XTC - Black Sea demos (1980)

Happy New Year, and welcome to night eight. I was debating what I was going to offer for the finale, and was on the fence about this one, as technically these were actually made available on the 2017 mondo bluray edition of Black Sea.  Well, for starters I don't own that highfalutin version.  Secondly, these files were sourced from a bootleg cassette (with a nominal amount of tape hiss intact).  Finally, it appeared that no one else was sharing this in FLAC, so I figured why not?

Most XTC fans will insist that the band never made an unsatisfactory album, and I can't argue with that at all.  But not all XTC records are equal, and their first two LPs, White Music and Go 2 (both from 1978) simply aren't as revered as those which followed. 1979's Drums and Wires is generally deemed as the beginning (though not necessarily the apex) of their halcyon era, and it's around this time a lot of folks jumped on the Partridge/Moulding wagon, particularly in the States.  

'80s Black Sea was arguably XTC's most consistent salvo to date yielding a pair of genuine signature songs "Generals and Majors" and "Sgt Rock. (is Going to Help Me." While I have no reason to frown on those tunes, I gravitate for deeper album tracks, and "Rocket From a Bottle" and "Don't Lose Your Temple" really quickened my pulse, and maybe a tad less so, "Respectable Street."  So far as I was concerned, there were zero throwaways, and I'll always regard Black Sea as one of XTC's career highlights.  These prototype variations (save for the instrumentals) don't radically deviate from the finished product, but they don't have to be in order to still fascinate. What's more there are three solo Partridge demos of songs that never carried over to the album or it's adjacent b-sides ("Pearl," "Monkeys in Human Skin Suits," and "Holding the Baby") that really might have been rendered into crucial nuggets in the XTC oeuvre had they had been fully fleshed out by the band.  Then again, maybe not, so I'll just let you decide.  Have at it.

01 Living Through Another Cuba [instrumental]

02 Sgt. Rock (Is Going To Help Me)

03 Rocket From A Bottle

04 Towers Of London

05 Smokeless Zone [instrumental]

06 Ban The Bomb [instrumental]

07 No Language In Our Lungs

08 Pearl [Andy Partridge solo]

09 Holding The Baby [Andy Partridge solo]

10 Monkeys In Human Skin Suits [Andy Partridge solo]

11 Burning With Optimism's Flames

12 Paper And Iron (Notes And Coins)

13 Travels In Nihilon

14 Don't Lose Your Temper

15 Respectable Street

16 Generals And Majors

MP3/FLAC