XTC - Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 3-8-1982

This is my first post for the music of the British band XTC. In the future, I plan to post some BBC albums by them. But in the meantime, this non-BBC bootleg is probably their best concert recording.

What makes this the best has to do with timing. The band released records from 1977 to 2000. But in 1982, after only a few years of touring, the band's main singer-songwriter, Andy Partridge, had a nervous breakdown. It turned out that he had been addicted to Valium for years. His wife finally forced him to stop taking it. Once it was out of his system, he found he was terrified of performing on stage. He had a panic attack at the start of a concert in Paris, France, on March 18, 1982. After that, the band never really played concerts again, although they did sometimes still play songs for the BBC and other radio shows.

This concert took place just ten days before Partridge's incident. It also happened shortly after the release of their classic 1982 double album "English Settlement." I've checked, and it seems there really are only two soundboard-level concerts by the band in 1982 that have key "English Settlement" songs such as "Senses Working Overtime" (their biggest hit), "Ball and Chain," and "No Thugs in Our House." There's this one, and a concert-length appearance on the German TV show "Rockpalast" a month earlier. Unfortunately, the best recording of the "Rockpalast" show I could find doesn't sound as good as this one. So this is the best concert recording from right before the band stopped touring.

Seven of the songs here are from "English Settlement," including the three best known songs, mentioned above. Another seven are from the band's previous album "Black Sea." Of the few other songs, there's an interesting version of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," virtually the only cover song the band played in concert (and which was done on the band's album "White Music").

There were a couple of problems with the recording, however. One was that the first two songs were missing. Luckily, those songs were played at the "Rockpalast" show too, so I've added those versions in the same order they were played here. The sound quality is rougher, but it's only two songs.

The second problem is that the lead vocals were low in the mix for many of the songs. So I used the audio editing program UVR5 (which I'm now using instead of X-Minus or Spleeter) to boost the vocals. I think the concert sounds excellent now.

This concert is an hour and 31 minutes long.

01 Respectable Street (XTC)
02 Burning with Optimism’s Flames (XTC)
03 talk (XTC)
04 Runaways (XTC)
05 Jason and the Argonauts (XTC)
06 Melt the Guns (XTC)
07 Snowman (XTC)
08 Ball and Chain (XTC)
09 talk (XTC)
10 No Thugs in Our House (XTC)
11 Senses Working Overtime (XTC)
12 All Along the Watchtower (XTC)
13 No Language in Our Lungs (XTC)
14 Towers of London (XTC)
15 Making Plans for Nigel (XTC)
16 Living through Another Cuba (XTC)
17 Generals and Majors (XTC)
18 Real by Reel (XTC)
19 Sgt. Rock [Is Going to Help Me] (XTC)
20 talk (XTC)
21 Life Begins at the Hop (XTC)

https://www.imagenetz.de/g7fcQ

I got lucky with the cover photo. At first, I couldn't find any photos of the band in concert in 1982. But then I came across two from the concert in Paris on March 18 where Partridge had his panic attack, taken by Jean-Christophe Prunet. One showed most of the band. But Partridge, it the middle, was basically a white blog due to a spotlight on him oversaturating the image. The other was just of Partridge, but didn't have the overexposure problem. So I used Photoshop to patch in just his head to the rest of the other image. These photos must have been taken right before his panic attack, since that happened during the first song they played that night.