' - Colin doing Andy & doing him proud! I personally don't notice any lack of song writing ability, there's a lot of clever stuff going on & just cos they got loads better doesn't necessarily assert that their first steps were fumbling...

Even right at the start, XTC stood out like a sore thumb as something special...

Love the the quirky punky attatude great album mind you the outtakes and live stuff from coat disc 1 complement this well

This album was the building blocks, but a stand out album on it's own. I love it.That uncontrolled rush of fun and hope and sheer exhileration holds everything up and should never be dismissed.

For me, White Music was XTC's second album..It wasn't released in the US until after Drums And Wires and it sounds nothing like D&W..It was like finding a whole other cool band to listen to..
I love it from the first note to the last..

I'm just listening to it for the first time. I'm new to XTC anyway but hearing Simpleton and Senses et. al didn't prepare me for this album. It might grow on me but it seems pretty tuneless and well...i just don't like it on first hearing. Chances are it'll end up as my fav. XTC album.

I started with Mummer, way back in 1983. Then came The Big Express. About this time I decided to go back through their catalog. English Settlement was next. So far, sophisticated stuff. Then I took a leap way back and picked up White Music. It didn't go over well. Go 2 was next. Both of them had some songs I really liked, like: Are You Receiving Me? This Is Pop? Battery Brides and a few others. But XTC had grown up and so did I. Maybe that sounds snobbish. But then came Drums And Wires and I loved it.

I may be the only person in the world who likes Barry's piano playing (on Monstrance and Shriekback) much better than his organ playing - with both XTC and Fripp's League of Gentlemen.
Oh? He didn't play piano on those?
Ah, that explains a lot.

Simp had those first two albums (as British imports - not easily acquired in Montana.)
I just thought the organ sounded too novelty and circus-y and distracted from the musicality of the songs.

It was Simp bringing over "Drums & Wires" in '79 that made me an XTC fan.
Barry was an interesting character, but Dave was the perfect foil.

I actually think the best way with XTC is to start with White Music and continue chronologically, as I think they were a band that just got better and better as time went on. Rare that. I really liked White Music when I first heard it too.

Couldn't even begin to descrbe the pleasure this record has given me over the last 30 odd years.....It's the first record i fell in love with that didn't belong to my elder brothers collection...the first true vinyl love of my own.

The black and white sleeve,the iconic XTc lettering,the band pictures....even before i pulled it from the black inner sleeve i knew this was a special bit of plastic back then early in 1978.

To blast of with XTc at the time they were launched was just the grooviest of all musical journeys,I don't ever think of Barryxtc as inferior musicaly at all....that beat combo was perfect for the stuff Andy and Colin were writing....tight and overflowing with energy.......a beautiful spluttering beast of noise.....perfect for 77/78

I'm Bugged,Radios in motion,Cross-wires,I'll set myself on fire,Newtown animal in a furnished cage(IMHO the best XTc song title ever) Spinning top, Neon Shuffle,Into the atom age and the lovely frosty version of This is pop? every one of them makes me feel like i'm plugged into the electric socket.....there's something about the energy of early XTc that i don't think they ever got with Dave(Funk pop a roll comes close)......The first two records as energetic as they are pale into insignifigance in comparison to a an early live show.....Andy enjoys to distance himself from this eureaka moment of an album for me.....thats cool.....but for me, of all the XTc albums this is the one that i'll always love!

If you ever stop next to someone at a traffic light and they're manicaly doing a bit air-harmonica with the happiest eyes you'll ever see.....that's me grooving to 'All along the watchtower' one of the great XTc driving songs

Never look back at old photos and think you looked like a twat. You are probably more of a twat now. That's you ,that's me, that's everyone. That's the endless energy of White Music. Like falling in love for the first time, special. But better live, feck, there's always a catch.

This is definitely true of me.

me too

I never said (or meant to infer) that I thought Barry was "inferior musically" to Dave at all.
It's more of an individual taste and direction thing.
Barry played in a band with Robert Fripp, a musician of the absolute highest caliber there is in rock music.
Even Dave may admit he would've been hard pressed to do that.

All I'm saying is the Barry version of the band didn't shake my musical world like the Dave version did.
But I was 3000 miles away, isolated and detached from any real music scene, listening to prog and drinking Rainier beer.
You guys were drinking the good stuff, smack in the middle of the whole punk explosion and experiencing it firsthand by slam dancing at XTC gigs.

Don't think I don't envy you for it.

That's really important.
Every generation has to develop music styles of their own - ones the previous generation can't stand.
It's a rite of passage.

You guys were drinking the good stuff, smack in the middle of the whole punk explosion and experiencing it firsthand by slam dancing at XTC gigs.



More pogoing than slamming Jeff. Punk for me was a very peaceful, relaxed, drug free movement. It was more about the music and the clubs and starting a band. Like you said you had to be here. The best thing was it added a new dimension. The charts at the end of the seventies were still full of disco and progs.The movement only lasted about a year or so then the bands that survived became part of the machine and wanted to be on Top of the Pops. Now nobody cares about the charts and it's probably better that way. White Music reminds me of the fun and I hate people looking back and being embarrassed about it. Because in 20 years time we'll look back at now and say, oh my God what was all that about?

That's sure not the impression I got reading Melody Maker and the NME!
(Damn music press...and I had to google 'pogoing'.)

Still, would love to have been there.

We pogoed here on the East Coast!

Hell yes we did!!!!

I nearly bounced myself out of Emerald City every weekend....

The first time I ever stepped foot in that place, Living Thru Another Cuba was pounding out of the speakers..
GODDAMN, I miss those days..

I love White Music.


edited because of adverts on video.

This is Pop

Yeah, yeah !